The article on “Cognitive Apprenticeship” (Collins, Brown and Holum) enshrines principles and experiences of learning that bring to mind such historical figures as Benjamin Franklin and Benito Juarez.  Both these leaders used trade apprenticeships as springboards for advancement and lifetimes of self-development.  However, I wondered whether apprenticeship provides an apt paradigm for teaching the more abstract subject of literature?  After all, Stanley Fish argues that poetry is such an indeterminate art form that it blurs the distinction between the realms of subjectivity and objectivity.  Does the apprenticeship paradigm apply to this type learning?

I recall Benjamin Franklin, who was one of 17 children in his family.  His father withdrew him from school at age ten and sent him to work as an apprentice in his brother’s print shop in Boston.  Under the reputedly harsh tutelage of his brother James, Benjamin learned how to set type and help compose pamphlets.  He began to submit newspaper articles anonymously.  In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin opened his own print shop.  He became an excellent printer, mathematician, inventor, diplomat, and author, who helped write the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The “Cognitive Apprenticeship” article seems to exemplify how a rigorous, close learning foundation can launch someone like Franklin.  It emphasizes that students must actively use their knowledge, tackle difficulties, and acquire the confidence to expand and improve in other areas.

 Benito Juarez is another hero who seems to fulfill this vision.  I have visited the village of Guelatao high up in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico where he was born into  poverty.  Juarez was a Zapotec Indian who became an orphan at age twelve.  In desperation, he walked barefoot some fifty miles to the Oaxaca state capital.  In Oaxaca, a Franciscan friar adopted Juarez and put him to work in a bookbinding apprenticeship in his home.  All the implements of the bookbinding trade are on view today in the room of the adobe house where Juarez lived and worked.  In this humble, hands-on workshop and abode, he also learned Spanish, reading and writing, and he found a path to law school.  Juarez became Mexico’s Minister of Justice, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and a five-term President, who established the rule of law in the Constitution of 1857.  

I believe that a crucible of apprenticeship can against all odds transform individuals, particularly those of such determination and talent.  However, I cannot exactly envision Franklin or Juarez in a classroom learning literature as “cognitive apprentices.”  How does apprenticeship apply to a field that is more organic and to classes that are less intensive than a full-time, close relationship with a master teacher?  I concluded that key principles do apply to the teaching of literature, but that the active practice of writing is also required.  Apprenticeship is a hands-on process.  Some of the authors we read this week underscore this type engagement and the need to make personal connections with a text.  Student-centered learning requires the teacher to help relate a poem meaningfully to students’ lives and encourage them to see differently and struggle with their own attempts at writing (Showalter.)  Rabinowitz asserts that the very ambiguity of literature requires a teacher to provide practical analytical devices as keys to comprehension.  And Linkon shows how a piece of literature can be introduced into a larger framework that enlarges a student’s understanding of conceptual relationships.  She provides a toolkit – beyond the chisels and strips of leather that I saw in Juarez’s workroom – which any apprentice requires for an immediate and lifetime experience of effective learning.  At its best, this is what education can do.