David E. Kirkland recalls a time when a student in his class expressed his frustration while reading Beowulf, a text which Kirkland asserts offers no connection between the student and the reading. In other words, the students simply are unable to relate themselves to the text and experience a sense of alienation, leading them to question what the point of reading the text is. As Ball and Freedman indicate, the “ideological self” acts as an “identity apparatus” that culminates ones “present interests and past experiences” (Kirkland, 200). Kirkland refers to these as “reading ideologies”, and argues that these interests greatly influence one’s reading practices and literacy engagement. In other words, if a reading is not relevant to the student’s experiences or unrelatable, chances are the student will express a sense of apathy towards the lesson. Kirkland offers a hopeful view of how American schools can dispel the image of apathetic, rowdy, and uncooperative black men from classrooms, and issues this task to be completed by teachers who must “reconfigure this failed scene and insist on another that is capable of characterizing a new sort of narrative”.

Do you agree with Kirkland? Is bridging the gap between student apathy and student attentiveness such a binary fix as relatability/unrelatability?