so how do I want doesn’t wanna engage a
teenage mind in literature that’s the
big question I think because teenage
years are very stormy for parents and
for teachers the job of having to steer
a teenager through this period that’s
absolutely marked by turbulent changes
and trying to help them blossom and
mature and importantly invest in an
education this isn’t an easy task at all
there is a cognitive neuroscientist
called professor Sarah Jane Blake Moore
and her research has found her research
into the prefrontal cortex that part of
the brain that’s responsible for
decision-making for memory for empathy
for judgment making all of that is still
developing in a teenage mine so it’s all
still in flux the brain is still very
valuable as ideas can be opened in a way
that they’re not when you become further
on into adulthood and for a teacher this
research really is a valuable aid for us
to a task with not only the academic
progress of their students in our care
but also their social well-being as well
and because for the students at that
moment an adolescent their self-concept
their self-knowledge their sense of
themselves their experiences in the
world around them are all in a state of
flux and they have they’re trying to
reevaluate reformulate their own their
very own identities but it’s also
luckily for us teachers it’s a time when
they have an ability to empathize and
this idea of empathy really kicks in in
teenage years and so they are able to
hear a country point of view and hold it
alongside their own point of view they
are not able to imagine thoughts and
experiences and feelings of others and
really to be able to sort of stand in
someone else’s shoes and really try to
imagine what’s going
on the others in the other person’s mind
and in cognitive neuroscientific circles
this is known as theory of mind or
mind-reading and it really has great
applications in the study of literary
text because it seems to be that our
brains make no distinction between our
relationships in the three-dimensional
world and the emotions that we invest in
characters in a literary context but
what enables our cognitive architecture
to really make sense of and respond to
these entities which are in composed
entirely of syntax these characters
because all literary characters exist
only as black smudges on a white page
but as readers we’ve become sort of
emotionally connected to these ink and
paper individuals and there is precipice
hannity argues that literary experience
for us as well as for our teenagers it’s
not triggered in a vacuum as readers we
process events and characters in an
imagined space as if they were
corresponding to an actual event or an
actual situation in the
three-dimensional world and for
teenagers at this moment in their lives
they’re fast developing this ability to
accurately infer the intentions and
emotions of other people and for
literature teachers teachers like myself
studies in this cognitive literary
criticism it really enables us to see
new critical approaches new ways of
seeing texts and we can build upon our
tried and tested methods of our students
what they think of a text so I’d like to
give you an example of mind-reading in
action and it comes from a class of 2009
I had three years ago at CFB L can see a
number of the audience tonight and I’d
prepared these extracts of James Joyce’s
Ulysses know as Steven Daedalus is
entrance on Sunday man strand there was
Leopold blooms entrance into the novel
and there was Molly blooms famous eight
sentence soliloquy that finishes Ulysses
and Ulysses as you probably well know
it’s supposed to be one of the most
difficult novels in the canon to decode
and
seek and it’s the text that’s left a
trail of confused readers at its wake
and the extracts that I’d chosen they
were very well known extracts very well
studied and very well argued over pieces
there are thousands of literature
students the world over who must have
dedicated thousands of hours to the
study of this really complex text so
there is this vast body of criticism
which exists so I could help the
students if I needed to to guide them
through the text with the critics that
have gone before them but I didn’t want
to do that I want I didn’t want to just
impart critics knowledge and say go away
and learn what the critic has said about
James Joyce’s Ulysses what I wanted them
to do was to really put their collective
heads together and offer their opinion
on what they thought Joyce’s words are
all about and I just have to tell you a
word about these students before I
continue these were students exceptional
students in my tour the EM glass they
were 14 and 15 year olds who had for the
last two years gone on this journey of
literature they had William Blake at 13
a modernist taster at 14 and I as a
teacher I’d been truly amazed at what
they could see under the surface of the
text I could do Shakespeare I could do
Sylvia Plath TS Eliot that didn’t seem
to be an artist because I tried many
they didn’t seem to be an artist that
they wouldn’t try on so they just went
with all this literature and I used to
say to them when embarking on a new
piece of literature trust yourselves as
critics of literature it was wine well
more mantra which I’m sure they all
remember me say and I used to say it to
them every time we put on our critical
glasses and started to look down at a
