LitLife Blog

Robert Fagles died last week. A professor at Princeton University, Fagles was described in his obituary in The New York Times as “an immensely popular teacher.”

The last few posts on this blog have begun examining the essential element of learning to read: in order to learn to read, you must read. And it is exponentially easier to read if the text you are reading is one you can understand.

Fagles became famous for his translations of the classics: The Odyssey, The Iliad and The Aeneid.

The nature of translation provides proof of the critical importance of providing a reader with text that he or she can understand. For if I were to offer you ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ, and 400 pages of more of the same, along with the recommendation that this piece of literature is one of the best books ever written, you would almost assuredly get nothing whatsoever out of it. So, while reading Homer in his original ancient Greek would probably give us the most nuanced understanding of the text, the fact that we cannot understand ancient Greek renders the original useless to us.

Apparently George Chapman set out to rectify this problem by translating The Odyssey into English in 1616. His opening lines: “The man, O Muse, informe, that many a way Wound with his wisedome to his wished stay; That wandered wondrous farre when He the towne Of sacred Troy had sackt and shiverd downe.” Better, as far as possibilities for understanding go, but still extremely challenging.

Others over the years continued to offer translations, each hopefully coming closer and closer to relaying the poetry and essence of the original language in a way we can understand.

Fagles came up with this: “Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.” And so begins the tale of a man on a long, wildly exciting, journey home.

Three thoughts come to mind: 1) before Homer put them in writing, these epic poems were presented orally to the people. People have been telling each other stories since long before there was anything like reading and writing; 2) the battle scenes in The Iliad are some of the most exciting I have ever read. A good translation of drama like that is a surefire hook to engage boys (since engaging boys in reading is on the minds of so many people); and 3) on some level there may only be two great themes in storytelling: a stranger comes to town, and the journey home.

So thank you to Robert Fagles as he sets out on his journey home, for making some of the greatest stories in human history accessible to us as readers, and as people.

“Launch out on his story, muse, daughter of Zeus, start from where you will — sing for our time too.”

Let’s explore briefly what it feels like to read words you cannot understand:

Foucault maintains that the great “turn” in modern philosophy occurs when, with Kant (though no doubt he is merely an example of something much broader and deeper), it becomes possible to raise the question of whether ideas do in fact represent their objects and, if so, how (in virtue of what) they do so. In other words, ideas are no longer taken as the unproblematic vehicles of knowledge; it is now possible to think that knowledge might be (or have roots in) something other than representation. This did not mean that representation had nothing at all to do with knowledge. Perhaps some (or even all) knowledge still essentially involved ideas’ representing objects. But, Foucault insists, the thought that was only now (with Kant) possible was that representation itself (and the ideas that represented) could have an origin in something else.

This thought, according to Foucault, led to some important and distinctively modern possibilities. The first was that developed by Kant himself, who thought that representations (thoughts or ideas) were themselves the product of (“constituted” by) the mind. Not, however, produced by the mind as a natural or historical reality, but as belonging to a special epistemic realm: transcendental subjectivity. Kant thus maintained the Classical insistence that knowledge cannot be understood as a physical or historical reality, but he located the grounds of knowledge in a domain (the transcendental) more fundamental than the ideas it subtended. (We must add, of course, that Kant also did not think of this domain as possessing a reality beyond the historical and the physical; it was not metaphysical. But this metaphysical alternative was explored by the idealistic metaphysics that followed Kant) Another–and in some ways more typically modern–view was that ideas were themselves historical realities. This could be most plausibly developed by making ideas essentially tied to language (as in, for example, Herder), now regarded as the primary (and historicized) vehicle of knowledge. But such an approach was not viable in its pure form, since to make knowledge entirely historical would deprive it of any normative character and so destroy its character as knowledge. In other words, even when modern thought makes knowledge essentially historical, it must retain some functional equivalent of Kant’s transcendental realm to guarantee the normative validity of knowledge.

I found this excerpt on the web. It summarizes some of the ideas of Michel Foucault, a famous French philosopher. Do you have as hard a time understanding it as I do? How long would you read if the text before you continued on in a similar incomprehensible vein? Maybe fifteen more seconds, struggling to find meaning?

The challenge is not so much with the vocabulary, but with the complexity of the content.

Or how about this one:

To replicate, HIV-1 capitalizes on endogenous cellular activation pathways resulting in recruitment of key host transcription factors to its viral enhancer. RNA interference has been a powerful tool for blocking key checkpoints in HIV-1 entry into cells. Here we apply RNA interference to HIV-1 transcription in primary macrophages, a major reservoir of the virus, and specifically target the transcription factor NFAT5 (nuclear factor of activated T cells 5), which is the most evolutionarily divergent NFAT protein. By molecularly cloning and sequencing isolates from multiple viral subtypes, and performing DNase I footprinting, electrophoretic mobility shift, and promoter mutagenesis transfection assays, we demonstrate that NFAT5 functionally interacts with a specific enhancer binding site conserved in HIV-1, HIV-2, and multiple simian immunodeficiency viruses. Using small interfering RNA to ablate expression of endogenous NFAT5 protein, we show that the replication of three major HIV-1 viral subtypes (B, C, and E) is dependent upon NFAT5 in human primary differentiated macrophages. Our results define a novel host factor-viral enhancer interaction that reveals a new regulatory role for NFAT5 and defines a functional DNA motif conserved across HIV-1 subtypes and representative simian immunodeficiency viruses. Inhibition of the NFAT5-LTR interaction may thus present a novel therapeutic target to suppress HIV-1 replication and progression of AIDS.

