Turning Water into Wine: Giving Remote Texts Full Flavor for the Audience of "Friends"
Author(s): Marshall Gregory
Source: College Teaching, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Summer, 2005), pp. 95-98
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27559232
Accessed: 27-08-2014 19:27 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to College Teaching.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 134.161.28.175 on Wed, 27 Aug 2014 19:27:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
TURNING
INTO
WATER
WINE
GIVINGREMOTE
TEXTSFULLFLAVOR
FOR
THEAUDIENCE
OF FRIENDS
Marshall
Gregory
This essay argues that teachers would be
Abstract,
more effective
to
at promoting
students' willingness
work hard at course content that seems to them remote
and abstract if teachers explicitly presented that content
to students more as a means
to their education rather
than as the aim of their education. Teachers should con
front the fact that most of the content they teach will be
forgotten by students. Once this fact is accepted, then it
follows that teaching content that teachers know will be
forgotten as if it should never be forgotten ismyopic and
is
perhaps dysfunctional. An alternative teaching model
to use course content to stimulate the flourishing
of
human skills?rationality,
language, aes
developmental
thetic responsiveness,
imagination, introspection, moral
and ethical deliberation,
sociability, and physicality?in
notion of liberal educa
the service of a developmental
tion that can never go out of date and can never be for
gotten because its effects become absorbed as develop
mentally advanced orientations of life, not crammed into
short-term memory for the sake of passing tests.
every year, I am privileged to
It is
teach my favorite course.
Almost
[gulp] British Literature Survey I, that old
workhorse,
one-semester
from Beowulf
is the Ice Professor
Gregory
and
Liberal Education,
Pedagogy
is also an executive
He
University.
Marshall
College
Vol.
Teaching.
53/No.
of English,
at Butler
editor
of
such formidable
poet, Chaucer
ney,
Shakespeare,
survey
that goes
to Blake
and that includes
authors as the Beowulf
(in Middle
Webster,
English),
Donne,
Sid
Mar
vel,
Milton,
Herrick,
son, Gray,
course
favorite
most
and
to teach,
challenging
It is my
others.
it is also
but
course
John
Swift,
Pope,
Goldsmith,
I teach.
the
In what
I am going to discuss how my
theory of liberal education has helped me
improve my pedagogy in Brit Lit I, and I
follows,
will
demonstrate
gogy
by
some
discussing
of
examples
arts
liberal
my
common
peda
particular
classroom
content,
including Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written
in a Country Churchyard," one of the
most
vey
to teach
poems
daunting
sur
in my
course.
literature
Brit Lit I is devilishly hard to teach
because all of my students?just
like
most
of
such
yours?find
as
works
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
(or G. M. Trevelyan's History of England,
Durkheim's
Rules
of
Sociological
James's Varieties of
Method, William
Charles Darwin's
Religious Experience,
Origin of the Species', examples could go
on and on) difficult to read because of the
density and complexity of the language,
and
remote.
this
why
our
emotions
ture
have
shaped
instead
fact
on
had
on
development,
issues
and
abstract,
in
emo
reasons
fact
that most
their
minds
and
media
cul
by America's
that America's
their
of
(one
the
are many
of by books,
so much
focuses
arid,
There
is the case?the
students
to"
because
phrases)
seem
tionally
than
"relate
works
these
the
to
difficult
favorite
for example,
"youth
entertainment
and
many
of
and
culture"
rather
other
95
3
This content downloaded from 134.161.28.175 on Wed, 27 Aug 2014 19:27:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
reasons
as well?but
it is not my
to
aim
go down this path of possible explana
tions. The phenomenon
is sufficiently
familiar to every college teacher that none
them
of
for
require
explanations
to know
that it does
exists
For
whatever
that our
students
mation
we
know
then,
are used
to getting
infor
and
sound
of
of
their
images
systems?are
perceptual
to
students
read
to
I ask my
pre-nineteenth-century
out
of
I always
the experience,
if I am trying to accomplish
at once:
tasks
impossible
and simultaneously
ethos
of
the
for
left
a serious
a vastly
least
with
engagement
and
Most
at
free,
computer
come
to
arcane
teachers
dents
certainly
their
stu
close
such
as
or
literary
and
argumentation,
do
dents.
