I really enjoyed this particular section because it begins to contrast many ideas of universality that I personally believe have been held by the education system for to long. “If we claim that great literature has a timeless and universal significance, we thereby demote or disregard, cultural, social, regional, and national differences in experience and outlook, preferring instead to judge all literature by a single, supposedly, Universal standard.” For example I believe this is like teaching someone in the city how to survive in the wilderness. Although this is an important lesson and these lessons can benefit everyone how many times is boy from the city going to find himself stranded in the wilderness with just the clothes he has on and a his every trusty swiss army knife, not very realistic but yes it could happen. This is why I believe that we as future educators have to be really aware of the cultural backgrounds from which our students come from. While it is hard to try and pick books that relate to the majority of students we have to continuously be adapting our materials that we are teaching as to provide are students with books that they will be able to relate to on a more personal level so they can take a deeper meaning from the texts we will be teaching. This is why I believe for the major novels in the class Teachers should not even have it picked out before the year starts. I believe teachers should have in mind a couple texts they are planning on using but instead wait till they get to know their classes a little more before they make these decisions as they will begin to realize the needs of their students and can pick a text accordingly. If a teacher is able to do this correctly they should be able to capture the interest of most of the class and be able to pick a text which many of the students can relate. From this the students should be able to develop a connection to the text and it will help look at their lives and their own experiences. The other part of developing a connection with the text is to explain the texts in ways that would connect with your students so that being said I believe there are many texts available that if they are presented in various ways before being taught will help the students relate to the subject material.
I think you make some really good points. The literature we teach should represent a range of experiences and outlooks so that we are not just teaching to some students but to every student. It is definitely important for students to be able to relate to the books they are reading. If they can't relate in some way they will be less interested in reading the book. The idea of teachers waiting to pick the major novels until after they know their students is interesting and not something I had thought of. I agree that this could be a good way to try to find a novel that students would be able to connect with.
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