Metaphor and reflection

I think the metaphor and reflection chapters are quite useful in that they offer some good examples and strategies. I often ask my students to discuss what a piece of literature is "like" or what it is distinctly NOT like. Sometimes, that is equally as revealing. It never ceases to surprise me how willing some of my regular English students are to dig more deeply into what they have read and relate it to their lives. It is regularly more difficult to get honors and AP kids to do this. They seek the "right" answer. I have to re-train them to understand that there are multiple ways to view literature. I begin with The Little Engine That Could, which we read with a focus on words and ideas that are stereotypically male or female. Then we identify the theme -- that we can do what we put our minds to. We talk about how it's a great book for kids because of this theme. Then I ask what we can get from our gender images. Fairly quickly, the kids realize that all the male engines (big, strong, important ones) are too busy to help. It is finally the tiny female engine (who only works in the yard) that helps get the dolls and toys over the mountain. The kids begin to get angry at the apparent sexist theme. It is at this time when a student always suggests that "it's just how things were then." This realization opens up a semester-long dialogue about text and subtext -- the idea that a writing can mean multiple things. From there, we explore some other basics -- Plato's Allegory of the Cave, for example. This collection of primers becomes our point of reference and comparison. In this way, the kids learn to use comparison to enhance their comprehension on a deeper level. AND they learn to reflect meaningfully on what they have read based on a much wider literary experience. By the end of the semester, they generally quite enjoy intertextual relationships for their own sake.

I explain all this to again make this observation: My honors and AP kids always come to class as better technical readers than regular English kids, but they are frequently LESS prepared to make these deeper connections. Conversely, regular English kids are less prepared technically, but they often seem to make connections more easily. This is, of course, a generalization, but I wonder if anyone else has observed it.