I. An Educator's View

Abstract

? PANEL: ON LITERARY CRITICISM I. An Educator's View Jane M. Bingham My response to what has come to be known as the CooperRudman controversy is mixed. Mixed because I think we're arguing about apples and turnips. Rudman's criticism of children's literature, as reflected in her book, Children' s Literature: An Issues A» »roach, is not literary '. Indeed, she maintains "that she is prov ding "a critical examination of the books in li;ht of how they treat contemporary social rob1ems and con« it onsT" She claims that her perspective s as essential as the historical and literary perspectives. It is here that many people disagree. Literary criticism is one thing they say, and social criticism quite another. The problem is that the two modes of criticism are often perceived as having the same purpose and employing the same procedures. In addition, and more importantly, in children 's literature, we often find more social criticism and with it more psychological and historical criticism -- than the educated and sensitive criticism that Susan Cooper calls for. We would, of course, have to curb the curiosity of people (and university tenure systems too) in order to eliminate the kind of analysis that Cooper deplores. Psychologists, sociologists, historians, and educators with their respective brands of curiosity are here to stay. Social scientists generally confine their analysis to their fields, but literary critics in the field of English often opt for the point of view of any field but English. One would think that some people in the field of English have little to say about literature except in psychological, sociological, historical, or educational terms. Cooper has, justifiably, pointed out the paucity of good literary criticism. But what i£ literary criticism anyway? As you know, I am called an educator, in a School of Education. In the finite world of academe I am not supposed to be troubled by matters such as literary criticism. Certainly a group of English scholars would not expect me to do literary criticism. This multi-discipline organization, ChLA, however, has extended to me the courtesy of allowing me to respond to the question of what is literary criticism from an educator's perspective, from the perspective of a person who works with children, teachers, and children's trade books. As an educator (I realize we're all educators and would welcome a better label, but. . . .), I see Rudman's approach to children's literature as expedient and protective. Expedient because educators are plagued by requests for books which deal with a particular social or psychological problem . Only the most courageous educators can refuse to respond to such requests. Indeed, the common perception is that educators are supposed to criticize books only in terms of how much a child is going to learn from or be helped by a particular book or how much a child will be entertained by a book simply because the child must read something in order to practice his reading skills. Rudman's book was welcomed by many educators because it provides ready answers to the persistent questions from parents and teachers. The book serves to protect educators from the position of not knowing, or more realistically, not having to admit that they do not know, or worse, do not care. For not caring is the worst sin. To admit that one doesn't care whether a book portrays a negative image of Blacks, for example, would be hard in the field of education because it is an accepted fact of life that books influence children. (Ironically, this belief is often ignored, debated , or misconstrued by practitioners.) Certainly Rudman believes books influence and help children to form both attitudes and behaviors. Mollie Hunter, for instance, declared in her ChLA speech that she fully intends to give her readers strong characters who are inspiring enough to influence her reader's attitudes and behaviors . Susan Cooper said in her ChLA Keynote Address at Harvard that "if you attribute to writers some more sinister kind of power over a child's attitudes and future beliefs, as both Freudian and issues-approach kinds of criticism do, then you're doing that child a terrible disservice." She maintains...