Don't get me wrong--I love the classics. But the canon is not the be all and end all of literature, and it annoys me to end when people act as though it is. That's why I chose to do my I-Search on young adult literature. Most of my sources spent the majority of their articles justifying why YA lit should be used in the classroom, and, likewise, most of my paper was spent doing the same thing. It encourages kids to read, they can identify with the age appropriate protagonists, they can relate to the subject matter, YA lit is full of quality material. The same ol' arguments. Yet it irritates me that we have to justify it so much in the first place. Communication Arts is the study of just that communication, and thus, we should study communication in all forms, not just the ones that some privileged group of people chose as the "best" and most valuable.
I also wrote about a few ideas I had for actually using YA lit in the classroom. One of my ideas involved using YA to study genre, reading different examples of genre works, such as mystery, sci-fi, etc.. and then having the students write a story using the genre conventions of those they liked best. Another idea was to use YA lit as a bridge to the classics. For example, I could teach a unit on dystopia using Orwell's 1984 as the classic text and Lowry's The Giver or Scott Westerfeld's Uglies as way to introduce the genre to kids.
3 comments:
Sounds like we read a lot of the same research and had some of the same ideas, which is encouraging. I've definitely learned that I will be using YAL in some form in my classes!
I think I read a lot of the same research also...I found a great lesson plan for The Giver if you wanted to see it, just let me know!
I agree with you completely. The classics are great for their time period, but sometimes they just don't interest students in today's classroom. That doesn't mean we shouldn't teach them, but I don't think we should teach only the classics.
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