Playing with Poems: Rules, Tools, and Games

Rationale: Why Read, Study, and Teach Poetry in the Age of Common Core?

Geoffrey Harpham, director of the National Humanities Center, posited "[t]he scholarly study of documents and artifacts produced by human beings in the past enables us to see the world from different points of view so that we may better understand ourselves." ⁷ It's been a century since World War I, and many present-day high school students feel that distance, feel that the history is too dusty and too far removed from their own lives. But it is important to read the personal words that memorialize that period. We are not so far removed from total war nor from sending our citizens to fight for our ideals.

"If you want to fight your way through a thorny sentence, look no further than Shakespeare. If you are having trouble figuring out what equipment is necessary for the task you are about to perform, look no further than The Iliad, where Achilles has a similar problem." ⁸ The Common Core State Standards, introduced in 2011, have been adopted by 45 states. These standards include specific indicators for reading and analyzing literature, abbreviated as RL. Our classrooms must be places that encourage teachers and students to focus on the craft and structure of complex pieces of texts, looking not just at plot but also theme (RL.9-10.2) and demanding students use textual evidence to support their thoughtful analyses (RL.9-10.1). These steps are satisfied through both an introduction and extended analysis of the succinct literature of poetry.

Because of its nature, poetry encourages both literacy—the building block of an educated and capable populace—and global citizenry. The Common Core is built on the concept of range and complexity in reading with teachers building on texts that get progressively more complex as students advance through each grade level (RL. 9-10.10). Further, students should be analyzing a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature (RL.9-10.6). When building a poetry unit—especially a unit that focuses on World War I or any event that played out on a world stage—it is easy to include poems from various cultures and time periods. Our national standards in English-Language Arts recognize that students at the secondary level need to be reading texts selected from a broad range of cultures and periods. This includes "narrative poems, lyrical poems, free verse poems, sonnets, odes, ballads, and epics." ⁹ Poems written during the war have become the permanent "verbal artifacts" of World War I, to appropriate a phrase of W.H. Auden. ¹⁰ It is as important to study these artifacts, as it is to know the causes and consequences of a world at total war.

The Common Core encourages teachers to build cross-curricular units. The History/Social Studies Standards, a subset of the English-Language Arts Standards, are abbreviated RH for Reading History. Students must be able to examine key ideas and details and, just like in literature, they must be able to cite specific textual evidence (RH.9-10.1) and determine central ideas (RH.9-10.2). The difference is that, in history, student-historians should be reading primary and secondary sources in order to compare and contrast the treatment of the same topic over several primary and secondary sources (RH.9-10.9). Many of the poems from World War I are first-hand narratives and are found in the diaries and journals of the poet-soldiers, creating first-hand documentation and personal insights. "Children need to be told personal stories about historical events such as the First World War because these are often too big for them to comprehend… stories are able to get through to people in a way that history books are unable to." ¹¹ In this sense, the poetry and history textbooks complement each other, each giving something the other cannot.

In 1938, just months before the start of a second World War, Winston Churchill defended the absolute need for a country to have an investment in the arts. "The arts are essential to any complete national life. The State owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them….Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due." ¹² The livelihood of many in the arts, not to mention every elective program in every school, is threatened whenever the economy takes a downturn. Likewise, when standards change—such as the switch to Common Core—some politicians and administrators can overreact in an attempt to appease their constituents. In my own district and across my state, senior English is being eliminated and replaced with a course called Expository Reading and Writing. ERWC focuses on non-fiction modules such as "The Rhetoric of the Op-Ed Page: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos" and "Good Food/Bad Food." Fiction has been replaced by magazines, poetry supplanted by newspaper articles. This is the result of erroneous beliefs that senior English courses that focus on non-fiction will better meet the Common Core and improve test scores. Contemporary British writer and activist Jeanette Winterson counters this dangerous path:

When people say that poetry is a luxury or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read in school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place. ¹³

In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences commissioned a report: The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences for a Vibrant, Competitive, and Secure Nation. Their findings indicate that there has been a troubling shift in the pendulum of education away from the liberal arts towards science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Since 2011, Common Core State Standards have been suggesting more non-fiction texts be taught and that, by Grade 12, students should spend only 30% of their day on fiction and 70% of their reading should be informational texts. ¹⁴ In an overreaction, this means Fast Food Nation has replaced Faustus in some districts. But the adoption of the Common Core does not mean that 70% of the reading in 12th grade English classes should be informational, but that nonfiction should make up 70% of all the reading 12th graders should do throughout their school day, across all their subjects. The final report stated three overarching goals:

1. to educate Americans in the knowledge, skills, and understanding [students] will need to thrive in a twenty-first-century democracy;
2. to foster a society that is innovative, competitive, and strong; and
3. to equip a nation for leadership in an interconnected world.

The report warns "these goals cannot be achieved by science alone." ¹⁵ In the 88-page document, the Commission details how the humanities and social sciences are key in maintaining national excellence in education. If the goal of the country is to have educated citizens, then citizens must have a background in the humanities. A sustained, structured, and scaffolded poetry unit teaches the highest levels in Bloom's Taxonomy—analysis, synthesis, and evaluation—which are essential in shaping citizens who can think critically and independently. These findings echo the United Kingdom's Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) report Poetry in Schools: a Survey of Practice, 2006/07 where primary and secondary schools were evaluated to see if and how poetry was taught. Their findings were that a lot of the poetry being taught was considered "relatively lightweight" and pupils had "a limited experience of classic poems and poems from other traditions and cultures." ¹⁶ Their findings also showed that students enjoyed poetry when their teachers were using active approaches. Additionally, Ofsted found that it was necessary in broadening the range of poems studied:

Poetry matters because it is a central example of the use human beings make of words to explore and understand. Like other forms of writing we value, it lends shape and meaning to our experiences and helps us move confidently in the world we know and to step beyond it. [Therefore,] poetry should be at the heart of work in English because of the quality of language…that it offers to us. ¹⁷