THINKING, READING, AND WRITING GOALS FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS

The first goal is that students leave my classes desiring to continue thinking, reading, and writing about literature in whatever form it takes (whether essay, memoir, biography, autobiography, short story, novel, poetry, or drama) and that they recognize that the ability to use words to spring a reader's consciousness into an imaginative sharing of experience is an honored, precious, and uniquely human ability. This ability is not limited (although publication may be) to the currently acceptable writers in whatever the current currency is, but is practiced by male and female, rich and poor, devout and non, in all lands, in all times where writing exists.

As for thinking goals--students analyze literary works for the purpose of arriving at an appreciation of their meaning through systematic thought as they move from an initial undifferentiated reaction to a work to a reasoned assessment of it. Students engage creative works actively, rather than accept them passively while relying on the interpretation of their teachers and of literary critics to explain them.

As for reading goals--students recognize what makes an essay, a story, a poem, or a play go by that name and the ways literary artists seek to stretch the conventional definitions and make something new. Students celebrate the multiple perspectives that many voices singing through the ages bring to subjects of universal concern--our place in the universe, our human natures, the experience of love, and the certainty of death.

As for writing goals--students make their own contribution to the understanding of writtten works by listening to and researching the various and often conflicting views of the works under examination and pointing out what has not yet been noticed or fully understood or sufficiently appreciated.

Students leave my classes having made the acquaintance of multitudes of readings, having delighted in their company and having shown themselves to be worthy companions. Students leave my courses with numbers to call and something to say.

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