text just yourselves as a critic of
literature and I said to them you won’t
find meaning straightaway you won’t get
it by yourselves but if we put our
collective heads together you’ll find
that the sum of our combined
observations will be a deeper richer
more nuanced and we could say more
accurate interpretation of the text and
as long as you remember eyes
tell them that writers occupy the same
space as you in the three-dimensional
world so they feel the same joys and
triumphs the same exasperation and
disappointments I said you will get it
and they do as I told them a good writer
a great writer I great the writer worth
his or her semantic salt will really try
to get to the knotty and intricate heart
of the human experience which is what
literature is all about the difference
between the writer and the student is
the writers left behind a record of
those experiences in beautifully crafted
English but the student can and does it
that student is able to follow these
clues that the writer has left through
the text and it will lead them to the to
have a deeper understanding of
humanity’s frailties and sufferings its
resilience and capacity for empathy my
college students are just like us
teachers of literature able to recognize
these artists concerns that lie beneath
their constructions and my students can
do this because they felt themselves
part of the world and they felt
themselves bumping up against
interacting with other people in that
world with them I hope that I’m able to
facilitate this process of recognition
not by imposing my own thoughts on the
text or leading them on some kind of
analytical beauties until they come up
with the answer that I think is the
correct one I hope that I’m able to just
try to guide their critical ideas to one
textually evidence interpretation or
another I can give them the tools they
need to tackle a text I can share my
passion for literature I can show them
how to import literary devices
comparative and contextual references
into a text and like a maths equation as
a noun meaning I can show them how to
shape and polish their thoughts crafts
their ideas into beautifully constructed
F essays that adhere to a methodology
and sharing the tools of the trade
because after all I’ve been trained as a
teacher so sharing the tools of my trade
in my technical knowledge is what I
bring to the learning process but I
don’t have all the answers for the right
interpretation and I really feel as a
teacher that it’s critical that my
students understand that there is a
space in this discussion for their ideas
and their responses because their
experiences as a world matter their
place and time matter in the here and
now for example who can read The
Merchant of Venice without addressing
the Holocaust who can read To Kill a
Mockingbird and not think of this
disturbing rise of the rut far-right
narrative that’s going across European
politics who can read The Great Gatsby
without drawing parallels to the global
crash of 2007 so my students I feel come
to a text with their own experiences of
life and the living and the solving of
it their interpretations can undo change
and evolve according to the shifting
tints and textures of their continuing
individual and collective narratives I
have a responsibility and a duty to
listen carefully to what my students
have to say to acknowledge and validate
what they see in a text I can study the
same book across the years and across
classes and every single time every
single time there will be of students
who has some different interpretation
that I’d never ever occurred to me
before and it might only be a way of
seeing a sentence it might only be a
single word but it doesn’t matter
the fact is that I’ve learned something
new in whatever text we we’ve got under
our critical lenses and I think here
right there is the nature of
transactional teaching it’s really
letting the students have this this
space in a discussion to engage their
theory of mind to see something new in a
text that comes wholly from the students
empathetic part of their brain and it’s
a scary thing for any of us to offer up
our thoughts to be picked over and
scrutinized and evaluated by a group of
individuals but as long as the students
ideas are held by everybody in that
group they will gain a confidence to
speak out knowing it they won’t be
laughed at they won’t be told that
and even if they have no recall across
the terms or down the years have the
idea that they threw out that one day in
an English lesson they will sense or
remember that their thoughts were
endorsed and authenticated this is the
path I truly believe as a teacher this
is the path that will lead them to their
own independent critical thinking but
also to be empathetic individuals in
their social world interacting with
their peers and adults alike so for me
the business of literary criticism
really gets going properly when my
students are in Kathi and almost to a
student they are baffled by the
mechanics of literary criticism they say
things like how can we know for sure
that the writer meant to make our
critical Raiders beep with that
particular literary device how can we be
sure that William Blake meant to echo
Smithy’s hammer with his regular and
rhythmic meter in the tiger how can the
burnt-out ends of smoky days possibly
speak of nullifying modernist condition
and saying it’s too far-fetched miss
