Subject: Re: Burns, coming through the rye/teaching and learning
From: Will Hochman (hochman@southernct.edu)
Date: Sat Jul 21 2001 - 20:41:32 GMT
Phoebe corrects Holden on page 173 of my bantam paperback and page
224 of the hardback first edition...a student who I haven't met at my
new school heard the show and corrected me...I am the type of
Salinger scholar and teacher to be proud of being corrected by a
student...I could fudge it with the parallel of Holden being
corrected by Phoebe but the truth is that as an educator, I believe
in students knowing a great deal. I think teaching isn't about
communicating information but experiencing ideas and it's fun to
correct the teacher! I learned that little lesson best as a teacher
in a computerized classes. Young folks know how to use computers
better than most old folks...when students can teach teachers,
learning is not only empowered in the ways Paulo Freire describes in
his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, learning prompts and info are
clearly coming from a variety of places. Salinger's sense of
vulgarians or even superiority of educated folks was wrong. On page
189-90 (bantam) Antolini has been saying some mighty fine things to
Holden but then gets into this stuff about how "nine times out of ten
they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker" and then a
couple of paragraphs down on 190 Antolini is says "You'll begin to
know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly." But
the lesson of knowing Holden that I like best is that schools don't
always understand students.
Holden is articulate and insightful. In fact the way he uses
language is at the center of what language itself is all about...the
hope that we can use words to get beyond ourselves and connect the
mysteries of human experience with others and understand ideas and
feelings more deeply. I've always thought that Holden's intelligence
and ability to tell his story is a great example of how intelligence
is not always understood. In l983, Harvard professor Howard Gardner
published Frames of Mind which presented his theory of multiple
intelligence. Basically, he claimed that there are 7 or more types
of intelligence. The SAT for example, may test verbal and
mathematical intelligence, but doesn't test for spatial intelligence,
kinetic intelligence, visual intelligence, etc. The example of
Holden, and the hope of language, make me tolerant of my
students...teaching is about creating opportunities to attempt
something...learning often happens asynchronously and is usually an
more an individual path than most institutions are able to address as
powerfully and directly as our culture might like...which is why
bananafish is such a pleasant advance for my own path as a Salinger
reader!
will
-- Will Hochman Assistant Professor of English Southern Connecticut State University 501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515 203 392 5024
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