Beware the Ides of March.
That phrase has been running through my head all day, though it relates to tomorrow. Mainly, I've been thinking about how I came to learn what the Ides of March were, in English class. Of course I don't remember now. I'm sure it's trivial and in the grand scheme, unimportant, but it bothers me that I don't remember.
It bothers me because my reading comprehension in high school was so abysmal. But only lately have I discovered why I could understand and apply essentially long texts on other subjects, but when it came to fiction, I was a fish out of water.
It has to do with assumptions.
There's an assumption in our educational system that when you are reading a book or a story of some sort, you need to give the characters some sort of unspoken automatic "background". It has to do with layering history, the American identity, and stereotypes onto a character that you're being introduced to. And so authors who write from this system make a big deal as to the differences (from this basic assumption) that their character is. And more emphasis is placed on how classic authors' characters differ from the assumed "expectation".
But that's not how I think. I wanted the author to build the character from the ground up - I wanted to make no assumptions whatsoever. I still feel that this burden is on the writer if the author expects the reader to have a relationship with this character.
At the time, though, I didn't know that. Compounding this, I get easily distracted and my thoughts will start to wander about some tangential thing for a couple of paragraphs. I have the same issue with public readings of books, plays, etc. There's so much going on in the human dynamics of the situation, that I can't focus on the text. I can always go back to the text later, but life only happens once.
The whole point of bringing this up is to say that, as an educator, I should realize that my manner of presenting information (however diverse it may be) just will not mesh with some students. So I will see exam results that don't necessarily reflect knowledge...
Peace
John