Contemporary
not
less
make
trouble
for
analysis.
than
intelligent
stu
today's
are
students
college
genera
previous
tions of students, but they are certainly
less practiced at performing sophisticated
connotations
among
lyzing
tures.
artistic,
competing
rhetorical
tricky
Complex,
and
the very
of
and
subtle,
literary
of
kinds
in Brit Lit
many
as
such
tasks
language
language
I?make
today's
college
adjudicating
or ana
artistic
allusive,
uses
poem's
a poem
I'm
struc
on
sits
the
fence
and
was
smart
reasonably
and
because
it never
see
when
worked
very
students'
can
well?you
nostrils
as
out
flare
they attempt to stifle that give-away
after a while I figured out why
yawn?and
was
approach
so well.
not working
artistic,
poem's
"features,"
son
to
of
namely
for
some
why
other
find
me?might
a
case
convincing
poem
about
I love is not only
tant?and
A good case in point is Thomas Gray's
in a Country Church
"Elegy Written
interesting,
by
the
why
literature
interesting but impor
I mean
important
not
now,
then
I seldom
in
make
two
And
I have
an
century
students
headway
on
to do
if they
interest
are
choose
future?
mere
to resent
not
this
interest
my
become
much
learned
skepticism
should
vague
that literature interests
ly by showing why
me.
some
that my
obliged
It's a perfectly wonderful
students.
like
things: important to the concrete students
sitting in front of me and important to
them
will
ever
to, but
point.
in Gray's
my
Why,
poem
twenty-first
to replicate?
thing for them
it's not
course,
my
clude
or that
courses
other
who
those
that
not
do
are somehow uneducated
that
is some
there
the
an
in
it at all,
read
slobs? To think
intrinsic
as
curriculum
love
crowds
never
will
to
learn
the unwashed
who
hear
British
lives. Should I con
in their whole
poetry
or even
to read
have
again
to eighteenth-century
a reference
or author
in learn
value
be to treat
a means.
not
end,
a con
temptible thing for them to choose not to.
as well:
the
end
of
educated
is
are
there
even
because
persons,
includes
coverage
then
education,
educated
deeply
at the
that
yes,
If maximum
Shakespeare).
no
the most
us merely
scratch
there
is to know.
among
of
surface
all
One clear implication of my claim that
there is no intrinsic educational virtue in
knowing Gray's "Elegy" (but that there is
great educational virtue in being called
on
people?
persons
strange
Gray's
a rea
but I was giving them no reasons of their
own for finding Gray's poem important. I
have finally learned that unless I can make
indeed,
language?
they encounter
or
historical
students
my
giving
understand
me
and
intellectual,
I was
leave
it is a fair bet that not a single one of them
work
trained,
highly
of Gray's
idea that anyone ignorant of Gray's
is
is ipso facto uneducated
"Elegy"
absurd (or ignorant of any other particular
Romantic
all good
students
Once
"Elegy."
the
appreciate
position
The
between
and really love this poem. But the truth is
students'
nuanced,
tough sledding
that
must
or historical
ideas,
that
that
whatever
ing about the "Elegy" would
intel
Inmy eager analytical cataloging of the
expression,
dense
and
artistic
lectual content, and its historical position
oblig
Any uses of language more difficult than
that of high school textbooks can and
often
the
of
analysis
my
atory model for their own lives. Not only
are they not used to getting information
from books, but they are especially not
used to the kind of labor that is required
to deal with highly complicated linguistic
structures
I used to try to motivate
students to
and
value
enjoy
Gray's poem by taking
them carefully
through a descriptive
that
teachers'
as a compelling
in books
interest
years
reason
students
that my
says
art,
means
in itself, which
intrinsic
this poem,
old.
expressiveness.
most
teacherly?but
take
ana
in either
interested
lyzing or admiring. Students find it a lit
tle off-putting, not motivating, to be faked
out of their socks by a poem that's 255
This
in books?to
don't
much
aren't
they
restraint
ready
a
like
that,
personifications
is no
there
to an end,
is a means
the curriculum
not an end
good head fake in basketball, leave stu
dents looking helpless as the poem drib
bles around them for a slam dunk that
neoclassical
many of them, their teachers' book fetish
is just one of the weird, cute traits that
makes
and
They have a right to expect me to be able
to tell them what's in it for them if they
study this poem with me.
