catapult magazine

Well, for the first time (admittedly anyway) I’m out of ideas in my American Lit. class. I reached the Transcendentalists. I’ve always loved these guys (except Whitman). I loved teaching them in my past three years, but those were in a Christian school. Any good ideas on how to teach the simple beauty and wisdom of the transcendentalists (primarily Emerson and Thoreau) without falling into their traps and without blatantly explaining how Christians take the good and leave the bad?
You take ’em all and there you have the facts of life! the facts of life! Doot doo doo doo doo….

What are the traps of the transcendentalists?

Individualism is the big one. Emerson’s biggest hangup was self- reliance, which in and of itself isn’t the biggest deal. The extent to which he stresses it though is the problem.
The transcendentalists were an offshoot of Romanticism that stressed going beyond simply emotion to discover personal truth. Kind of a link between the Romantics and the Existentialists I guess.
That brings me to another problem. I’ve taught Demian by Hesse in other classes (see Cari Zylstras article from a previous issue that I’m too lazy to look up right now). I’d like to teach that again to my Brit Lit class (even though he’s German), but i’m afraid of the repercussions of that as well. Any help there as long as I’m asking?

Here’s a small answer to a big question — sometimes it helps to take students back to the idea of general revalation, then help them to see the societal forces that led to this particular author seeing this particular truth in this particular light.

Can you give me an example?

Well, I haven’t taught that neighborhood of American Lit for several years, but I’ll try.
1. I would talk generally about where we get truth (admittedly, this might occur back at the beginning of the semester) — the idea that God gives us Biblical truth, but also leaves a great deal of the world open for us to discover. This impulse to learn and understand is inside the non-Christian as well as the Christian — and the non-Christian can discover truth too — though they sometimes lack a coherent worldview to put it into.
2. Ask the students to try to determine what bits of truth the trancendentalists latched onto (Maybe the idea that we can see God’s hand in nature — or the idea that all the world’s natural systems work together, or the idea that spending time in nature can give us a sense of connection tot he divine (like I said, it has been a while since I taught this stuff))
3. Ground those revalations in a context (reation against rationalism maybe? Influence of American individualism? Response to the first seeds of inductrialism?)
4. Point out how the context of that time period caused some distortion in discovery of that truth. (belief that nature becomes almost a God and that transcendence becomes a goal in itself. Also that whole thanatopsis idea of becoming one with the earth after death — all a kind of neo-Bhuddism, really)
5. I usually like to end by reminding students that the author did put together an essential truth, so se should not feel superior as if we’ve got it all figured out that the author is a schmuck who missed the point.

Of course, it has been so long since I taught this that maybe all of the above is gibberish. Should I try again with something like Voltaire?

No that’s good stuff BBC.
I’ve been in Christian school for the last 20 years, and it’s just a weird adjustment to make. We’ve done some discussing on truth. We’ve discussed some mysticism, lots of romanticism and deism and now we’re working through the transcendentalists on the way to the existentialists. I figured that this would be a good time to ask for help.
It seems that the students should have a background for some of the stuff you mentioned above. Now I guess the job is to connect it all right?
Thanks!
Anyone else with ideas, please feel free to share as well.

For anyone interested, I ended up teaching the Transcendentalists straight up, but used Hawthorne’s “Minister’s Black Veil” as a chaser. An anti-transcendentalism thing. I also used David James Duncan’s “Streetlamp in the Netherlands” from River Teeth. Great example of depravity in human nature.
It worked out pretty well I think. Has anybody read anything by Duncan? I really like River Teeth. A cool perspective. Neat character sketches.

Yes, I’ve read The Brothers K by Duncan. A spectacular book. As you can probably guess, it’s a contemporary American spinoff of The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. As you said, neat character sketches. And everything else that rare great novels like this possess. I read it at a very poignant time in my life—right after I returned from Russia and was experiencing some intense reverse culture shock. This book was a well-needed antidote to my aversion to all things North American. It redeemed my opinion of American Lit, and humanity in general.

I’ve followed this discussion with a bit of interest. I don’t feel like I have anything to add, however, because I’m so inexperienced at this! But this is my first time for many things—my first year after graduating from Dordt where everything felt so stable, my first year of grad school, my first year of attending any public university, and my first semester of teaching (or attempting) English to university freshmen. I feel like I’m juggling so many different things and trying to walk the finest line I’ve ever walked in my life—so I don’t even know how to articulate just exactly what I’m thinking. But what is this aversion to thinking that seems so prevalent among these students? And how do I overcome it and engage them in what we’re reading, writing, and thinking about, even if they lack the structural world view I’m so used to dealing with? I’m sitting here grading their second batches of papers, as well as journals I’ve asked them to keep. Over and over their journals say, “I liked the first paper we wrote better because we had to think less.” [I sit here pounding my head against my desk] There is such racial and religious diversity in my class that I’m afraid of stepping on peoples’ toes, but I want to stir them up. Is this just first-year teacher blues? Or a sign of my idealism being challenged?

Sarah, I think the frustration you feel is felt by most teachers (and those who don’t feel it aren’t aware, engaged, and/or conscious. There are, I think a couple of things I keep in mind to keep myself from bonking my head on the desk.

First, we tend to dwell on the one or two comments like that that we get every week. Sometimes our frustration with those folks causes us to miss those people who are actively seeking deeper and harder thought. They are out there sitting in your class. Find them. It makes your job much more satisfying if you can identify them and talk to them now and again.

Second, our students are learning. The wonderful and horrible thing about teaching (in my experience) is that, just about the time they start getting it, they leave you. This is why, in some ways, teaching becomes easier the longer you do it. After five or six years you are able to look at examples of kids who were knuckleheads when they started with you who are now out trying to transform the world . (Others remain knuckleheads, but thankfully they usually don’t call or write, so you lose track of them.)

Third, I think we too often err on the side of letting that which is implied remain implied. That is to say, we are dealing with students who are heading this message from the culture and the mass media — the goal of life is to get more, work less, and take the easy way whenever possible. If we want them to understand that in order to get smart you have to work at it for a long time, and that to do such a thing is a worthwhile pursuit, we need to come right out and tell them so. Modelling it for them is a good start, but someone needs to tell them that despite the college brochures, college is not just about sitting around your dorm laughing with your friends. You can even, I think, be direct with them about saying stuff like, “I like this because I didn’t have to think so much”. Evidently they thing that is a cool or funny response. Tell them that it isn’t. Tell them to knock it off. You can do that. You are their teacher. they respect you (really).

I don’t want that last to sound like I am scolding you or anything — those are my words to myself whenever I forget to make the implied clear (which is often). In my experience, though, it never hurts to get something like that out in the open.

Oh, and amen to everything you said about David James Duncan. I’ve only read Brothers K and The River Why. What is the other book that Norb was talking about?

Hold onto that idealism Sarah; it can really make a difference in a classroom. As BBC said, there are students who you are reaching with your challenging assignments. It does take awhile to get the positive feedback. Negative feedback comes immediately (“This is stupid”, “Can’t we do something else”). In my fourth year of teaching, I’m just starting to get some really helpful positive feedback from previous students.
As you go along, make sure your experience and practicallity accentuate your idealism instead of dull it.
Thanks for the comments on Duncan. I’ve never read either of his novels (I don’t know if there is another outside of Brothers K and River Why). I’ll have to add them to my volume of book titles to explore.
I saw him at the Calvin writing festival which was my first (and only) push to pick up one of his books. I don’t think I have heard him mentioned since then.