Literature and Ethics in High School English Classes: Reading Together with Moral Vision

Abstract

This book offers a defence of ethical reading in secondary school English classes at a time when reformers and policy makers are trying to reorganize English language arts around technical skills or politics.Ross Collin shows how students and teachers use literature as a venue for exploring their own and others’ ethical ideas and practices and argues that moral inquiry in English class is a distinctly social endeavour. The book draws ideas from English education and moral philosophy. From English education, Collin explores social reading, or what Louise Rosenblatt named ‘transaction’, looking at texts commonly taught in secondary school English, including Shakespeare’sRomeo and Julietand Jacqueline Woodson’sBrown Girl Dreaming. From philosophy, he draws on arguments about moral vision and literature developed by Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum, and Nora Hämäläinen, and develops ideas, tacit in English education, about reading with moral vision. He concludes by proposing a new theory of moral vision in transactional reading.