Here is where liberal education theory
offers a helpful guide to pedagogy. Inmy
view,
carefully
and rhymed, and full of literary
sitcom TV,
their teachers'
interest
nuanced,
complex,
as
college
to indulge
and
refined
that my
games.
students
and willing
and
is self
crafted,
meticulously
temporarily,
an ethos
of
sort from
different
movies,
Friends
sufficient wiliness
are
into
slip around the
late-and-lamented
Seinfeld with
students
two nearly
to turn water
wine
as
feel
any more
look
the poem
of
language
artistic,
allusions
British poetry and to get something valu
able
The
metered
geared
this way. Thus, when
working
mother.
formal,
bites, and that they have been doing so all
of their lives. Their collective brains?all
not
does
poem
like the poems our students typically
write or study than the typical Victoria's
looks like your typical
Secret model
consciously
reasons,
means
by
it
why
exist.
This
yard."
use
to
a
that
in colleges
is much
this
no
and
content,
imply
tent matters
but we
who
to our
students
for
in fact,
seldom,
There
universities.
in studying
virtue
educational
often
educational
intrinsic
of the other content we
in much
teach
elemental
in order to study it) is
is also
there
virtue
of
range
large
human capacities
its own
content
this
love
that
the
con
in a way
sake
it
matter.
does
There is no guarantee
that learning
about ethics will make students ethical;
that
about
knowing
knowing
who
dents
tive;
or
produce
common
my
goes
about
solid
students
sense.
my
produce
classical
who
And
have
just
as
that
stu
produce
historical
knowing
own discipline
from
will
history
have
that
will
science
think like scientists;
students who
perspec
Latin
will
Ciceronian
it is the case
in
that no student who
classroom
to the world
out
side academe will ever be asked if she or
96
This content downloaded from 134.161.28.175 on Wed, 27 Aug 2014 19:27:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
COLLEGETEACHING
he has read Gray's "Elegy" or if she or he
can
describe
classical
the
features
generic
so no student
poetry,
neo
of
outside
any
terms;
the
sixth,
ing;
seventh,
tion;
and,
capacity
for
capacity
for
the
the
finally,
social
liv
introspec
for
capacity
under
life through
standing and experiencing
the medium of a particular kind of body,
o?
brain,
or Cicero's
of history
theory
Toynbee's
on
And
friendship.
because
that
to become
plines
never
will
mostly
content
they
to recall
even
most
who
ever
she
algebra
has
or
tion
Linnaeus's
cational
the
and
table,
failure
of which
that
work
to develop
these
is appropriate
for
alike to view
teachers
and
history.
need,
and
My point is that teachers who love spe
cific kinds of content often misrepresent
the kind of usefulness
that content will
gogy
as the primary means
their
students.
Mostly,
students do not get educated because they
study our beloved content. They get edu
cated because they learn how to study our
beloved content, and they carry the how
of that learning with them in the world as
cognitive and intellectual skills that stick
long after the content is forgotten. In
the
short,
itself.
content
Curricular
human
The
development.
an
not
is
curriculum
in
end
is a means
to
curriculum
is
focuses
that
tive
tain
liberal
useful
ourselves
what
features
of
empirically
human
existence
human
beings
as
such
places
and
strable
across
and
ethnicities,
all
Clearly,
human
guage;
beings
the
second,
imagination;
ing
human
Vol.
