A Native Returns 4

A NATIVE RETURNS #4


“Give us more freedom to choose what we want to study!”

“I hate to be told what to read and when to read it!”

“Why do I have to write about things that I’m not interested in?”

These are some of the agitated cries of many students. These cries cannot be passed off as being the ranting of a disturbed adolescence; the complaints are valid. Teenagers, as well as adults, feel the need for self expression and the need for recognition as persons having ideas worthy of attention.

In one of my English classes at Oxford Hills High School, I have entrusted twenty seniors with considerable freedom to plan their own academic menu. I haven’t discovered yet what is for desert, but the meat and potatoes are beginning to take shape in the form of the authors that each one wants to study and the period of time each student wants to investigate.

One morning I walked into class and asked them what they had discovered about their new-found academic freedom.

“Freedom isn’t really freedom; it means a lot of responsibility,” gloomily replied several with worried faces.

Fine! The important thing here is that they discovered it themselves. The old cliché, freedom means responsibility, has been tossed at them for years, and that’s all it was, just words. Now, however, the words are theirs and have meaning.

I think the reader ought to know and be interested in what is going on at Oxford Hills High School; perhaps I should define this freedom which I have given. It does not mean that I have turned the classroom over to the students, locked myself in my office, and hidden behind a bookcase. It means that I have become a resource person and a guide rather than a dictator.

The curriculum for senior English includes world literature, history of the language, and an emphasis on composition and vocabulary. During the first days of this school year, I asked them how they wanted to approach it. The seriousness of the situation struck them at this point: no planned daily assignments, no one to tell them how many pages to read tonight, and no assigned topics to write about. This program was pretty close to what they had been asking for, and now they were stuck with it.

I thought the whole situation was quite hopeful, though, because no one suggested doing nothing or discussing the weather and campus riots for the rest of the year.

They didn’t remain worried very long; they came through with a variety of workable ideas. In many cases the tendency was to bite off more than they could chew. If I had assigned them as much as they were going to assign themselves, they would have yelled bloody murder.

They took the four terms of the year and divided the literary study into four parts: Russian, French, Classical Greek, and Hamlet. This term we are working on Russian literature.

We are also working on narration: how to tell a story of our own experience or invention in the most effective way. They have appointed a committee to come up with a vocabulary study that will prepare them to read the things they want to read and ought to read.

The point is that we do not have to worry about giving these youngsters of our a little responsibility. They may not know what to do with it right away, but they never will unless they have a chance to experiment.

This little group of mine seems to be generating a certain amount of enthusiasm, and I’m enthusiastic, too. I intend to tell you a lot more about them as time goes on because they have promised me that it is going to be successful.