ABSTRACT
I discovered that the literature-with-grammar curriculum that was standard was not what my students wanted or needed. Many of my students were only marginally literate because their parents were transient workers. This was on the Mississippi River. Families moved up and down the River, following the crops, so the students never got a chance to stay in school very long. I was charged to teach American literature to a class of 15-year-old kids who couldn’t read, for example. So I took the big old American lit book, a big thing, it started with “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”—half my class was African American. As one of them said about that, “Shiii-it!” [laughter] And so we started with Thoreau and we read “Civil Disobedience” together. This is the 60s. We read it out loud. It took us a long time because they were just learning to read tougher texts. They picked up reading really fast, and by the end of “Civil Disobedience,” we had a revolution on our hands. It was exciting. … [T]hese kids were more receptive to instruction than almost anybody I’ve ever taught. … I enjoyed teaching high school, but I just couldn’t stand the institution.
