Null Curriculum and Prevailing Ideologies in High School Literature Anthologies

 

          In post-No Child Left Behind-California, many literature classrooms have adopted the use of anthology textbooks as the primary source for students to study. Perhaps in its initial creation the anthology was meant to simplify student and teacher life by condensing the amount of books needed. But as standards became the norm, the anthology became an easy way to ensure that certain topics were being addressed. There are so many standards that must be taught within a given year that for a teacher to create an entire curriculum on his or her own would be arduous and extremely time-consuming. First time teachers must sigh in relief when handed their teacher-edition anthology. It is complete package with all the necessary standards–they do not have to decide what novel to teach and which standard it should meet, all the work is done already. Sure this might serve as a useful tool for a first time teacher, but this begs the question, is it the right one to use to further a student’s education? Literature anthologies are vastly limiting: the editors of the textbook hold all the power, not the teacher. Editors have the choice to condense novels and stories and only present the shredded bits of a masterpiece. They also get to decide what is taught and what is left behind. This “one size fits all” textbook does not take into account its audience and it thus leaves the student population disconnected and alienated, especially if they are not of the dominate population that is represented within the text. These anthologies may be “hitting the standards” within the pages but how effectively is it serving the imaginations and learning processes of its students?

            No Child Left Behind standards may be relatively new, but the literature anthology is not. John F. Warner wrote an article in October of 1959 expressing his absolute distaste in the beast that is the literature anthology:

      Generally, the anthologies looked like poorly conceived hybrids of Reader’s Digest and Life! They were nothing but a polygot of condensations, excerpts, and abridgements; and of photographs and sketches, liberally sprinkled with color plates designed, I suppose, to instill a sort of interest in the pupils and to motivate. Attractive and appealing as they were, no doubt, closer inspection showed that they were as false as Macbeth’s smile. (383)  

        This description still holds true to this day. Except now with state standards in play, editors have crammed even more things for a student to read and do-there are not just poems, excerpts, and short stories in these anthologies, but short author biographies, one-page historical background blurbs, magazine articles, website pages, suggested books for independent reading, and dozens upon dozens of quizzes, worksheets, and questions.

         The way I see it, a teacher should put forth a text and use an array of supported activities to teach it-this is up to the discretion of the teacher, but what teaching strategies work with one class may not work with another. It is important that we know our audience and create our lesson plans around them. Also, a teacher should allow for some flexibility in the curriculum to bring in certain texts that may work better for an individual class. In the text Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society, by Gollnick and Chinn, they point out the importance of educations to teach multiethnic curriculum in accordance to the needs of their students:

The ethnic communities to which students belong provide the real-life examples teachers should draw on to teach. Knowing students’ ethnic and cultural experiences and how subject matter interacts with students’ reality are important in designing effective strategies to engage students in learning. [...] Development of multiethnic curriculum requires the educator to evaluate textbooks and classroom resources for ethnic content and biases. (121-127)

          As teachers, we cannot turn a “blind-eye” from race, ethnicity, and culture as these topics are vital to our students’ identity as people and learners. We must fight the dominant ethnocentric tendency of teaching, especially since a majority of us come from that dominant culture-white and middle class. This is why it is so important for us to analyze the texts to ensure that what we are teaching is multicultural and diverse. Just as we must not ignore the importance of ethnicity, we must not take these anthologies for their face value-they are not just collections of literature but an interpretation of that literature by a select group of scholars (the editors). This interpretation gets passed down to the educators in the teacher’s edition and then to the students in the manner of which the book is compiled. These anthologies are multi-layer texts and must be treated as such. There is a clear null curriculum being taught through these texts through the choices the editors make. Can we be culturally sensitive and progressive when bound to these heavy and unchanging texts?

            For this case study of how culture is portrayed through curriculum, I have chosen to study and analyze Holt’s “Literature and Language Arts: Third Course,” which was published in 2003. It is interesting to take a look at the biographies of the people involved in creating this anthology. The writers and editors come from Harvard and Brown doctorate programs, are teachers of theatre and English in both college and high school levels, and are professional writers-these people are highly learned and have been given many opportunities throughout their lifetime to succeed. And now they hold in their hands the power to choose what is taught to California students and how. Not one of the authors claimed to have studied anything about teaching to second language learners or students with learning disabilities. They are all well-read and know their literature, but how do their skills translate into creating a textbook to be taught from? Do they keep those diverse students in mind? What social biases have crept onto the page? And what have these authors turned a blind eye to? It is interesting to note that the senior program consultant Carol Jago has written books on Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni, and Sandra Cisneros, and all three of these authors are highlighted within the text. I am not arguing that this is bad, merely noticing that the authors have great control to implement their own biases and literature favorites into this text. They have great power and hold the keys to ideological hegemony-do they continue the progression of presenting a picture of white male authors, or do they show a greater range of cultural backgrounds for the high school students to learn?

