Using What You Learn in English Class

    As an English teacher there are many things you hear on a daily basis.  One of the most often stated is: when am I ever going to use this stuff?  This question has and will always plague the English teacher.   Just as assigning a 1 page paper turns into a 125 page book where every page is about the same thing, this is just one of the other items that plagues the English teacher.  Most teachers just ignore that the question was ever asked, and continues with the lesson.  Unfortunately what happens is that the student, and many other students that witnessed the situation are confirmed with the idea that there is no reason to learn or pay attention to this English lit stuff.  A valuable lesson has been dodged, and those students have now escaped the opportunity to learn some real  knowledge. 

    I propose this story as a anecdote for question such as these, it just might get into those think teenage skulls.  My son and I arrived at a family owned bike shop.  The young woman who was “watching” the shop for her husband, but it looked a lot more like “running it” while her huband was away, asked if she could help us.  I explained we came looking for a bike for my son.  She looked at both of us,a nd then looked again.  I have always had a babhy face, and it hasn’t seemed to go away much as I’ve gotten older.  Now please, I’m not complaining, it’s just a point of the story.  She smiled and chuckled to herself, and then had to say something about this obvious oddity that was in front of her. 

    At this moment her husband came in and the first thing she did was to explain that the two of us were father and son.  He looked to both of us, and smiled.  She explained that we looked like brothers, and he said that in few years my son would look like my father.  I tell everyone that that is what I’m shooting for.  Then the oddest thing began to happen: The young lady said, it’s like that novel The curious case of Benjamin Button , so she asked if I was aging in reverse and giving it to my son.  I told her it was a good idea, but it hadn’t happened consciously.  The gentleman came out of a chuckle and said, yeah you have a picture of yourself somewhere that has wrinkles and grey hair right?  I told him I wasn’t a 19th century English Dandy.  We debated as to whether Dorian Grey, from the Oscar Wilde novel Picture of dorian grey , was indeed an English Dandy.  After the very literate conversation, he gave us a bike for $20 saying, there was no way he could charge $200 to a person who knew Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare.  So I ended it with the “parting is such sweet sorrow” speech from Romeo and Juliet.  With a few chuckles we left.  

    So how will this stuff ever help you?  Not only will it help you with your ideas and thoughts of your own inner self, which is what literature is suppose to do for the reader, but it will also help you get a $200 bike for just $20.  That’s a pretty immediate and decent piece of change for sitting in a classroom and learning about all of the crazy stuff that the authors of the past wrote down for us.

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