A Reparative Approach to Grades and Identity in the English Literature Classroom
About Me
~ Louisville, Kentucky
Murray State University - final year doctoral student (English Literature and Pedagogy)
Six years teaching English - grades 6-12
Adjunct English Professor - Colorado Christian University
Passionate about using English literature and pedagogy to generate hope and meaning in the classroom
Hannah Lancaster
“The duty of literature is to note what counts and to light up what is suited to the light” (Anatole France)
“Generate an image of literary books on a sunny day” prompt. Google Gemini, version 2.0 Flash, 3 Jun. 2025.
According to the Nation’s Report Card for reading, the percentage of thirteen year olds who reported reading “almost every day” has greatly decreased within recent years. As of 2023, 14 percent of students identified themselves as regular readers; in 2012, that number was 27 percent. In just nine years, that number has been nearly cut in half. While these statistics certainly suggest a disheartening trajectory about the role of reading in the lives of secondary students, they do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, the state of the humanities at large is on the decline. According to Robert Townsend’s article, “The State(s) of the Humanities”, colleges and universities have been cutting humanities programs on a national scale. In all but three of the fifty states, the amount of humanities degrees is declining; on a national level, “the number of bachelor’s degrees in the humanities being awarded fell 18 percent from 2012…to 2021”.
“Generate an image of unused books by trash” prompt. Google Gemini, version 2.0 Flash, 3 Jun. 2025.
The issues that exist within the English classroom and the humanities field share two common necessities: a lack of hope and a need for repair.
As statistics from the Pew Research Center illustrate, the rates of anxiety and depression among America’s youth are rising, and academics are at the top of their list of stressors - 61 percent of teens state that they feel pressure from the need to get good grades. The stress students feel about their grades undoubtedly stems from the fact that student grades have the potential to impact their lives outside of the classroom. The high-stakes nature of grades and assessment leads many students to see their grades as a reflection of their identity.
“Generate an image of a crowded desk with books and stress” prompt. Google Gemini, version 2.0 Flash, 3 Jun. 2025.
While students routinely link their grades in humanities courses to their own identity, the humanities are important for reasons that go far beyond a student’s report card.
As Richard Frank succinctly puts it in “The Power of the Humanities & a Challenge to Humanists”, “The humanities protect and give life to our most enduring values. The very DNA of civilization is encoded in the poet’s song, the painter’s brushstroke, and the vibrant dialogue about ideas” (13). As the field of English belongs to the larger field of the humanities, it is important to note the current state of the humanities. Despite being intrinsically valuable to the human condition, the humanities are struggling. Frank goes on to state that “Although the study of the humanities cultivates the critical thought necessary for a civil society, it has suffered neglect over the last few decades, both in terms of financial support and in the national debate on education” (13). According to Frank, the U.S. Department of Education privileges math and science fields over the humanities (14).
“Generate an image of report cards” prompt. Google Gemini, version 2.0 Flash, 3 Jun. 2025.
“Generate an image of a paint palette next to poetry” prompt. Google Gemini, version 2.0 Flash, 3 Jun. 2025.
The struggles students face in connecting their grades to their identities in English class is a reflection of the struggling state of the humanities at large - there is a need for repair within the humanities field that deeply affects those who study within it.
What does research say about how student grades impact student identity in an English humanities class?
Source/Author: Nelson-Dawson
Traces etymological origins of the term ‘assessment’. Discusses how assessments put the student on trial; when students try, they are simultaneously being tried.
Source/Author: David Boud
“Too often we fail to make absolutely clear the distinction between giving feedback on a specific product which has been produced by a person and judging them as a person” (6).
Source/Author: Miriam Plotinsky
“With writing, this problem is magnified because of the personal risk that is associated with sharing what we create. Writing is an expression of the self, which connects directly to how we expose our inner realities to the outside world, no matter how old or successful we become.”
Source/Author: Joe Feldman
When students link their grades to their self-images, there are serious consequences: “They protect their low self-esteem and manage their fear of failure by not engaging or risking that failure, and in so doing undermine any likelihood of success” (166).
2. Struggling State of the Humanities
How might the struggling state of the humanities reflect the connection students make between their grades and their identity in English class?
