Recently, I taught Art Spiegelman’s short graphic essay “Mein Kampf” to my first year composition students. I realized quickly that they were unaware of Spiegelman’s seminal work, Maus, which was something of a problem, because it’s part of what the piece is commenting on. I did my best to explain to the students to basics of Maus and found a couple of images that I could project from the computer.
We did our best to have a discussion — and in terms of my goals for the day we achieved them. I was able to have students look beyond the words to the way that the words and the images interacted and complemented one another. But I felt like something was missing from the discussion — most especially the students’ ability to truly appreciate the work.
This is something I worry about a lot. It’s also something I suspect most of us run into a lot. We know our pop culture references are lost on our students (and theirs are lost on us). That’s expected — and I’m so far past that threshold that I roll my eyes at myself along with my students.
But when it comes to other types of prior knowledge — especially the type that’s necessary to understand literature — I think we’re facing a different sort of problem. A certain amount of prior knowledge is necessary when reading any literature, and that’s even more true for those of us who teach a lot of literature from earlier eras (or “back in the day,” as my students always say, whether we’re talking the 1990s or the 1590s). Continue reading “Prior Knowledge: A Reminder to Myself”