53/No.
and
are marked
fourth,
fifth,
conduct
the
lan
for aesthetic
capacity
the capacity
in moral
for
for
for judg
and
ethical
content?so
to understand
the poem
of how
they
those
and
to give
in order
capacities
a sense
replicate
we
assess
stu
con
personally
capacities.
the extent
me
a liberal
also:
arts pedagogy
without
In stanza
ocean
bear:
blush
unseen,
on
the desert
how
the
capacities
air,"
forebears
I invite
by forcing
and
appreciated.
waste
exercises
poem
whose
a flow'r
many
/ And
the
students
to see
rational
them to decode
the
unfamous
speaker's
ocean
gems
beauty
Further
sweetness
its
their
never
to
is born
the
between
analogy
flowers
dark
/ Full
persona.
which
example,
a gem
of purest
ray
caves
of
unfathom'd
many
/ The
and
gets
investigation
desert
seen
or
shows
word
The
length
the
have
the
open
caves
demonstration
but
could
not
does
A
point.
of
arts
liberal
to.
need
peda
the poem
the way body
gogy uses
builders use weights: to increase specific
of different
powers as varying weights
densities are lifted in different ways.
When
are
students
from
poem
view
they
to
coached
this
perspective?or
other
any
view
complicated
artifact this way?they
find that the very
features of it that initially made the poem
seem
remote,
seem,
if not
educational
the poem
and
arid,
intimate
and defensible.
become
now
forbidding
and
at
rich,
least
Not only does
and
educational
defen
sible, but the labor that students exert in
studying it also becomes educational and
not
I do
defensible.
ask
to
students
my
love Gray's poem as I love it. I only help
them see that their study of the poem
them
helps
on
grow
several
fronts
that
are
essential to their goal of achieving
the
can
fullest possible
development
they
as human
in
words,
ped
a
students
gives
the
studying
arts
liberal
poem,
a
stake
in their real interest in growth
anchored
and
A
beings.
in other
not
development
some
for
as-yet
unclaimed
me
for
fourteen,
"Full
reads,
a false
adopting
such
notice
emo
the poignant
as "serene"
choices
notice
at
stake
in the position of a fellow
to place myself
and
the allitera
"unfathom'd
"waste."
agogy,
to which
allows
in
and
You
of
bear,"
reach
Then,
a close study of Gray's "Elegy" helps them
how it helps
develop those capacities?and
serene,
genders,
the capacity
for
capacity
human
learner
by virtue of their uni
third, the capacity
responsiveness;
times
use
them
collectively,
mark
cultures,
of, first,
possession
reasoning;
to
demon
races.
as human beings
versal
in all
all
of
way
is simply
those capacities
identifying
ask
One
education.
the course
around
sounds
Gray's
of fulfilling
stu
(and
craftsman
aesthetic
to blush,"
"born
of
when
peda
their lives. I am not trying to indoctrinate
them into specialized knowledge that they
will never use. I discuss the list of distinc
those
ties that tend to distinguish human beings
as such, and the fullest possible develop
ment of which defines the true end of a
and
or need.
end
to help
the
capaci
of
they can see that what I am trying to do is
dents
development
that
development
as an existential
capacities
to view
curriculum
it a "frame"
the exercise field, for
human
primarily
the
This theory of liberal education, even in
this highly sketchy form, yields a system
atic approach to the teaching of Gray's
"Elegy." The first thing I do is share my
liberal arts theory with my students?I call
the playing ground,
of
students
the kind of education
on
tion
continue
tutes a kind of existential deprivation, the
same way that blindness or the loss of a
limb constitutes a physical deprivation, it
human
of
consti
capacities
peo
cultivating
to
sensitivity
tions
the
poem
ship) as they learn to notice
ocean
work
the
their
constitute
Since
shows
to subtle language
vowel
teachers
basic
for most
the
of
dents' sensitivity
empower
toward.
Nor does the historian who specializes in
Hegelian notions of history have to know
anything about Edward Carr's theory of
have
the
also
expansion,
end
or should
are
they
the
that
educational
learned
are
these
communities
ple, some members of which might have
been born with great talent. Additional
inquiry
that mark
then
such,
and completion
toward,
of classifica
system
a
anatomy.
frog's
to dissect
how
system.
perceptual
that students bring to the edu
capacities
special
to think
or he
and
as
beings
ment,
dis
in high school and college. No biologist
who specializes inDNA sequencing has to
remember
human
capacities
the
of
own
in their
functions
the
about
disci
themselves
specialists
mathematician
in recursive
again
in those
stay
have
learned
No
ciplines.
izes
who
students
nervous
and
If these are the capacities
spe
it is even the
cialization within disciplines,
case
of
on whole
obscurity
other discipline will ever be asked if s/he
knows the periodical table or Boyle's law
treatise
that an implicit moral question is being
raised about the fairness of such enforced
and uncertain future but for
right now, because their worth as human
beings is not tied to future income but to
whatever
any
can make
they
given
of
point
right
themselves
development,
ing the present moment
class,
of
at
includ
of this day, in this
now.