2. Struggling State of the Humanities
Source/Author: Richard Frank
The humanities strives for scientific objectivity; however, “emotions and values are always at play in humanistic inquiry” which makes it impossible, in some ways, to remain objective (17).
According to Frank, an individual’s perspective is valuable in conducting humanistic critical inquiry. However, this means that objectivity does not always lend itself to humanities practices. Put another way, Frank states that “When the domain of inquiry is the inherently ambiguous life of the human spirit, which includes the word of values, emotions, and beliefs, scientific objectivity is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve” (17). In a world where concrete fact is often prioritized over nuance, it is no wonder that the aims of the humanities are less appreciated than their scientific counterparts. The conflict between student grades and identity can be traced all the way to the roots of the humanities field itself, which is very much in need of repair.
3. The Need for Repair
Why do scholars suggest a reparative approach to reading literature as a means of healing the field of humanities and its students?
3. The Need for Repair
Source/Author: Anker and Felski
Introduce the debate between critique and postcritique as a potential response to the humanities crisis. Critique, or paranoid reading, is “Treating the text as a patient, the critic sought to identify buried symptoms that would undercut explicit meaning and conscious intent” (4). The critic’s reading of the text is takes on greater authority than the text itself: “It is a fundamental premise of this line of thinking that a patient cannot adequately diagnose herself; the third-person perspective of the critic/analyst will always trump the self-understanding of the text/patient” (5). Despite identifying a text’s symptom, however, the paranoid critic does not aim for a cure; instead, a key aspect of the paranoid approach is that the “fundamental incurability of the symptom also renders the labor of critical interpretation an infinite task” (5).
3. The Need for Repair
Source/Author: Eve Sedgwick
Sedgwick questions the ultimate purpose of knowledge that a paranoid reader generates: “What does knowledge do - the pursuit of it, the having and exposing of it, the receiving gain of knowledge of what one already knows? How, in short, is knowledge performative, and how does one move among its causes and effects?” (124). As Sedgwick points out, the constant criticism of a paranoid reader lacks an end goal. Also known as the “hermeneutics of suspicion”, Sedgwick expresses frustration with the critic’s endless criticism. While the paranoid reader is capable of asking valuable questions and identifying a text’s symptoms, Sedgwick sparks the idea that knowledge should do more than exist: knowledge is meant to generate hope (146).
While Sedgwick does not seek to eradicate the role of the critic, she does argue that a reparative approach to the humanities would be beneficial for its ability to employ hope amongst the brokenness. Sedgwick writes that “Hope, often a fracturing, even a traumatic thing to experience, is among the energies by which the reparatively positioned reader tries to organize the fragments and part-objects she encounters or creates” (146). With hope being the ultimate goal of the reparative reader, rather than simply criticism and knowledge with no action intended, the notion of postcritque is aimed at generating productive meaning. Sedgwick continues, saying “Because the reader has room to realize that the future may be different from the present, it is also possible for her to entertain such profoundly painful, profoundly relieving, ethically crucial possibilities as that the past, in turn, could have happened differently from the way that it did” (146). Offering solutions, rather than simply pointing out problems, is another way in which a reparative reading differs from a paranoid one: where the paranoid reader identifies symptoms with no prescription for change, the reparative reader seeks to reimagine a text’s context in ways that offer healing and hope.
4. Reparative Reading in the Classroom
What does a reparative approach to understanding literature look like in pedagogy?
4. Reparative Reading in the Classroom
Source/Author: Best and Marcus
Critique, Paranoid, and Symptomatic reading - “We were trained in symptomatic reading, became attached to the power it gave to the act of interpreting, and find it hard to let go of the belief that texts and their readers have an unconscious” (1). Symptomatic reading is “an interpretive method that argues that the most interesting aspect of a text is what it represses” (3). As Best and Marcus define, the paranoid reader seeks to find a text’s symptoms; it is in the interpreter’s power (and their power only) to identify the text’s problems.
