Contemplative Inquiry: The Missing Component of the Common Core Reading Standards

• In Event: Rethinking education: diversity, mindfulness, and movement

Proposal

Reader’s Response Theory stipulates that in order for true transcendence to take place during the reading experience, the reader must make a personal connection to the story. National reading standards are promoting a scientific versus an aesthetic approach toward the reading method. Void is the transactional relationship that occurs between the reader and the text. Rosenblatt’s (1938) core tenant of the reading experience argues that, “the reader brings to the works personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preconceptions, a particular mood of the moment, and a particular physical condition. These and many other elements in a never-to-be-duplicated combination determine his response to the peculiar contribution of the text (Literature as Exploration, 1938, 30). The Common Core reading standards eliminate any engagement of text-to-self and move into a deep analytic relationship of form, idea, and the acquisition of information. The goal remains to pass the standardized test. The standards miss this essential and pivotal element of the reading process that connects mind, body, and spirit: Contemplative Inquiry.
The four Common Core anchor standards within the English/Language Arts standards include: Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, Integration of Knowledge and Ideas, and Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity. The anchor standards run across all ELA standards K-12 and through the reading standards of social studies, science, and technical subjects. Authors of the Common Core successfully mainstreamed a K-12 curriculum and created a similar conversation to create continuity across grade levels and content disciplines. What they neglected to include is the heart of the reading process: contemplative inquiry across grade levels and content disciplines. Within the anchor standard students are asked to: cite contextual evidence, determine central themes, analyze author’s choices, determine meaning of words and analyze their impact on text, infer satire, sarcasm and irony, analyze multiple interpretations of the same text, demonstrate knowledge of classic texts, and comprehend text complexities.
When in the investigation mode of reading text will the reader be given the opportunity to express concern for a character, disagree with a character, understand a character’s intentions, and sympathize with a difficult decision? When will students be allowed to fall in love with a character, a new country, region, or planet? When will a reader simply be able to escape? Under the common core initiative, the answer is: never. Students must read for information, search for contextual evidence, determine central themes, and analyze the impact of author’s choices. Readers must not go on an adventure, get ensnared in a great debate, live vicariously through a heroine embarking on a journey, or learn how to survive a tumultuous and threatening situation. The heart of the reading process will not exist on our K-12 classrooms unless a paradigm shift occurs to include a holistic approach to the reading process. The stages in the reading process where cathartic moments erupt, spiritual quests begin, and where the mind and body are nurtured.


Adding the a Fifth Anchor Strand: Connection and Reflection

Administrators and teachers are faced with the pressures of state and national high stakes standards that impact funding and resources, but to drill and kill our students through text analysis will never create a love a reading, a passion for reading. Lovers of books read for what Rosenblatt calls The Aesthetic Transaction, the personal relationship the reader brings to the experience. Rosenblatt understands the need for the efferent and the aesthetic modes of the reading process. She argued that readers shift back and forth along a continuum; at times reading for information and analyzing unique technical aspects of the text, but also engaging in deep and meaningful textual features that related directly to the reader’s personal experiences (The Reader, The Text, The Poem, 1978). But it is always the aesthetic mode that will bring readers back to the book and other books, creating life-long readers. In 1986 Rosenblatt argued that, “despite the mix of private and public aspects of meaning in each stance, the two dominant stances are clearly distinguishable: someone else can read a text efferent for us, and acceptably paraphrase, but no one can read aesthetically-that is, experience the evocation of –a literary work of art for us” (The Aesthetic Transaction, 1986, 125).
When working in the Common Core anchor strands, I argue that teachers must restructure the curriculum to include contemplative inquiry in the form of an additional anchor: Connection and Reflection. Connection: Introduce students to the strategy of visualizing character’s actions and drawing connections to their own personal experiences. Use graphic organizers like Venn diagrams and T-charts to make associations between the characters and themselves. Would they ever define themselves as a hero or adventurer or romantic? Discuss why they are drawn to a particular character, are they commonalities between the character and themselves? Reflection: Present a process for students to write about the connections they are making during the reading process. How are they connecting in a deep and meaningful way to the text? Students can use response journals and reaction guides to enhance the reflective process and share their insights with peers and teachers. This final anchor stand of Connection and Reflection will not be assessed by the state, will not factor into teacher merit pay, or the school grade, but it will support the process of creating lifelong readers. Literacy teachers must incorporate the aesthetic mode of the reading process within the more technical, efferent approach toward reading instruction. Students do need to understand how to analyze and interpret text complexities, structure, and search for textual evidence, but they also need to experience the emotional side of the text through contemplative inquiry so as to create a more balanced educational practice that promotes a holistic approach toward literacy.

Authors

• Theoni Soublis, The University of Tampa

• Hunter O'Hara, The University of Tampa