TALKING ABOUT TEACHING

ON OUR AUDIENCE

A bit of dialogue from a very intelligent documentary:

Ben Makuch, Viceland Reporter [smart and knowledgeable; teamed with intelligent and insigtful producers]:	(incredulously) "So then . . . are you describing that narrative, in some way, is . . . sort of a Trojan Horse . . . for ideas?"
Jonas T. Kaplan, Assistant Research Professor of Psychology, Brain and Creativity Institute, USC [neuropsychologist who studies electical responses in the brain]:	(seriously) "Yeah, I think it can work that way."

If this reporter and this psychologist are both amazed that a narratives contains ideas—that is, meaning—then perhaps we're expecting too much of our students. Maybe they don't know that narratives can mean something more than what they appear to present at the surface level. Never mind the fact that the reporter is actually answering his own question with the metaphor of the Trojan Horse. Perhaps he's not aware of The Illiad, and is merely thinking of a computer program that hides a virus within it. But that computer security usage still owes its meaning to Homer.

Maybe we need to start at a lower level with our students, and begin with what a metaphor, or a symbol, or a theme, really is. I've always assumed a certain level of understanding in our students, that they were familiar with the building blocks of narratives, or of language itself. But this exchange above has made me reconsider what knowledge our students walk into our classrooms with.