Over the past week, I've appreciated sitting alongside my students and supporting them in their writing of essays about Lord of the Flies. Only that's just the half of it. I've LOVED it. I've asked them questions both big and small (I wonder how the rhythm would change if you gave your reader a break in this paragraph; your conclusion is universal in its appeal, but why does this topic matter to you?), and I've taken the time to digest and explore the sharp, young voices beginning to emerge from each analysis.
But I've also been struck by the contemporary relevance of their topic choices. Each of them is dissecting Golding's novel through the lens of human nature. They're looking beneath the characters for symbols that are universally applicable. And they're thinking beautiful, brilliant thoughts. While some students are opting to focus on one philosophical belief (Hobbes, Aristotle, Locke, etc.), others are looking at feminism, and asking the question "Why did Golding choose to write the novel without any female characters?
They're asking HUGE questions, and taking big risks. They're discussing power, developing joke webs to both develop creative titles and embrace their inner adolescent (e.g. "No Mama, No Drama" or "Golding's Daughterless Doom" or "Hopeless Humanity"), and engaging in deliberative dialogue with one another.
And nobody has brought up TIME magazine's person of the year, or #MeToo, or the current state of "human nature" in Washington, DC, or Jerusalem, or the Levant, or anywhere else. And that's good. It's healthy. They're still kids. But what they're doing by engaging in these conversations is placing themselves steadfastly in the path of their future selves, their future consciences. They realize that, even in the absence of women, Piggy and Simon were the two most caring, compassionate, logical, comforting (motherly) characters...and even they are killed. And, frankly, that breaks my students hearts.
Golding wrote a novel about boys and what boys do in groups. For a very long time the narrative about power and humankind has been about men, because they're the only ones in the room. But that's changing, and my students are ready. All of them--male and female--realize that Golding was really asking us to consider who will come to save us from our island.
Someday my students will be the powerful, the decision-makers, the leaders. And I trust that they will choose good and treat one another well.
Sure, they've reminded me that they are emerging as strong writers...but they have also reminded me that the future is in good hands...that they are emerging as strong humans as well.
When Will McDonough was a little boy, he loved to learn. In fact, he still does. Will is a teacher now, and every Thursday he writes about something he's learning in the classroom. He's pretty busy, so he takes just 30 minutes to free write; then, regardless of how polished the ideas or mechanics might be, he publishes it. It's incomplete. It's a start. And it feels good.
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