One of the primary benefits of liberal
arts pedagogy
is that it relieves students
from the diminishing and frustrating feel
ings of inadequacy that afflict them when
they lack the ability to appreciate the poem
"at
Such
tion
the
teacher's
feelings
are serious
level,"
of
as
inadequacy
roadblocks
say.
they might
and frustra
to education.
97
3
This content downloaded from 134.161.28.175 on Wed, 27 Aug 2014 19:27:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
But a curious thing happens once students
are relieved of having to feel inadequate in
this way,
and
once
they
accept
the notion
that the poem's study is useful to them
even if they cannot initially emulate their
teacher's enthusiasm for it. Students find
themselves liberated to start enjoying the
content
of
the poem
on
its own
terms.
This is when Imake another liberal arts
move. I remind students that not only do
all
human
but
beings
that we
stances
also
such
share
share
as having
certain
capacities
common
to deal
in Gray's
speaker
"Elegy,"
to under
trying
stand the extent to which the life-patterns
kind
and life-models of our forebears?the
of lives led by our parents, grandparents,
and
become
thing
each
great-grandparents?offer
both a prediction
and
of
us
about what we might
a challenge
some
to become
else.
students
in my
class
are
asking
"Is it enough for me if I
themselves:
become something different from what
for my
cism
"Elegy"
an a-b-a-b
about
of God and merit,
or abstract
ideas
but is in fact about the
a
young
his
future,
of
is uncertain
who
its
neoclassi
meditations
introspective
pen
scheme,
rhyme
position
that
iambic
between
and Romanticism,
person
aware
become
is not
about
a young man trying to find pertinent
clues about his own destiny in the lives
of those from his own community who
have gone before him, they suddenly see
that Gray's "Elegy" is a document that
informs
in this
because
in
concerns
interests.
They
a justification
have
interested
grade
own
their
interested
might
own
their
articulates
denly
The young speaker in this poem is ask
ing himself the identical questions that all
the young
students
Once
historical
lies, going through the stages of youth and
maturity and old age, facing an inevitable
about the origins and
death, wondering
of
endings
things, and, like the young
container
ambition? Do Iwant more? Am I talented
enough to deserve more? Even if I am tal
ented enough to deserve more, will luck
and circumstances be on my side? What
if I live a whole
life and no one ever
notices? What if I die and no one cares?"
tameter,
fami
a sufficient
offer
parents
Gray's
circum
with
my parents and other forebears became?
Do the models of my parents and grand
not
poem,
the
become
some
course,
not
English
fathead
of
because
majors,
because
The
written?").
it
invites
the
share
they
com
open-ended
of
version
nontraditional
responsiveness
("What did you think of this poem?")
ball
and tries to keep the discussion
A
end
of
liberal
until
the
class.
bouncing
arts
allows
pedagogy
to
teachers
avoid
both of these stultifying versions of ped
agogy and to root students' study of texts
in issues that can be made real for them
because
and
their
but
existential
plight of all human
beings who wonder what they might
become, and how much of what they
might become has already been deter
mined for them by the circumstances of
their birth and upbringing.
Whatever
is, the
"English pedagogy"
traditional version of it sticks to formal
and intellectual analysis ("Can anyone
identify the meter in which this poem is
and
I am
because
traders,
mon
sud
for being
in it, not because
speaker has told them that reading poet
ry will make them better commodities
are
they
real:
and
capacities
productive,
of
a broad
circumstances
human being must
effective,
issues
across
development
that
deal with
and
growth
range
of
every
to lead an
self-aware
life.
they
and not
convocation
Key
words:
liberal
education,
pedagogy,
liberal arts
98
This content downloaded from 134.161.28.175 on Wed, 27 Aug 2014 19:27:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
COLLEGETEACHING