Here the challenge stems not so much from the content, but from the vocabulary and terminology.

When you are determining what text is right for a child to read, please keep in mind how it feels when you are asked to read something that is too hard for you.

A child must read in order to become a reader.

Again, a child must read in order to become a reader.

One more time — a child must read in order to become a reader.

Everything else, absolutely everything else, involved in teaching someone to read must derive from that essential truth.

Always ask yourself this question when you are teaching or, as a parent, interacting with your child about reading: “Will what I am saying to this child cause him or her to read more?”  The answer must be, “Yes.” If it is not, then what you are doing is at best not helping, and at worst, seriously harming the child’s development as a reader.

The next posts will address the “how” of instructing kids so that they read more.

If you read, you will become a better reader. If you do not read, you will not become a better reader. It is truly as simple as that at its core.

We can atomically clock it to megananosupertinypartofasecond accuracy.

We marvel at our ability to fix the exact moment of the vernal equinox on our yearlong, loping jaunt around the sun.

Who among us, even the least interested in jewelry and other baubles, has not at least once been taken by the astounding magnificence of a beautiful watch.

It almost sounds silly to say, but time is everywhere. Time can be on your side. It can be your enemy. It is everything, and it is nothing, and it is so much a part of our perception of the world that we can’t really even think about what it really is. Or means.

So what do we do when confronted with such conundrums? Turn to poetry, of course.

“To wait an hour is long

If love be just beyond;

To wait eternity is short

If love be at the end.”   Emily Dickinson

Or we can turn to deep thinkers like Abraham Joshua Heschel:

“Time is the only property the self really owns. Temporality, therefore, is an essential feature of existence. Time, however, is the most flimsy of things: a mere succession of perishing instants. It is something we never hold: the past is gone forever, what is yet to come is beyond our reach, and the present departs before we can perceive it. How paradoxical and true — the only property we own we never possess.”

Gosh, he is kind of bringing me down a bit, though I love his ultimate message if you keep plowing through his work.

Rest easy, though, for LitLife can change the entire space/time paradigm in your classroom. We can show you how you can be more effective than you already are in your teaching of reading and writing, how your literacy time will start to feel like skating on smooth ice with a wind at your back rather than slogging the mule train through mud, and how you will feel like the hands on the clock in your room are slowing down, giving you what you have always wanted — a feeling of having enough time to teach the way you want to teach. Write to time@litlifeinfo.com, and we’ll tell you how.

Finally, I have to disagree with Heschel that the past is gone forever. My own experience is quite different. I find that the past is very much alive. I worked for my grandfather one summer cutting brush. I can still remember him deciding it would be a good idea for me to learn how to drive with a clutch on a work truck that was supposed to be driven smoothly and slowly under overhanging branches while the guys standing in the back trimmed the branches down. I climbed down from my branch cutting position and got in the driver’s seat. We bucked and lurched for a bit, spastically proceeding down the road, the men in the back tossed about like flotsam in a storm.  My grandfather soon enough said, “Somebody must have put rabbit juice in the tank,” and I was thereupon back in my original place, trimming the branches.

I remember everything about that moment as clear as day — the bright warmth of the sun, the vibrant green of all the foliage, the heat shimmering off the hardtop, the feel of the wheel and the stickshift, the lurch of the truck, the alarmed yelping of the guys in the back, the bemused warmth of my grandfather’s expression, the affection in his voice when he made the rabbit juice comment, and the point of his lesson, one he repeated over and over without even thinking about it: “Give it a try, the first time it’ll be hard and you probably won’t do it right, so don’t take it too seriously, go back and take your ribbing from your friends  . . . but then do it again until you get it right.”

I learned how to drive a stick that same summer in my grandmother’s for-some-reason metallic gold VW bug. That car had a split personality type of existence that summer: bridge games and the library during the day, a fairly active social life in the evening . . .

My grandparents aren’t alive now, but they sure are in my memory. Vividly, and lovingly, and everyday making their presence felt, and keeping their own time.

The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in an important case involving the Second Amendment. The issues are whether the citizens of the United States have a constitutional right to own a gun for personal use, and what sort of restrictions the government may impose on any such right in the name of public safety. As famed sportscaster Warner Wolf might say, “Let’s go the text.”

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That clears it up, right?

Talk about an ill-crafted sentence. What’s with the extra commas? And the initial focus seems to be on States and Militias, but then the focus is clearly on the people. What gives?

Whether the confusion stems from poor drafting, or intentional ambiguity to reach political agreement between differing points of view of the drafters, we are very curious to see how the Court decides this case (the decision should be out in June).