Welby will say but seeing meaning in a
text it really is baffling at the
beginning but our shared experience my
experience that students experience
there our shared experience together
these students will see that there is
the idea of love or passion that they
had when they when they looked at the
image of a red rose it’s actually shared
by other people in the group as well and
if someone else thought that then maybe
there’s some marital veracity in their
own ideas so little by little across the
years my Kathy MS begin to find their
critical feet we always take regular
compass points along the way and I
always encourage them to see how far
they’ve come by themselves in this in
their analytical and semantic landscapes
and what seemed to them at the beginning
of Catherine to be this analytical
alchemy it actually turns out to be a
culmination of experience effort
practice but most of all trusting their
theory of mind skills to be critical of
their
so bite was iam they were decoding
complex text almost standing on their
heads and for me as a teacher it was
really a privilege to have accompany
these young minds on that analytical
journey and to try to bring them to text
where they were able to see really see
the complexities of the human condition
in typeface and bite was iam they are
able to recognize the universalities
that run through a particular time and
location that the writer has chosen to
set his or her text because they too
have felt or will feel at some moment in
their lives these emotions these
concerns and these questions – there is
a two years ago I studied the history
boys with my Twizy M group and Alan
Bennett play and he has Alan Bennett has
a moment where there is an old teacher
coming to the end of his career and he
says something to a student and it’s
almost theory of mind as a definition
and so there’s a group of eager young
teenagers who are going off to carve
their mark on the doors of Oxford
colleges and the teacher at the end of
his career says to one of them the best
moments in reading and where you come
across something a thought a feeling a
way of looking at things which you had
thought was special in particular to you
and now here it is set down by someone
else a person that you have never met
someone even who is long dead and as if
it’s a hand has come out across time and
taken yours my transient students who
tackled extracts of Ulysses at 14 and 15
years old they’d had some really
challenging texts across the two years
and they’d not only risen to these
challenges they’d actually soared
absolutely soared on every single
occasion and it was so it was rejoiced
that afternoon during the course of
their analysis the trope of motherhood
gender identity
national identities multiple
perspectives the weight of Irish history
the modernist condition the symbols of C
and time perspectives on life love and
death they all came flying towards my
whiteboard and it was from the students
themselves these clever thoughtful
mindful students that this and that they
decoded James Joyce’s Ulysses I told
them not to I didn’t tell them that
Joyce was scary I didn’t tell them that
Joyce’s unfathomable so they weren’t
scared and they found him out and it was
really they weren’t scared of it he
Joyce’s words and they weren’t scared of
themselves as critics of literature and
it was really I could see with their
developing theory of mine skills they’ve
been in training over the previous two
years and I could see whirring and
flushing and they found meaning in James
Joyce in a snit and for me it was just
an amazing moment as a teacher so like
everything in life were for having being
a good critic of literature takes time
and practice experience and hard work
but underpinning all of this is a
confidence that one is able to find
meaning in a text using the skill of
inference and the skill of empathy my
job I feel as a teacher in the first
instance is to insert a confidence in my
students of their very own critical
abilities
if this Biscay stone isn’t in place then
the whole analysis will be shaky ins and
uncertain because they will always be
looking to me to tell them the right
answer and that won’t do at all not
least in the exams that they have to
take at the end of terminado but I do
feel that in the second instance
encouraging their empathetic abilities
strengthening their aptitude for
decoding fictive situations and
characters intentions will enhance their
sense of selfhood their sense of
themselves and their sense of themselves
within a community as they navigate
relationships in real-life spaces
because the literary text it’s
it does more than just give us pleasure
take us by surprise and delight us with
its elegant technical constructions it
can and does enable us to decode make
sense of and understand our fellow
mammals ideas intentions feelings
thoughts emotions and it’s important
that they do understand this as we
bumping up it together in our
communities so I do feel really as a
teacher by encouraging our students to
take their minds throughout for a
healthy run through the myriad of
literature that’s on offer we are in
effect training our teenagers for the
main sprint in the social arena of the
three-dimensional world hoping
desperately that they’ll run the right
way stay on the right track and above
all empathize with their fellow runners
thanks very much [Applause]
