Shane 2
One of the characters in Shane is from New England. This could be a somewhat important detail. Suppose it can implicitly say much about the tastes and mannerisms of the character. I don’t think I noted the origin of that character the first time I read the book. I figure it’s one of those details that I might pass over and not register. I think it could also be one of those details that show up on an elementary school English test. Which I would have gotten incorrect after a panic struck me for not being able to answer the question. That experience made me not want to read books, because, clearly, I’m reading them wrong.
But you gotta teach reading comprehension to the children, right? I suppose testing is a proven way to educate?
Jae-Ho
If you want to see if someone understands a novel, ask them to use the novel to prove a concept.
“Using details from the novel Shane, explain how blood is thicker than water.”
The novel Shane can explain how blood is thicker than water by chronicling how a blank, un-embedded, stranger becomes a virtual member of the Starrett family through his loyalty, gratitude, and understanding of the family’s human condition. This creates a bond and new responsibilities which personally out weighs any self interests the stranger had before he became family. [possibly to be continued…]
Would it have been acceptable to say that a book can not explain what is asked in the specific essay question? Because that sounds like something I might have tried and gotten hit for…
It’s a thousand times more difficult to assess properly, which is why it’s done so rarely, but it’s also a thousand times more useful to test how someone thinks, rather than the facts he knows.
In high school I took a class called Extended Studies for two years, which was basically a smarty-pants class about thinking. One day we walked into class and all the tables and chairs had been pushed to the side, and in the middle was a large circle of rope with a glass jar half full of water at its centre.
This, we were told, was a nuclear reactor, and the jar its core. The reactor was about to blow and we had exactly 20 minutes to extract it without entering the reactor. To do so we had a box of “tools”.
Well, it only took me about 5 minutes before I started to loudly declare we were doomed. Seriously, I was that guy. At first it was for “comedic” effect, but it became pretty obvious to me that it was also because I didn’t have the faintest idea how to do it.
To this day this shit bothers me – why did I give up so easily? Why did I resort to simply criticising the plans of others? Why, when I was a pretty dedicated student, was my attitude so poor?
I’m very surprised you were that guy, because I know you mostly as a person to not back down from a challenge. You generally embrace a good enigma, no?
I might be making this more about me than you, but I’ll try this: this past behaviour, it was a failure of the imagination (a symptom of a tautened mind too enamoured with its own certainty). Which is very bothersome indeed.
Nobody is immune to thinking narrowly or defeatism, as seen in an anectdote from the distant past. I wouldn’t say these traits define you . Far from it. So why so bothered?
Because the failure of imagination is one of my most hated things – and we hate the things we see in ourselves the most.
And now I have a job where I am paid for my imagination not to fail.
Do you know Arthur C. Clarke’s first law? Are you an old scientist?