Priscilla Collins

In his essay “The Ethics of Teaching Literature,” acclaimed critic and University of Chicago professor Wayne Booth begins by writing a defense of ethics and its role in the study of literature. Booth argues that ethical thinking has always pursued not literal ‘thou shalt nots’ but a range of ‘virtues,’ which are characteristic habits of behavior that are considered admirable (222).

Many teachers these days mistrust words like ethical and literature, because they suggest a naïve return to old-fashioned questions and methods that they consider by now utterly refuted. (221)

However, as we can see from his discussion on virtue, Professor Booth argues that this modern view of ethics is too narrow.

Traditionally the virtues included every capacity or strength or competency or habit of mind and heart that the practicer, the self, the character (or his or her critic), could admire—or at least could bear to live with. A virtue was any excellence (areté) that could be praised, whether the successful navigation of a ship or throwing of a discus or raising of a family. (222)

As a teacher of English and literature, what is my ethical obligation to help guide my students into deeper modes of thinking when I teach a particular book or story? When I teach them about literature, am I also teaching them anything about true character?

Booth offers a variety of reasons why English teachers and literature professors need to revisit terms such as ethics that, because of some movements within postmodern, have gone to the wayside. In Booth’s time as an English professor, the popular vernacular labels was “Pomos” for postmodernist critics and “Trads” for traditionalists. What Booth contends is that teachers and professors, regardless of their labels, should still desire the same results despite their different theories on how to get there.

My point is not to downgrade scientific or religious storytellers but to invite them to recognize how often they enter into our “English” territory. Is it absurd to hope that, since we all live in the world of story, we English teachers can find ways of joining with teachers from all fields in pursuit of a common goal, ethical education? Whether we consider ourselves radical, liberal, or conservative, Trad or Pomo, scientists or humanists or antihumanists, we surely must all aim to produce, using the world of story, not flunkies who can only pass tests—though they can do that—but self-motivated learners. They should be living in their time with us in ways that make the path to further learning irresistible. (236)

We, as teachers and professors, need to open our minds to what Booth is saying here about literature and the effects it may have on our students when it is taught well. Literature, as Booth broadly defines it, is “the world of story,” and it has the ability to greatly influence the student’s place in the society where he or she lives. In order for teachers and professors to teach the literature “well,” they must be willing to self-reflect first. Booth writes,

What ethical improvements in ourselves should we seek, in or out of the world of story, that will help our students create selves most useful to them― useful not just in the narrow utilitarian sense but in the sense of yielding an ultimately rewarding life, working for an ultimately rewarding and defensible society? (226)

This speaks to the teachers and professors who get so lost in the sacredness of literature that they cannot guide the student into applying the story to his or her own life. Who does not learn by interpreting and comparing the ideas and morals they read about in stories to what they experience in the world around them? No one! Students are no different. Literature can best be used in the classroom by taking it out of its context so that students can apply it to their lives today.

As an English teacher, if I cannot guide my students into deeper thinking that leads them to apply a piece of literature to their own lives, then I will never succeed at teaching them anything about true character. Booth sums it all up well:

Does the content-and-commandments crowd really think that our dropout rate is caused by students not being taught this or that content? Students drop out mainly because they have learned that the classroom is not for them: boring, dull, empty of personal relevance, alien, ‘somebody else’s idea of how to live, not mine. (227)

(1). Booth, Wayne C. “The Ethics of Teaching Literature.” The Essential Wayne Booth. Edited by Walter Jost. University Press of Chicago, 2006. Print.