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Article: Thoreau-lite: Anthologies leave students with only some snippets.(Features)(Learning)(K-12)(Class Act)(A Teacher's View)
- Article from:
- The Christian Science Monitor
- Article date:
- October 19, 1999
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 The Christian Science Publishing Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Not too long ago, a colleague of mine had to leave school at the spur of the moment and asked me to take over her American literature class. I said of course and asked what they were reading. She hollered, "Thoreau" and dashed for the door.
"Wonderful," I thought. I love Thoreau and hadn't reread him for years. This afternoon was going to be fun.
Well, it would have been fun if we had been working with anything that remotely resembled Thoreau's writings. Instead of a coherent extended excerpt, the anthology the students were reading from offered snippets of Thoreau under headings like: "Solitude," "Nature," "Work." How could we discuss Thoreau's ...