欧宝娱乐

There is a debate (or at least an ongoing conversation) among teachers who help college students hone their reading skills. What exactly, do you have the students read? The great works of literature, such as Homer, Emerson (yes, Vicky, I am thinking about our conversation the other night)? Do you have them read more modern works? How do you teach reading when you also have to teach reference? The best example of this is when my students were reading an essay about wetlands and thought the word crane only referred to the building machine. They couldn't figure out why it was flying. And no, my students are not stupid, and some are well traveled. They just don't read, usually because school has failed them.

When I teach pre-college level reading, I make my students do book reports. They can choose the books. This surprises them, and most of my students will read something by Terry Woods, like The Dutch books (a series about a drug dealer). One student was surprised that I let her read them. I just wanted her to read. Literature, she can get in my class. Her last teacher had said she could read whatever she wanted for a book report, until she brought in the Dutch book. Last year, one of my 101 level students asked me to read some of the books that she reads. After all, she said, I was making them read Dracula. I said yes. For those of you who live in a big city, her books would be those books you can get from a street vendor, sometimes from a bookstore. What has been called Urban African American fiction. These books deal with life in the inner city and are usually, though not always, published by small firms.

Out of three books my student loaned me, two could have used more than just spell-check, one was little more than badly written fan fiction; one I understood the appeal of (though the writing needed polish), and the last, by Sister Souljah, was good. Sister Souljah's novel aside, the books, in short, were not what us "literary" teachers read. The flaws were far too many and the plot was eye brow rising, and did explain why my students make some of the mistakes they do.

Yet this type of work is important because it reflects something about society.

Yet this genre also includes a book such as Precious, a book I will use in my classes.

The book is not an easy read for two reasons. One is the subject matter. Precious is abused by both her father and her mother. The second reason is the early spelling. What Sapphire boldly does is capturing Precious's voice, and captures it exactly. Precious cannot read; therefore, she cannot spell. Unlike two of the books I mentioned above, the errors in Precious are important. They let the reader really know Precious, and come as close to her life as is possible. What is more, the writing improves as Precious changes her life. Sapphire is using language on many different levels. Using language in the strictest terms of communication, and she deserves award after award for this.

If the spelling was perfect, the book would lack half of its impact, if not more.

Some idiots, and I use this word intentionally, will say a story like this could never happen.

BULLSH**!

I have taught people who came from where Precious comes from. It is shocking what your students will sometimes tell you. It is even more shocking when the student's next comment is about how impressed she is with you because you went straight to college after high school. Yet, the student is going to school while working two jobs, is a single mother, and has usually come though a violent relationship (or two).

That's impressive. Not me.

What Sapphire gives the reader is a true story. An uplifting story with a good dose of sadness, but a story that many teachers will know, will recognize, and will be nodding their heads over. This is far better than those feel good Hollywood teacher movies. This, like Entre les murs(The Class), is what life and teaching are.
Additionally, the action in the classroom rings true. While the whole book is told from Precious鈥� point of view, the actions of Miz Rain and Precious鈥� classmates ring true. Even JoAnn who disappears from the class rings true. Any teacher will tell you that there are students like that in the classroom. The sense of cohesion and togetherness that a good class can achieve is realistically drawn. This is not the Hollywood movie where the white suburban teacher comes into an inner city class room fresh from the suburbs. This is not the story where after a tough first two weeks, she magically touches her students who all start behaving well and gets scholarships to Princeton (or some other Ivy League school). If this was a Hollywood story, it would end with Precious, now a successful something, returning to her old school and thanking the (white) principal and (white) math teacher who arranged for her to join the alternative school.

No, thankfully, it鈥檚 not that type of story.

Classes don鈥檛 work like that. Teachers have bad days. Students have bad days. True, sometimes there will be that shocking light, where everything comes together. But for days, weeks, months before that, there is hard work. Hard repetitive work, for both the teacher and student. Sapphire catches this.

What stands out the most, however, is Precious herself. While the reader feels pity and horror for her, Precious doesn鈥檛 demand that pity. Compared to other books where the female protagonist is horribly abused or mistreated (or in the case of The Lovely Bones, killed) and gets the reader鈥檚 pity though the suffering of victimhood, Precious doesn鈥檛 do that. We see her angry and disruptive. She curses. She has something. Nice is the word you want to use, but it doesn鈥檛 really fit. She is, in fact, a victim, though to call her this cheapens her. Instead, Precious gets us on her side by simply existing. By stating in a matter fact tone of voice what is, and yet because of her frankness, we admire and like her. We root for her simply because she earns our respect. Despite the fact that her story is not ours, there are the roots of everyman, everywoman, in her. We all sometimes feel the way Precious sometimes feels.

This makes her real.

Read this book