So, how might a reparative approach to reading act as a solution to the problems that a symptomatic reading brings to light? Best and Marcus introduce what they call surface reading, saying “we take surface to mean what is evident, perceptible, apprehensible in texts; what is neither hidden nor hiding….A surface is what insists on being looked at rather than what we must train ourselves to see through” (9). Surface reading is synonymous with a reparative approach, and embraces the primary meaning of a text without attaching a symptom or problem to it that is not already evident in the text itself. A surface reading allows the text to be the expert, rather than the text’s analyst. Best and Marcus continue to describe surface reading as being “Close readings that do not seek hidden meanings” because “the key to understanding a text’s meaning lay within the text itself, particularly in its formal properties” (10). Practicing surface reading is a way to empower the text over the analyst. Surface readers do not believe themselves to hold more knowledge than the text itself, because “Texts can reveal their own truths because texts mediate themselves; what we think theory brings to texts (form, structure, meaning) is already present in them” (11).
5. Impact of Paranoid and Reparative Approaches on Grades and Identity
In what ways does a paranoid approach overlap with traditional grading practices, and a reparative approach overlap with restorative grading practices? How might these respective practices impact student identity?
5. Impact of Paranoid and Reparative Approaches
on Grades and Identity
Paranoid Reading / Traditional Grading | Reparative Reading / Restorative Grading |
- Paranoid readers as sole figure of authority in their act of interpreting, and believe that their patients do not have the capabilities to understand themselves. From the critic/teacher perspective, their texts/students are not self-aware, empowered, or equipped to understand their own meaning. - Paranoid readers not wish to change this dynamic because of the importance it bestows on them; teachers “have one remaining island of autonomy: our grades” which makes many hesitant to change (Feldman, 4) - "An omnibus grade captures everything I do in class, so how could the grade not describe everything that I am?" (Feldman, 64). - Texts/students have no autonomy to define themselves because all of the power lies with the critic/teacher. For students, this leads to perpetual hopelessness and disempowerment in the classroom. | - Grading practices should “nourish one of the most important keys for learning: hope” (Feldman, 169). Sedgwick echoes this sentiment in stating that knowledge is meant to generate hope (146) - Surface readers believe that “Texts can reveal their own truths because texts mediate themselves; what we think theory brings to texts (form, structure, meaning) is already present in them” (Best and Marcus, 11). - “The way we grade should increase students’ confidence so that each student feels that they are equally eligible for academic success” (Feldman, 72-73). - “attend to what is present rather than privilege what is absent” (Best and Marcus, 11). - A reparative reading approach is needed for at-risk populations because it is a hopeful response to “a culture whose avowed desire has often been not to sustain them” (Sedgwick, 151); Feldman further highlights the importance of his equitable grading practices as they pertain to underserved students, saying that “We need to improve grading specifically to address the generations of educational harm” (xxii). - At the same time, making changes to the traditional grading system has the potential to positively impact all students - and teachers too. Teachers do not get into the profession to exert power; teachers became teachers because we sought to nurture students intellectually and personally so that they “can make the world better” (xxiii). |
Synthesizing sources discussed so far ~
*critic/teacher + text/student
6. A Reparative Approach to Assessment in the Classroom
How might a reparative approach to reading literature extend to healing students’ relationships between their grades and their identity when applied to the assessment process?
6. A Reparative Approach to Assessment in the Classroom
Tracy’s paranoid, traditional classroom | Angela’s reparative, restorative classroom |
- Goal: what makes for quality in a piece of work - Lesson: write a letter in the voice of a character and use class time to improve work - Focus on correcting spelling and punctuation errors - Notions of correctness and closed questions - Teacher responds to student answers as being either right or wrong - Classroom has a ‘dire hush’ | - Goal: what makes for quality in a piece of work - Lesson: reading a poem and performing a section - Student and teacher co-create list for what makes a quality performance - Students offer all suggestions; conversation is open-ended - Teacher engages students with questions of quality and judgment - core activities in English - Lively and extended discussion - Students collaborate with each other - Lesson is emphasized as an opportunity for growth |
Source: Bethan Marshall
6. A Reparative Approach to Assessment in the Classroom
3 main takeaways:
Engaging with the humanities is endlessly valuable because “the moral, aesthetic, and spiritual discoveries of the humanities reveal which is common to the human experience and provide the foundation for a successful and fulfilling life” (Frank, 18).
Thank you!
“Generate an image of a mirror that reflects art and literature” prompt. Google Gemini, version 2.0 Flash, 3 Jun. 2025.
Works Cited
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