teenage mind in literature that’s the
big question I think because teenage
years are very stormy for parents and
for teachers the job of having to steer
a teenager through this period that’s
absolutely marked by turbulent changes
and trying to help them blossom and
mature and importantly invest in an
education this isn’t an easy task at all
there is a cognitive neuroscientist
called professor Sarah Jane Blake Moore
and her research has found her research
into the prefrontal cortex that part of
the brain that’s responsible for
decision-making for memory for empathy
for judgment making all of that is still
developing in a teenage mine so it’s all
still in flux the brain is still very
valuable as ideas can be opened in a way
that they’re not when you become further
on into adulthood and for a teacher this
research really is a valuable aid for us
to a task with not only the academic
progress of their students in our care
but also their social well-being as well
and because for the students at that
moment an adolescent their self-concept
their self-knowledge their sense of
themselves their experiences in the
world around them are all in a state of
flux and they have they’re trying to
reevaluate reformulate their own their
very own identities but it’s also
luckily for us teachers it’s a time when
they have an ability to empathize and
this idea of empathy really kicks in in
teenage years and so they are able to
hear a country point of view and hold it
alongside their own point of view they
are not able to imagine thoughts and
experiences and feelings of others and
really to be able to sort of stand in
someone else’s shoes and really try to
imagine what’s going
on the others in the other person’s mind
and in cognitive neuroscientific circles
this is known as theory of mind or
mind-reading and it really has great
applications in the study of literary
text because it seems to be that our
brains make no distinction between our
relationships in the three-dimensional
world and the emotions that we invest in
characters in a literary context but
what enables our cognitive architecture
to really make sense of and respond to
these entities which are in composed
entirely of syntax these characters
because all literary characters exist
only as black smudges on a white page
but as readers we’ve become sort of
emotionally connected to these ink and
paper individuals and there is precipice
hannity argues that literary experience
for us as well as for our teenagers it’s
not triggered in a vacuum as readers we
process events and characters in an
imagined space as if they were
corresponding to an actual event or an
actual situation in the
three-dimensional world and for
teenagers at this moment in their lives
they’re fast developing this ability to
accurately infer the intentions and
emotions of other people and for
literature teachers teachers like myself
studies in this cognitive literary
criticism it really enables us to see
new critical approaches new ways of
seeing texts and we can build upon our
tried and tested methods of our students
what they think of a text so I’d like to
give you an example of mind-reading in
action and it comes from a class of 2009
I had three years ago at CFB L can see a
number of the audience tonight and I’d
prepared these extracts of James Joyce’s
Ulysses know as Steven Daedalus is
entrance on Sunday man strand there was
Leopold blooms entrance into the novel
and there was Molly blooms famous eight
sentence soliloquy that finishes Ulysses
and Ulysses as you probably well know
it’s supposed to be one of the most
difficult novels in the canon to decode
and
seek and it’s the text that’s left a
trail of confused readers at its wake
and the extracts that I’d chosen they
were very well known extracts very well
studied and very well argued over pieces
there are thousands of literature
students the world over who must have
dedicated thousands of hours to the
study of this really complex text so
there is this vast body of criticism
which exists so I could help the
students if I needed to to guide them
through the text with the critics that
have gone before them but I didn’t want
to do that I want I didn’t want to just
impart critics knowledge and say go away
and learn what the critic has said about
James Joyce’s Ulysses what I wanted them
to do was to really put their collective
heads together and offer their opinion
on what they thought Joyce’s words are
all about and I just have to tell you a
word about these students before I
continue these were students exceptional
students in my tour the EM glass they
were 14 and 15 year olds who had for the
last two years gone on this journey of
literature they had William Blake at 13
a modernist taster at 14 and I as a
teacher I’d been truly amazed at what
they could see under the surface of the
text I could do Shakespeare I could do
Sylvia Plath TS Eliot that didn’t seem
to be an artist because I tried many
they didn’t seem to be an artist that
they wouldn’t try on so they just went
with all this literature and I used to
say to them when embarking on a new
piece of literature trust yourselves as
critics of literature it was wine well
more mantra which I’m sure they all
remember me say and I used to say it to
them every time we put on our critical
glasses and started to look down at a
text just yourselves as a critic of
literature and I said to them you won’t
