The Big Easy: Literary New Orleans and Intangible Heritage

Teaching Strategies: Engagement with Culture through Performance

When I was a boy learning Spanish, the dominant instructional model was the formal/structural approach, with a heavy emphasis on vocabulary drill, grammar and conjugation. Language teachers had almost all studied abroad and would add an element of culture into their lessons by bringing in their photographs and souvenirs from their study abroad or their past travel with student groups. They would repeat with us the familiar rituals of showing us their photos, sometimes telling us the stories behind them, and passing around their artifacts.

These lessons were indispensible. The sharing of a family member's travel snapshots and souvenirs is as much about the person as it is about the place, a symbolic reenactment of the journey taken together. The exercise validated for us the authority of the teacher as someone who had really been there, even if our understanding of "there" was nebulous at best. We saw her (in my case, her) younger and in innocent but non-teacherly situations, creating a sense of mystery and interest. (She had friends? And who is that boy in half the pictures? He's not the man in the picture on her desk. Were they in love? How could they not stay in love?) These lessons were also crucial because while we did not understand the meanings and contexts of the images and artifacts we saw and handled, their places of origin became possibilities for us—she had been there, so we could go there—and so we began to chart desire maps, plotting out our own future pilgrimages.

As the focus of second language instruction crept away from the formal/structural approach, textbook editors helpfully provided textbooks with candid photos of places and photos of realía—authentic artifacts, or souvenirs, to help replicate the experience of "culture days". These are simulacra—exact reproductions of originals that never existed, ²³—souvenirs and snapshots from trips our teachers did not take. The travel photos of strangers are rarely interesting; less so the simulated travel photos of strangers. In their form, such lessons are less relevant than ever; digital natives send pictures much less than they show them. In their content, "culture" lessons on the travelogue/realía model were always about our relationship with the teacher and our sense of curiosity and wonder. They transmitted little useful knowledge because they weren't designed to transmit useful knowledge; they were supposed to transmit useful emotions.

We have an ethical responsibility as educators to teach students how the events of history shape a nation's culture, rather than abandoning students to deterministic notions of national character. The culture of a people is formed and shaped by its historical experiences, among other factors, and newer guidelines for the teaching of world languages reflect this. ²⁴ As M.C. Anderson points out in a piece on the portrayal of Mexico in American newspapers 1913-1915 during the height of the Mexican Revolution, the American papers highlighted three general themes: "backwardness," "racial limitations," and "moral decrepitude." All three themes reinforced a portrayal of violence as an essential Mexican trait and promoted a doctrine of Anglo-Saxon superiority. ^{2 5} Contemporary news outlets have not abandoned this theme; Mexico City's murder rate is one fourth that of Washington, D.C., but few Americans would know this. ²⁶

Experiencing history through performance is a widely embraced means for teaching history in the elementary years. For generations, children experienced the First Thanksgiving by dressing up as Pilgrims and Indians (when I was a child, they were still Indians; Native Americans were yet to be discovered). For those of my students who attend houses of worship, whether on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, almost invariably the core of the service is the shared reconstruction of a community's history of itself through participatory performance of primary texts. We have presentational communication goals for our students of world languages; we have an opportunity to add value to the classroom experience by giving students creative and meaningful material to present. We do not need to dress them in paper hats to engage them in the performance of history; the essential element is the acting out, the participation, the immersive experience.