            This anthology contains a plethora of literary genres; I believe this text is attempting to be all-encompassing, trying to hit every type and style of writing at least once. But the focus of this anthology is clear, both in what is represented and what is deemphasized.

Sample 1: Genres and Number of Representations

Literary Genre	Number of Examples
Short Story	24
Novel (Excerpt)	1
Poetry	46
Drama	2

Sample 2: Three Most Dominant Texts by Page Number

Genre/Text	Pages
Play/Romeo & Juliet	150
Myth/The Odyssey	80
Play/Visitor from Forest Hills	25

         It is interesting to note that the one and only novel excerpt encompassed only three pages, yet Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet,” equipped with full page production photos hogged up 150 pages of the anthology. The production pictures of the play show a pretty blonde Juliet and a handsome dark-haired Romeo, both Caucasian. Many of the photos show the two lovers embracing, and are blatant examples of the acceptance and normalcy of the heterosexual identity. As far as ethnicity goes, one black actor is shown but the rest are white. So to sum this up, the most dominant part of this anthology is a play written by a white male, staged by mostly white actors, and encompasses the social norms of violence, suicide, and heterosexual love.

         The next most dominant text is The Odyssey, written by a white male, and presents masculinity and power in its male hero and protagonist. The third most dominant text of the anthology is a comedy written by a white male and shows photographs of an entirely white cast. The play is a comedy about a middle/upper class white family and all the typical comedic problems that occur between the family members: the bride daught locks herself in the bathroom in fear of her wedding ceremony and the play shows her parents comically trying to get her to come out. This play portrays the norms of heterosexual marriages and the values of the white middle-class American nuclear family. Out of all the great playwrights in the world, it seems strange that they decided to pick such an ideological hegemonic and ethnocentric play written by Neil Simon-why not pick something with more literary value like a play by August Wilson or Yasmina Reza?

            After picking apart the three most dominant texts in the anthology, I decided to document the presentation of both gender and ethnicity. By casually flipping through the anthology there seemed to be variety and diversity, but when actually counted the results were shocking.

Sample 3: Gender and Ethnicity Breakdown 

Ethnicity	Male	Female
White/Caucasian	29	6
Black/African American	3	7
Hispanic/Chicano	3	5
Asian/Asian American	4	1
	Total Male:    39	Total Female:    19

         The overwhelming majority of representation in this particular anthology is of white males. It is interesting to see that there are more black females represented than black males and white females. The Hispanic females represented outnumber the Hispanic males, but only one Asian female is represented against four Asian males. The representation of males outnumber the females by a whopping twenty, but only ten non-white males are represented against 13 non-white females. Overall the females are less represented compared to the males, but are of greater diverse ethnicities. These findings shocked me: I couldn’t believe how many white males were represented. And many of the white male authors are not even widely known, but are obscure and would never be taught in my classroom if I had a choice. Also, most of the full page author biographies are dedicated to the white males. Many of the female authors, especially the diverse ones, have shorter biographies and are not pictured like the white male authors. It is interesting to note which authors have the most words and page space in their biography. For example, Richard Connell, a man “famous for one story,” has an entire page dedicated to his biography that includes a half-page picture. The biography: “Despite its literary flaws, people rarely forget this story” (Holt 23). To recap, a relatively unknown author who wrote only one story, which by the editors themselves commented has “literary flaws,” gets his story published in this anthology and has an entire page dedicated to his biography, yet the Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker only has one poem published and a half-page biography-this all seems very skewed to me. What kind of message does this send to our students? A very clear one: white males who write mediocre stories have more presence than African American women, or any other ethnicity for that matter.

            Gender is a big issue we should look at in anthologies, especially since high school age students are in their awkward stage and try their hardest to abide to their assigned gender. I argue that this anthology is extremely sexist and adheres to gender stereotypes. I counted six adventure stories which were clearly geared towards boys: the main character in these stories is always a boy, these stories are adventurous, full of violence, and decorated with pictures tinted in dark red and black and capture people in action. The most striking example I found is a story called “The Sniper.” This story highlights a quote in a faded font on a red and black “target” circle: “There was a flash and a bullet whizzed over his head” (Holt 213). This is a violent military story where the main character (a male of course) shoots guns, smokes cigarettes, uses a knife to tear open his shirt to examine a bullet wound, and murders his enemy. War stories can have great literary importance, but this short story absent of historical context or purpose serves as a quick read of heightened action and violence that is aimed towards the boys in the classroom. I would never teach a story like this in my class, as it is so obviously normalizing boys and guns without further questioning the connection. Our textbook describes the gender stereotypes and I see this fitting exactly into the stories presented in this anthology:

Men control political and military apparatus in all societies. Achievement and self-reliance are fostered more in males than females. Males tend to seek dominance more than females do and are significantly more physically and verbally aggressive. (Gollnick 151)

The stories geared towards boys are encompassing these traits: the stories showcase an independent male in some active and adventurous way.

