Was Holden Caulfield abducted by aliens?
Why we should rethink four years of required English in high school
I once argued to my ninth grade English teacher that Catcher in the Rye involved Holden Caulfield getting abducted by aliens. I forget the details, but vaguely it had to do with Holden portraying the world he encountered as he wandered through New York as a completely unfamiliar environment. And at one point he sees bright lights which seemed suspiciously like what you might find in a classic alien abduction story.
My theory was completely absurd, but at that point I was frustrated enough with the book to start turning the exploration of Holden Caulfield's alientation (which we were covering in class) into an exploration of his encounters with aliens. I also do remember thinking that my crazy story about what was behind Catcher in the Rye was much more interesting than the explanations about the book that were being discussed in class, and perhaps not all that much more incoherent. I sometimes had a hard time figuring out how to anchor the themes and motifs and hidden meanings which were the bread and butter of the class in something that felt relevant. There was occasionally something which connected, but I spent a good portion of the time I felt I was reading books where my eyes glazed over in order to then dissect them into strained essays which taught me little.I should note that I could not have asked for better high school English teachers. My problems with English class are despite them, not because of them.
Of course, I’m not the only one who felt this way. I knew this in school, as asking pointed questions about English class was a good way to get at least a good number of classmates to nod their heads in agreement, but you don’t have to even finish typing similar questions into Google in order to confirm that I’m not the only one asking them.The Google search autocomplete results for "why is english class" include "why is english class boring", "why is english class so useless", and "why is english class so stupid". There are no end of thinkpieces out there on the internet about why English class doesn’t teach anything useful, why it makes students hate reading, and on and on.
Most states throughout the country require four years of English at the high school level,This seems to be true for all states that have statewide requirements. and yet states generally don’t provide explanations for their requirements. They certainly don’t spell out how four years of reading and analyzing classic novels necessitates a four-year requirement. And so the question that bugged me then and which continues to bug me is why do we require students to do this for four years?
The high school English teachers to whom I asked this question had a standard set of answers, which are the same as the ones you find if you go looking around on the internet. Reading books like Catcher, they said, provides a window into key issues of human experience, illustrates diverse perspectives that students can relate to, and make students better, more thoughtful people in the process. On the analysis side, parsing and examining the text of these novels helps students to build critical thinking skills and appreciate the perspectives and motivations apparent in a text.There are other arguments that are brought up (such as introducing students to a common literary canon), but this seems to be the most common one. (But if you really want to introduce students to the most widely read literary canons, perhaps your syllabus should include books like the Bible, Harry Potter, and Quotations from Mao.)
In some cases, students do indeed come away from English class having developed critical thinking skills and having broadened their perspectives. For every person who comes out of their high school English class saying that they saw little point in the class there is another for whom the class sparked a new drive of curiosity or uncovered a previously hidden thoughtfulness.
But this sort of personal development can’t be beaten into students by making them take more English even after they’ve already checked out. Unlike chemistry or calculus, which will stick at least a little with enough practice, the lessons in English class are harder to learn by just doing similar things over and over again. This is particularly true for the sort of mind-expansion and perspective-broadening which is often touted (generally by English teachers) as a key value of the standard high school English class. And it’s not like year three or four of English provides something substantially different than year one or two. Unlike a science requirement, where one year is biology and another is physics, or a history requirement, where one year is world history and another is US history and government, each year of English is just another set of novels to read and analyze.
So why do we actually force students to take four years of high school English? The answer, as with many other defining features of the high school curriculum, appears to be college. Much of the current high school English curriculum appears to have taken shape in the second half of the 19th century in response to colleges deciding that students needed to study English.
An influential 1894 reportReport of the Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies: With the Reports of the Conferences Arranged by the Committee. National Education Association of the United States, 1894. by a committee made up mostly of college presidents laid out recommendations for the sort of high school English curriculum that will prepare a student for college. The proposed curriculum looks quite similar to what you’d see in today’s high school English classes: “The Conference is of the opinion that the study of English should be pursued in the high-school for five hours a week during the entire course of four years,” the report says. It goes on to recommend that the bulk of this time should be spent studying literature.National Education Association, 90.
This report doesn’t provide a particularly in-depth explanation of why it recommends four years of English with a focus on literature, however. There are passing mentions of how a study of literature “furnish[es] the student with apparatus for analysis and criticism,”National Education Association, 90. but the report spends most of its time walking through what it believes the English curriculum in high school should look like rather than why. Indeed, some members of the committee which produced the report thought that students’ time might be better spent focusing more on other subjects like math or even Latin.Aulbach, Carol. "The Committee of Ten: Ghosts Who Still Haunt Us." The English Journal 83, no. 3 (1994): 16-17. Accessed December 4, 2020. doi:10.2307/820921.
Regardless, the basic form of this curriculum which took shape in the late 1800s has remained relatively constant through to the present day. High schools spend four years teaching English with a focus on reading and analyzing classic works of literature. While school curriculums have been revised and rethought over the years, it’s likely that one of the driving factors keeping the English curriculum so familiar remains that high schools take their cue from colleges. Most prominent colleges require or recommend four years of English in high school for prospective applicants. Indeed, if anything the importance of this signal from colleges has only grown over the years.
Looked at in this context, the four year English requirement seems rather ironic. It is meant to teach critical analysis, and yet comes in part from the uncritical acceptance of a curriculum structure sketched out more than 100 years ago. It is meant to be a way to broaden minds, and yet comes out of a rather narrow focus on what colleges want to see from their students. And it is meant to allow for an appreciation of diverse perspectives yet provides benefits largely to those for whom the structure and content of the classes resonates.
This is not to say that what the English curriculum attempts to do is not important. It is important that students learn to think critically about what they are reading and engage with a range of perspectives they might not otherwise encounter. But it is not at all evident that spending four years doing literary analysis of novels which cause some significant fraction of eyes to glaze over is the best way to do that. And students can’t have their eyes glazing over if they are to understand how to read critically and broaden their minds.
Given that the aims of English class are so important, it’s imperative that schools think about other ways to teach those aims. The good news is that literary analysis of standard novels shouldn’t be the only way to get students to think critically and write well. The reason why English class is considered so important is because the skills it tries to teach are relevant across many subjects. Why not then provide options for students to analyze texts which aren’t novels of supposed literary value? A campaign speech that might fit into a civics class? Or a primary source document that might fit into a history class?
The possibilities are endless, and go beyond just incorporating English class into other subjects. If English isn’t tied to a set of novels and endless literary analysis (perhaps with a couple weeks of poetry thrown in), then perhaps more time can be spent on things which might actually catch the attention of students who would otherwise zone out, or which would at least be a little more likely to stick in the minds of zoned out students through practice. How about creative writing? Persuasive essays on topics that students actually care about? Speechwriting? It might even be possible to sneak some textual analysis into these other topics.
Regardless of how English class is reworked or reimagined, the basic point is that it’s not worth spending four years doing variations of the same thing when a) that thing is causing 30 percent or more of the class to check out and b) the only way it’s valuable is if students are engaged. Perhaps we could instead have students do something that they find meaningful or will find useful, and we could all be saved crackpot theories from frustrated students about alien abductions in Catcher in the Rye.