Consider the following conversation between a teacher and her class of tenth graders. She is introducing the year's unit on Shakespeare, and while the young people argue against the need to read, she employs various common topics of invention to combat their complaints, which constitute to the overall special topic of invention, advantageous/disadvantageous:"Mrs. Richards, Shakespeare is an old dead guy. Why do we care about what he wrote?" Billy rang out after the English teacher had expressed her enthusiasm to begin King Lear.
"Well," she replied, "aren't the majority of the books we read written by 'old, dead guys'?" She retorted Billie's argument with a similarity/difference comparison that made his point ineffective.
"But Shakespeare's language is sooo old that none of us can understand it!" Sally chimed in.
Mrs. Richards jokingly asked her, "Have you ever said, 'tongue-tied,' 'lie low,' or 'in a pickle'? How about 'dead as a door-nail' or 'laughing stock' etc.? Shakespeare made up these and many more phrases that we use all the time. So you understand more than you think!" The familiar maxims showed Sally she really could comprehend the age-old language.
Jimmy offered another grievance, "Okay, Mrs. R, so maybe it doesn't matter if he's old and his words are old. Give me a reason why we young people have to read his plays." Mrs. Richards was prepared to supply a thousand reasons, but focused on those that related to past and future facts, as well as cause and effect relationships. "Class," she said, "reading Shakespeare is extremely advantageous. Just as I know you've read him in eighth and ninth grade, I know you'll read him in eleventh and twelfth! Familiarizing yourselves with his work will not only help you interpret numberless cultural allusions to it, but will also teach you how to tell better stories, like him! He was the world's greatest story-teller. And if you unravel a character in a Shakespeare play, you will begin to make sense of human nature in general, which in turn will help you come to understand yourselves in the time that you are trying to find out who you really are."
The students were still for a moment, and Jimmy finally concluded, "Those are good reasons..."
Mrs. Richards smiled, "Now. Let's open to Act I."
Haha the conversation was very amusing, especially since that is definitely not how I would imagine the conversation to go in a tenth grade class. Still, you definitely established your point and used the topics of invention effectively so good job!
ReplyDeleteThis is a well written post, I know I've been in the students' situation before. I have to say this this is a struggle that most teachers face when they try and introduce difficult topics to their class.
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