In the meantime, the Second Amendment is yet one more example of the importance of punctuation in our writing. LitLife has developed wonderful units of study to help kids learn punctuation and grammar. The essential focus is always that these rules and conventions are not at all designed as barriers to trip you up in your writing, but tools you can use to make your writing clear to your readers (or, at an advanced level, to perhaps make your reader slow down and take notice, to make your message more powerful). A lesson on exclamation points can bring delight to your students, as the teacher models reading with feeling during a readaloud. Grammar, punctuation, conventions . . . these are frequently “taught” to children through the use of what are frankly mind-numbing worksheets. It is no wonder that the rules of grammar can come to be seen as the enemy.

And the irony is that the greatest writers are very often celebrated for their unorthodox use of grammar and punctuation. Consider this:

“Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.”

No period at the end of the first poorly crafted sentence. Misuse of colons in the second sentence. Who is this writer?

You may recognize James Joyce and the beginning of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Just as we celebrate Picasso and his art, we celebrate writers who can use punctuation not just as devices to make themselves clear, but who can make the distorted use of punctuation part of the story itself.

So let’s really give our kids a chance to become great writers by teaching them grammar and conventions in interesting, fun and exciting ways (write to conventions@litlifeinfo.com if you would like to receive a sample unit). For. There. Is. Nothing. More. Important. Than. Teaching. Our. Kids. To. Read. And. Write. Well. Period.

If you want facts, read non-fiction. If you want the truth, read poetry.

And if you want both, read the sports pages.

Where else can you find statistics (and their interpretation — sure, a player might have a lot of RBIs, but does he deliver in the clutch?), and finance (do you have any idea how lucrative owning a sports franchise can be, even for the worst performing teams?), medical issues (surgery for a torn rotator cuff is named after former pitcher Tommy John) and poetic turns of phrase (the Hail Mary pass, the Immaculate Reception, the Thrilla in Manilla, the Ice Bowl). Keith Jackson is famous for his broadcasting of college football games, with his Southern drawl cranking out such beauties as, “They’re beating them down like a monster paver rolling over hot asphalt under a blazing Alabama sun.”

But the real beauty of the sports pages is in the stories, the heroics, the drama. The unbelievable comeback of the Red Sox against the Yankees in 2004 (down 3-0, then sweeping the next four games for the first time in baseball playoff history). The Giants returning the favor to the Beantowners by beating the previously undefeated Patriots in this year’s Super Bowl, the biggest play a wild pass by Eli Manning, who spun and twisted and turned and escaped the grasp of the charging defenders not once but twice, to hurl the ball downfield where it was caught in a leaping grab and somehow pressed against the receiver’s helmet, where he managed to hang on as he was pummeled to the ground . . . It was magic, pure magic (if you were a Giants fan, that is).

For sports are a story of life, played out right before us. Can the underdog win, can someone perform far beyond what they have previously been capable of, can we embrace both “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”, as they used to say on Wide World of Sports.

The sports pages are a treasure trove of reading materials, for boys, for girls, and for the teachers who teach them.

Change is the one true constant. We can fight it, we can embrace it, we can try to ignore it . . . but change will come. Of course, some say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Things may look different on the surface, but underneath they remain as before.

LitLife’s work is to shatter that paradigm. To move to a new place, a changed place, where things are different than before.

My daughter’s senior English class is reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis. We were talking about the book the other evening, about what a  strange and weird tale it tells. Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find that he has turned into a giant, beetle-like bug for no reason whatsoever. Talk about a startling change.

I had read the book a long time ago and couldn’t remember the details except for that incredible beginning. We got to talking, though, about the message of waking up to find everything in your world completely and radically and unexpectedly changed.

And that led us to think of Silda Wall Spitzer, who went to bed one evening with her world securely in one place, and awoke the next with everything changed. Or the folks at Bear Stearns, who woke up to find their company gone, just like that.

Kafka wrote about the universality of experiencing uncontrollable change. That sort of change is usually painful.

We at LitLife work to make change manageable, and easy, quickly leading to improvements that in turn generate an organic desire for more positive change. Think of the invention of the wheel. That was a change, but it sure as heck made life a lot easier.

Change will come. We work with teachers to make that change as productive and easy as possible. Make the inevitable changes in your life feel like a smooth ride on a flat road with new tires on your bicycle. Rather than like waking up one morning to find out you have become a giant bug.  Read Kafka for the message, but keep your life as unKafkaesque as possible.

Words change worlds. Words are the most powerful transformative agents in the world.

LitLife’s work is to bring the power to use words to all children. The power to read well and understand the ideas of others. The power to write well, and put one’s own ideas out into the world. To be a force for change, to fight injustice, to utilize the incredible technology we now can access to push the world forward to a better, kinder place.

The goal is transformative, the destination almost hard to imagine, and the process seemingly a long one. But that only adds to the thrill of the journey. For we strongly believe that the combination of good teaching practice, human connectedness, kindness, and most critically, fun — incredible, old-fashioned, laughing and enjoying life fun — is the key component to success.

We hope this blog inspires you in your teaching, motivates you in your dreams, and brings a smile to your face.

LitLife