         On the other hand, I noted three stories geared towards girls. These stories show women as passive, quiet, and beautiful. The pictures that accompany the stories are softer and gentler than in the adventure examples. In the story “The Necklace,” the tagline quote says “She so much longed to please, be envied, be fascinating.” This quote is underneath a Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot painting of a white woman passively sitting with her held tilted down and a book in her hand. This story is about a women who “dressed plainly because she could not afford fine clothes” and who struggles with never being good enough or having the right things to wear. Contrast this story with “The Sniper” and it is obvious which one the editors are trying to “sell” to which gender.

          I only noticed two examples of broken norms, or things that were clearly going outside the hegemonic norms. One example is of a boy hugging a tiny furry dog. The image surprised me because the boy is showing emotion and love in a more gentle way than I would expect. This image looks like it should be a girl holding the dog (if it were to be going with gender stereotypes). This is a refreshing image to see as it shows a boy in a softer light. There is also a picture of two handicapped athletic people in a story of heroes. This is the only instance of exceptionality I saw in the text. Also, homosexuality is completely void in this anthology. There are dozens of blatant portrayals of heterosexuality (especially in the “Romeo & Juliet” section) and zero stories or mentions of homosexuality. Religion is only mentioned once in the anthology in a story about Christmas. No other religions or religious traditions are mentioned. There is, however, an entire section on the American story: this is chock full of patriotism and the pushing of ideologies (America, liberty, and freedom are great!). It could be argued that the editors tried to stay as mainstream as possible to offend the least amount of people as possible. And the result of this is an anthology that perpetuates stereotypes, leaves out all students who do not walk in line with the dominate culture or ideologies, and does not cause students to use literature to push their own thinking on issues regarding equality, ethnicity, sexism, and other struggles we experience as humans living within this society. To me that is the point of literature, and thus I believe this anthology to be utterly mainstream, boring, and offending to the beautiful world of literature. Warner agrees with me in this point as he states in the end portion of his essay:

In their effort to do too much with too little, these anthologies do nothing to further interest in literature, or to reach their own objective of, if I assume correctly, presenting a comprehensive anthology of the best representative literature of a particular type or nation of era. (386)

            It is now very clear to me the hindrances that these anthologies present and the challenges I have yet to face as a future high school teacher. I will most likely have to teach with one of these ghastly books one day, but I feel better prepared to use these anthologies with open eyes. I have the skills to read underneath the surface and to see what ideologies and stereotypes these editors are trying to push. The good news is I have the power to do what I wish with these anthologies. I can point out the obvious flaws to my students and use the portrayal of the text as a point of study. Gullnick gives us hope in telling us that it is still possible to teach in a multiethnic manner while using these anthologies:

With many textbook revisions, ethnic content has been added to what already existed, rather than being carefully integrated throughout the text. Biased books should not prevent the teacher from providing multiethnic instruction.

Supplementary materials can fill the gap in this area. The biases and omissions in the texts can be used for discussions of the experiences of ethnic groups. None of these instructional activities will occur, however, unless the teacher is aware of and values ethnic differences and their importance in the curriculum.” (127)

            In reality, these gender stereotypes, ethnocentric focus, and dominating ideologies will always be present in our culture. Students must learn how to operate in their culture yet be able to read the underlying messages being presented to them. These anthologies could be used as a mirror to our culture, to show how much work still needs to be done. And then we can always add supporting curriculum under the table to supplement what was not included in the anthology. Unfortunately, this is the system that is set in place, and if we are to succeed as teachers we need to learn how to tweak it to the best of our abilities until our educational conditions improve.

Works Cited

Gollnick, Donna, and Phillip Chinn. Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society: Seventh Edition. Ohio: Merrill Prentice Hall, 2006.

Warner, John. “Anthologies in the High School Classroom? Never!” The English Journal, Vol. 48, No. 7. (Oct., 1959) pp. 382-387.

Holt. Literature & Language Arts: Third Course. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. New York: 2003.