I had a great chance this summer to talk with some fellow classical educators about a topic near and dear to my heart – poetry, and the teaching of poetry. Over the years, I have developed an approach to the discipline that is rather different than the approach typically taken in most high school classrooms. Commonly, students who study poetry in their English classes will read a poem, and then do the work of “analysis” or “interpretation” with their teacher; if some form of assessment follows, it is most often an “analytical” essay, which asks the student to perform a sort of “close-reading” on the text. When approached in this manner, the poem becomes an object of study, and the student’s mastery demonstrated if he or she can make true statements about the meaning and structure of the work.
Arts and Sciences in the Classical School
Arts and Sciences in the Classical School
Arts and Sciences in the Classical School
I had a great chance this summer to talk with some fellow classical educators about a topic near and dear to my heart – poetry, and the teaching of poetry. Over the years, I have developed an approach to the discipline that is rather different than the approach typically taken in most high school classrooms. Commonly, students who study poetry in their English classes will read a poem, and then do the work of “analysis” or “interpretation” with their teacher; if some form of assessment follows, it is most often an “analytical” essay, which asks the student to perform a sort of “close-reading” on the text. When approached in this manner, the poem becomes an object of study, and the student’s mastery demonstrated if he or she can make true statements about the meaning and structure of the work.