I call that bo-ring. And maybe, like maybe some really broad questions that, like, the answer isn t in the book but more like in your own thoughts, maybe that would be okay. But mostly you d just get to learn what your friends thought about the book. Perhaps such discussion, such talk, enables us to reshape our conception of human possibilities. This talk, if done correctly in the classrooms, so that it is productive and pleasurable, might encourage kids to sustain it on their own as they leave school and assume full responsibility for their own intellectual and ethical growth.
Literacy implies the assumption of that responsibility.
Literacy is not the ability to spell out the word, or to articulate its four short syllables distinctly and accurately. It is the ability to find what we share with the person behind a text, or the person created by a text, or the person with whom we discuss it, identifying the common pains and pleasure, hopes and fears, so that we may see that we are alike. And it is the ability on other occasions to declare ourselves other than, different from, the author and his characters and perhaps readers, rejecting bigotry, insensitivity, indifference, or illogic. These students illustrate this very fact as they move from a discussion about talk to actually talking about a book they had each read. That didn t remind me of anything because I hadn t ever read anything like it.