find meaning straightaway you won’t get
it by yourselves but if we put our
collective heads together you’ll find
that the sum of our combined
observations will be a deeper richer
more nuanced and we could say more
accurate interpretation of the text and
as long as you remember eyes
tell them that writers occupy the same
space as you in the three-dimensional
world so they feel the same joys and
triumphs the same exasperation and
disappointments I said you will get it
and they do as I told them a good writer
a great writer I great the writer worth
his or her semantic salt will really try
to get to the knotty and intricate heart
of the human experience which is what
literature is all about the difference
between the writer and the student is
the writers left behind a record of
those experiences in beautifully crafted
English but the student can and does it
that student is able to follow these
clues that the writer has left through
the text and it will lead them to the to
have a deeper understanding of
humanity’s frailties and sufferings its
resilience and capacity for empathy my
college students are just like us
teachers of literature able to recognize
these artists concerns that lie beneath
their constructions and my students can
do this because they felt themselves
part of the world and they felt
themselves bumping up against
interacting with other people in that
world with them I hope that I’m able to
facilitate this process of recognition
not by imposing my own thoughts on the
text or leading them on some kind of
analytical beauties until they come up
with the answer that I think is the
correct one I hope that I’m able to just
try to guide their critical ideas to one
textually evidence interpretation or
another I can give them the tools they
need to tackle a text I can share my
passion for literature I can show them
how to import literary devices
comparative and contextual references
into a text and like a maths equation as
a noun meaning I can show them how to
shape and polish their thoughts crafts
their ideas into beautifully constructed
F essays that adhere to a methodology
and sharing the tools of the trade
because after all I’ve been trained as a
teacher so sharing the tools of my trade
in my technical knowledge is what I
bring to the learning process but I
don’t have all the answers for the right
interpretation and I really feel as a
teacher that it’s critical that my
students understand that there is a
space in this discussion for their ideas
and their responses because their
experiences as a world matter their
place and time matter in the here and
now for example who can read The
Merchant of Venice without addressing
the Holocaust who can read To Kill a
Mockingbird and not think of this
disturbing rise of the rut far-right
narrative that’s going across European
politics who can read The Great Gatsby
without drawing parallels to the global
crash of 2007 so my students I feel come
to a text with their own experiences of
life and the living and the solving of
it their interpretations can undo change
and evolve according to the shifting
tints and textures of their continuing
individual and collective narratives I
have a responsibility and a duty to
listen carefully to what my students
have to say to acknowledge and validate
what they see in a text I can study the
same book across the years and across
classes and every single time every
single time there will be of students
who has some different interpretation
that I’d never ever occurred to me
before and it might only be a way of
seeing a sentence it might only be a
single word but it doesn’t matter
the fact is that I’ve learned something
new in whatever text we we’ve got under
our critical lenses and I think here
right there is the nature of
transactional teaching it’s really
letting the students have this this
space in a discussion to engage their
theory of mind to see something new in a
text that comes wholly from the students
empathetic part of their brain and it’s
a scary thing for any of us to offer up
our thoughts to be picked over and
scrutinized and evaluated by a group of
individuals but as long as the students
ideas are held by everybody in that
group they will gain a confidence to
speak out knowing it they won’t be
laughed at they won’t be told that
and even if they have no recall across
the terms or down the years have the
idea that they threw out that one day in
an English lesson they will sense or
remember that their thoughts were
endorsed and authenticated this is the
path I truly believe as a teacher this
is the path that will lead them to their
own independent critical thinking but
also to be empathetic individuals in
their social world interacting with
their peers and adults alike so for me
the business of literary criticism
really gets going properly when my
students are in Kathi and almost to a
student they are baffled by the
mechanics of literary criticism they say
things like how can we know for sure
that the writer meant to make our
critical Raiders beep with that
particular literary device how can we be
sure that William Blake meant to echo
Smithy’s hammer with his regular and
rhythmic meter in the tiger how can the
burnt-out ends of smoky days possibly
speak of nullifying modernist condition
and saying it’s too far-fetched miss
Welby will say but seeing meaning in a
