I found this book incredibly hilarious and quite subversive at the same time (like watching the Colbert Report or The Daily Show!). It put me very much in mind of our reading from the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (especially since the word "pedagogy" and variations thereof are used numerous times, I believe all in reference to Mr. Parkhill and some opportunity he sees). The part I found most demonstrative of the "banking concept of education" was on page 107, in the story about Mr. Kaplan and Shakespeare. Mr. Parkhill – who actually seems to be nothing if not a sympathetic, well meaning man – declares to the class that he will "introduce [them] to poetry." He does not say "English" poetry, he does not say "new," poetry, he simply says "poetry," as if he either assumes they don't have poetry in whatever their native languages are, or worse, that the only real poetry is that which he is about to share with them. In other words, Mr. Parkhill has the information, and the rest of the class will be blessed to receive it. However, Mr. Kaplan seems to prove how utterly wrong Mr. Parkhill is. In this story, he seems to know quite well who Shakespeare is – or at least he knows very well that Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar. It's also hard for me to believe that he didn't actually know full well that the passage Mr. Parkhill wrote was not only from Macbeth, but also exactly what it really meant.
What interests me most about the book, however, has nothing directly to do with its content: the fact that the author's name is not Leonard Q Ross, but instead Leo Rosten. I looked it up, and Rosten is a Jewish name, whereas Ross is English (if my searches are correct). I know that Stan Lee (yes, Marvel comic book writer and father of The Avengers, X-Men, etc….what do you want, I'm nerd!) was actually born Stanley Lieber, but changed it because it was Jewish and he was writing during a time of high anti-Semitism. I have no idea if Rosten's motivation was the same, but I find it especially interesting that he changed from a Jewish name to an English one given the subversive nature of stories in the book itself.
Thoughts?
I had no idea about the name change! That's quite interesting. I believe Ross is actually a Scottish name rather than English but it would still have been better received than a Jewish name at the time.
ReplyDeleteI definitely found this book entertaining as well. I'm not certain if Parkhill's "introducing" them to poetry was really meant to say that the students' native tongues did not have poetry, but rather an assumption that because they didn't know English that they must be illiterate. Either way it is a racist position to take, though not intentionally unkind. It's a quite interesting viewpoint to achieve, racism from a benevolent person