Proust and the Squid, Posting #8

For this post I am going to talk about how children my interpret text differently. We all have read the articles assigned to us and the main reason people interpret texts differently depend on the primary and secondary discourse. In my book, Wolf uses a great example. She uses the book, Dr. Seuss and says the “ children who never left the narrow boundaries of their neighborhood, either figuratively or literally, may understand this book in an entirely different way from other children” (Wolf, 9).  This quote is so true because your original understanding id=s developed from the people you grow up around. So, if you never venture out into the “unknown”, beyond your county line, then you will never see other discourses and see how others interpret different ideas.  This is the same for students as it is for teachers. If you do not learn or experience other discourses, than it will be hard for you to communicate outside of your home base. If the teacher is not literate in many discourses, then they will have a hard time explaining different ideas to different students. This was exemplified in the Mosaic article with the students Jeremy and Rachel as well as my book, Proust and the Squid. For myself as a P.E. teacher I need to make sure I am literate in more than one discourse so when I am showing the students how to do a skill, such as striking a ball, I can contour my explanations to the students when they ask me questions. By being literate in many discourses, I do not leave any students in the dark when they ask me a question, listen, or read my directions. Also, Wolf, talks about finding deeper meaning in text than just the absolute obvious. She says that this is why it can be important to venture outside of your home base. She says that “the goal of reading is to go beyond the author’s ideas to thoughts that are increasingly autonomous, transformative and ultimately independent of the written text” (Wolf, 18). This idea does not just promote a new way of reading and writing; it promotes a new way of understanding what ideas are being presented to the reader. It makes you an outside the box thinker.

            Going back to what I was saying earlier about children from different discourses interpreting texts differently. The whole idea of outside the box thinking, wraps around the idea of broadening your horizons when it comes to discourses. If one learns and becomes literate in many discourses they will have the ability to think outside the box and find deeper meaning in a text. Students who do not venture out of their home base will be limited to how far outside of the box they can think.  This a why it can be important to go outside of your home base and become literate in other discourses because it can open up your mind to a more exciting when you are becoming literate as a child.