text it really is baffling at the
beginning but our shared experience my
experience that students experience
there our shared experience together
these students will see that there is
the idea of love or passion that they
had when they when they looked at the
image of a red rose it’s actually shared
by other people in the group as well and
if someone else thought that then maybe
there’s some marital veracity in their
own ideas so little by little across the
years my Kathy MS begin to find their
critical feet we always take regular
compass points along the way and I
always encourage them to see how far
they’ve come by themselves in this in
their analytical and semantic landscapes
and what seemed to them at the beginning
of Catherine to be this analytical
alchemy it actually turns out to be a
culmination of experience effort
practice but most of all trusting their
theory of mind skills to be critical of
their
so bite was iam they were decoding
complex text almost standing on their
heads and for me as a teacher it was
really a privilege to have accompany
these young minds on that analytical
journey and to try to bring them to text
where they were able to see really see
the complexities of the human condition
in typeface and bite was iam they are
able to recognize the universalities
that run through a particular time and
location that the writer has chosen to
set his or her text because they too
have felt or will feel at some moment in
their lives these emotions these
concerns and these questions – there is
a two years ago I studied the history
boys with my Twizy M group and Alan
Bennett play and he has Alan Bennett has
a moment where there is an old teacher
coming to the end of his career and he
says something to a student and it’s
almost theory of mind as a definition
and so there’s a group of eager young
teenagers who are going off to carve
their mark on the doors of Oxford
colleges and the teacher at the end of
his career says to one of them the best
moments in reading and where you come
across something a thought a feeling a
way of looking at things which you had
thought was special in particular to you
and now here it is set down by someone
else a person that you have never met
someone even who is long dead and as if
it’s a hand has come out across time and
taken yours my transient students who
tackled extracts of Ulysses at 14 and 15
years old they’d had some really
challenging texts across the two years
and they’d not only risen to these
challenges they’d actually soared
absolutely soared on every single
occasion and it was so it was rejoiced
that afternoon during the course of
their analysis the trope of motherhood
gender identity
national identities multiple
perspectives the weight of Irish history
the modernist condition the symbols of C
and time perspectives on life love and
death they all came flying towards my
whiteboard and it was from the students
themselves these clever thoughtful
mindful students that this and that they
decoded James Joyce’s Ulysses I told
them not to I didn’t tell them that
Joyce was scary I didn’t tell them that
Joyce’s unfathomable so they weren’t
scared and they found him out and it was
really they weren’t scared of it he
Joyce’s words and they weren’t scared of
themselves as critics of literature and
it was really I could see with their
developing theory of mine skills they’ve
been in training over the previous two
years and I could see whirring and
flushing and they found meaning in James
Joyce in a snit and for me it was just
an amazing moment as a teacher so like
everything in life were for having being
a good critic of literature takes time
and practice experience and hard work
but underpinning all of this is a
confidence that one is able to find
meaning in a text using the skill of
inference and the skill of empathy my
job I feel as a teacher in the first
instance is to insert a confidence in my
students of their very own critical
abilities
if this Biscay stone isn’t in place then
the whole analysis will be shaky ins and
uncertain because they will always be
looking to me to tell them the right
answer and that won’t do at all not
least in the exams that they have to
take at the end of terminado but I do
feel that in the second instance
encouraging their empathetic abilities
strengthening their aptitude for
decoding fictive situations and
characters intentions will enhance their
sense of selfhood their sense of
themselves and their sense of themselves
within a community as they navigate
relationships in real-life spaces
because the literary text it’s
it does more than just give us pleasure
take us by surprise and delight us with
its elegant technical constructions it
can and does enable us to decode make
sense of and understand our fellow
mammals ideas intentions feelings
thoughts emotions and it’s important
that they do understand this as we
bumping up it together in our
communities so I do feel really as a
teacher by encouraging our students to
take their minds throughout for a
healthy run through the myriad of
literature that’s on offer we are in
effect training our teenagers for the
main sprint in the social arena of the
three-dimensional world hoping
desperately that they’ll run the right
way stay on the right track and above
all empathize with their fellow runners
thanks very much [Applause]
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