Illinois Schools Journal, Chicago State University, University Relations, Ninety-Fifth Street at King Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60628. Individual copies: $1.00; subscriptions: $4.00 per year.

Honors education is not immune from the current controversy concerning the role of the literary canon. Indeed, the problem seems especially crucial for honors programs, for their curriculums are often multi-disciplinary in their approaches to culture and history. The solution may lie in what Linda Hutcheon calls the "poetics of the…

Young adult literature is the subject of this journal. The first article, "The Executioner Sings" (Jay Bennett), relates how and why its author writes. The next article, "Cinderella and the Pigman" (Lucy E. Waddey), explains why kids read the works of Judy Blume and Paul Zindel. "An interview with Keven Major" (Mike…

Philosophers and poets from classical times to the present have argued that playful and amiable discourse are conducive to teaching and learning. The play principle enhances reading and study and should be applied by teachers to benefit their students. Teachers should help their students see that it is fun to enliven the imagination with good…

This book emerged from a Poetry in the Schools program which had two facets: teacher workshops and instruction by poets in elementary and secondary classrooms. Part one, "Poets and Teachers in Dialogue," describes major issues discussed in teacher workshops: keeping the imagination alive, writing as a way of discovery, exploration of…

Noting that for some time, the theory of literature has been supplanted by other disciplines as the major influences on the teaching of English in the secondary schools, this paper challenges the assumptions underlying two major principles for selecting and teaching literature: the social relevance of its subject matter and its immediate impact on…

Using great literature to clarify and to improve students' writing is like using the unknown-literature to explain the only slightly less unknown--the writing of compositions. An alternative is to study films to foster an awareness of technique, for films contain many of the same rhetorical and structural devices as literature. It is possible to…

THESE THREE TESTS--"ROUGHING IT,""THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA," AND "THE SHORT STORY"--WERE DESIGNED BY THE OREGON CURRICULUM STUDY CENTER FOR A NINTH-GRADE LITERATURE CURRICULUM. THEY ARE INTENDED TO ACCOMPANY CURRICULUM UNITS AVAILABLE AS ED 010 811 AND ED 010 812. (MM)

This dissertation presents a method for teaching secondary students many recognized critical approaches to the study of literature, so that they may choose the methods that function best for them with a given work. The novels of a contemporary American author, Jack Matthews, are used to show how the method operates. The investigator reports many…

This paper examines fragments of American Indian and Greek poetry and suggests that they be used in English composition classes as examples of the power of language. Because the poetry is brief and deceptively obvious, it invites careful examination of the expressive meaning of each word. It is concluded that, in an age when people are inundated…

WRITTEN FOR BOTH THE "GENERAL" STUDENT INTERESTED IN CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE AND THE ORAL INTERPRETATION STUDENT WHO NEEDS A VARIETY OF CRITICAL ANALYSES TO COMBINE WITH ORAL PERFORMANCE IN HIS STUDY OF LITERATURE, THIS BOOK PROVIDES FIVE EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE AND ITS ORAL INTERPRETATION. PART 1, "THE…

TCDIDC is a heuristic model for students to use when revising compositions. The model's acronym is derived from the main terms of the revising heuristic: time (the pattern of tenses and other time markers), commitment (the pattern of such predicate modes as indicative, conditional, questioning, exhortative, emphatic), directness (the pattern of…

Various approaches that teachers can use to help students interpret contemporary plays are presented in this discussion of teaching drama. Plays discussed include two from the Theater of Illusion ("Look Back in Anger,""A Raisin in the Sun"), two from the Theater of the Absurd ("Rhonoceros,""Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"), and two from…

Studying the Bible as a "source book for the humanities" can help students understand Biblical allusions found in literature, the fine arts, the news media, and cultured conversation. Students at Newton High School (Massachusetts) took part in a Biblical study course, using the King James Version because student most commonly meet…