What Students Don't Know is a Lot...continued

The day after my last column appeared -- the one about how little high school kids know -- a couple of fellow English teachers were ribbing me about it. ‘Pretty grim stuff, ‘ one of them said. ‘How about some good news next time?’
     ’I don’t do p.r.,’ I replied.
     It was Friday, and that means Teacher for a Minute in Modern Literature, a weekly ritual in which each of my 24 juniors and seniors is responsible for leading the class for at least 60 seconds. Everybody moans about it at first, but soon (and with this particular group, in record time) they’re so eager to wave the baton that we don’t get through half the class before our 85 minutes are up.
     Imagine my dismay when Molly, the second student up, marched to the front of the room, unfolded a copy of my column, and announced, ‘Mr. Clark wrote a story about our class, and I think you all ought to hear it.’
     They were between me and the door. The window was open, but it was too high to jump. I sat back to take my lumps.
     They listened to Molly read the column, and then they started to discuss it. ‘I think high school kids are smarter than they let on,’ Molly said. ‘It’s not considered cool to look smart, especially for some girls.’ Other girls nodded in appreciation.
     ’I didn’t mean to make you sound dumb,’ I said. ‘In fact, I worry about whether we’re focusing on the right things. There’s a saying among historians that military leaders too often prepare to fight the last war. In other words, they’re so eager to apply the lessons they learned from the last war that they miss the point that the next war will be different. Sometimes, I think our curriculum is designed to prepare you for the bright, shiny new world of 1980.’
     ’I think Mr. Clark is right,’ one boy said. ‘Hardly anybody reads books they aren’t assigned to read.’
     ’Who decides what we should read, anyway?’ Aaron asked. ‘I mean, we’ve just finished reading three plays about unhappy families. In all three of them, the father is either crazy, mean, or he’s run away. How is that relevant to our lives?’
     ’It’s relevant to mine!’ one boy snapped. That sparked a lively exchange about fathers and mothers, and how their dreams for their children aren’t always shared by those children.
     The conversation drifted onto teaching methods. I listened to some familiar arguments about how some English teachers read more into a novel than the novelist intended to put there. But a few kids argued back that it didn’t matter what the novelist intended -- if a reader finds something interesting in a book, it’s there.
    Erica demonstrated that very point. ‘I think each of the plays has a character who acts like a micronarrative,’ she suggested. ‘Biff and Corey live their lives in ways that parallel the whole story. Biff runs away at the end, just like his father committing suicide, because they’re both still boys. But Corey comes back for his father’s funeral, because he’s all grown up. He’s taking responsibility, something he learned from Troy.’
     It went on like that for the rest of the block: a couple dozen young people talking passionately about books and plays, struggling with complicated ideas, challenging conventional assumptions, making connections between literature and their lives. I kept my mouth shut, smiled a lot, and thought to myself, ‘They’re going to be just fine.’