Checking the blind spot: The inevitability of theory in the Ontario secondary school English classroo

This thesis concentrates on the application of research I have undertaken in literary theory to a set of problems I encountered in my professional practice as a secondary school English teacher. I argue that, although the last three decades has been a period of much ferment in both the universities and the high schools, the changes that have occurred in these two educational environments have been fundamentally different ones, and that this distinction has largely been overlooked. In most university English classrooms, the traditional New Critical approach to teaching literature has been problematized as a result of challenges from a range of alternative theories. In most high school classrooms, however, the traditional New Critical approach has been replaced by a less traditional Reader Response approach, but most Reader Response classrooms are no more problematized than the New Critical classrooms which preceded them. The failure to distinguish between these two different histories has led, in the high schools, to a situation in which Reader Response Practice has been thought to have solved the major problems inherent in New Critical Practice. I argue, however, that Reader Response practice cannot genuinely solve these problems because it does not address the issue that lies at the centre of New Criticism, which I call the issue of what counts. I argue that Reader Response Practice cannot address this issue because the limits on what counts are determined by theory, and because Reader Response Practice is no more problematized than New Critical Practice, teachers are still positioned so that theory remains in the blind spot. I show how both the garden path problem which characterizes New Critical Practice and the interpretation problem which characterizes Reader Response Practice are symptoms of an unproblematized classroom. I argue that, in order to solve these problems, classroom practice in the high schools needs to be problematized much like it has been in the universities, so that teachers may check the blind spot and the limits on what counts may be made more explicit and in fact renegotiated. In the last chapter of the thesis, I describe a problematized practice with which I am currently experimenting in my own high school classroom, one which offers a solution to both the garden path problem and the interpretation problem.