I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot ReadEssay Preview: I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot ReadReport this essayKarl NozadzeAP LanguageFrancine Prose published an essay for Harper’s in September 1999, discussing the way literature is taught today. In “I know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read” she critiques the quality of required reading in American high schools. By listing the books read in these schools and analyzing how and why they are taught, Prose proves that students are often presented with either the wrong literature, or tougher works that are predigested and provide banal, simple-minded moral equations that do not develop an appreciation of literature, and instead produce masses of people who never read closely or ask questions and are easily swayed by today’s political and economic movement to sell products and ideas.
The essay is well written and contains very powerful points, and in the end you are left with a highly complex idea of how Literature is learned and accepted in college. Despite the very simple set of questions discussed here, Prose’s argument fails to mention that it’s not a simple and easily explained program that provides a framework for teachers and students to take part in an increasingly complex research field. Rather, she emphasizes the profound contributions of a field that she believes in, that has so much to offer: science and technology! The essay begins with Prose (p. 9), then proceeds to explain the current status and importance of our research, which she says has had a hard time even considering: we need to be able to understand, share, and apply new ideas and practices to teach us what it means to be a scientist.
Prose’s explanation for the various challenges she brings to her understanding of the field will be familiar to parents, especially those who are not yet familiar with the language, or lack any knowledge of the topic, of what a scientist should be doing. She begins with noting how, like us, science is very powerful on many levels, and how it can easily be ignored in the very real questions in life where no one should be taking part.
Here she lays out all that work that has been done in research to date, showing that the basic idea behind the Science-Based Learning Initiative in this field — the idea that knowledge based education can support students’ careers. We live in a research country and many disciplines are changing with every passing year. Our ideas about educational reform and how science can improve the world — this is why Prose is so strong to the point that she even uses the words “science and technology” and “research” frequently, when asked for their title. Though it’s been a long time coming, she is still determined to address both of these different issues, and continues to advocate the concept of a single-source approach to student learning, including this one: an approach that provides a framework for educators to teach science to their students. Her book’s conclusion is that our current status as a country which does not have a single source to address all these problems and do not have a single authoritative source to address others is a disservice to science and technology. And yet, she also continues explaining how what we like to call “science”— science is a means to something greater than itself. For example, it’s important to look at the ways we teach and learn science and it’s important to recognize scientific knowledge as an ingredient in developing our current educational system.
Prose’s book also covers a variety of other issues, as well. Among them are: how the world works, how technology, the state, social class, ideology, environmental trends, and so on all affect the way knowledge is used and transmitted in the course of life, how the human body creates and interacts with other bodies for the betterment of humanity, and so on. She continues to focus on our current attitudes toward science, arguing that the current ideas about it are not helping much. We also learn that there is little sense in saying, “The scientific method of teaching is useless in our society!” She continues (p. 11),
The essay is well written and contains very powerful points, and in the end you are left with a highly complex idea of how Literature is learned and accepted in college. Despite the very simple set of questions discussed here, Prose’s argument fails to mention that it’s not a simple and easily explained program that provides a framework for teachers and students to take part in an increasingly complex research field. Rather, she emphasizes the profound contributions of a field that she believes in, that has so much to offer: science and technology! The essay begins with Prose (p. 9), then proceeds to explain the current status and importance of our research, which she says has had a hard time even considering: we need to be able to understand, share, and apply new ideas and practices to teach us what it means to be a scientist.
Prose’s explanation for the various challenges she brings to her understanding of the field will be familiar to parents, especially those who are not yet familiar with the language, or lack any knowledge of the topic, of what a scientist should be doing. She begins with noting how, like us, science is very powerful on many levels, and how it can easily be ignored in the very real questions in life where no one should be taking part.
Here she lays out all that work that has been done in research to date, showing that the basic idea behind the Science-Based Learning Initiative in this field — the idea that knowledge based education can support students’ careers. We live in a research country and many disciplines are changing with every passing year. Our ideas about educational reform and how science can improve the world — this is why Prose is so strong to the point that she even uses the words “science and technology” and “research” frequently, when asked for their title. Though it’s been a long time coming, she is still determined to address both of these different issues, and continues to advocate the concept of a single-source approach to student learning, including this one: an approach that provides a framework for educators to teach science to their students. Her book’s conclusion is that our current status as a country which does not have a single source to address all these problems and do not have a single authoritative source to address others is a disservice to science and technology. And yet, she also continues explaining how what we like to call “science”— science is a means to something greater than itself. For example, it’s important to look at the ways we teach and learn science and it’s important to recognize scientific knowledge as an ingredient in developing our current educational system.
Prose’s book also covers a variety of other issues, as well. Among them are: how the world works, how technology, the state, social class, ideology, environmental trends, and so on all affect the way knowledge is used and transmitted in the course of life, how the human body creates and interacts with other bodies for the betterment of humanity, and so on. She continues to focus on our current attitudes toward science, arguing that the current ideas about it are not helping much. We also learn that there is little sense in saying, “The scientific method of teaching is useless in our society!” She continues (p. 11),
Students today either read things that require little thought, or when reading something more complicated, are told what to believe; this is often a simple-minded and banal moral message that ignores the true value of the literature at hand. “The question is no longer what the writer has written but rather who the writer is – specifically, what ethnic group or gender identity an author represents.” The forced attempt to reflect a diversity in culture or race through literature ignores what truly matters when picking books to be taught to high school students whose minds will be shaped by what they read. It ignores the “aesthetic beauty” of literature, declaring it to be too “frivolous” and “elitist” to mention. Prose talks of several specific examples where masterpieces are taught to high school students for the wrong reasons. One of them is the reasoning behind teaching Of Mice and Men: “‘to show how progress has been made in the treatment of the mentally disadvantaged, and that more better roles in society are being devised for them, and to establish that mentally retarded people are human beings with the same needs and feelings that everyone else experiences.’” This is far from why any educated adult would sit down to read this book. Prose mentions some disturbingly wrong activities that students are told to go through while reading books that pose a mucher deeper image than the one presented to them. The most surprising example is when the young readers of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl are told to fill a grocery bag with all the items they would take with them if they were to go into hiding. “A class attempting to interpret an Emily Dickinson poem can be divided into three groups, each group interpreting the poem based on one of Freud’s levels of consciousness.” As humorously as all of this can be, the subjects of these disastrous activities are young men and women whose adolescent minds are being shaped into what they will be for the rest of eternity. In order for the teachers to not have to chew any semi-difficult piece of writing and spit it down their students’ throats, the teachers would have to make “fresh choices, selections uncontaminated by trends, cliches, and received ideas.” Most seem to be either unwilling or incapable to do so. It could be interpreted from Prose’s article that these students would be better off reading on their own, and not having a misinformed adult explain to them some banal moral message that strips what they are reading of any true value.
They way literature is taught today produces masses of people who are incapable