Tag Archives: Cathedral

Blindness and Teaching

The relationship between Robert, the blind man, and the husband (who I will refer to as “Bub”) in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” relates to the issues addressed in the chapter we read titled “How Experts Differ from Novices.”  Bub may be an expert at seeing a cathedral, but he lacks the pedagogical skills to teach Robert, the novice, to do so.

As teachers we tend to forget that students are not seeing things the same way that we do, or did, when we originally learned the subject matter.  A good example would be “Box 2.4” on page 34 of “How Experts Differ from Novices.”  The one teacher, Jake, cannot understand why his students are not enjoying Hamlet when he is teaching it the same way that he was taught, which he enjoyed immensely.  Like Jake (and Bub), we too often take for granted our point of view, and project it on to students.  We were easily able to decipher meaning of a poem or passage, so we know it can be done, and we do not understand why they are not able.  I think that “How Experts Differ from Novices” does a thorough, scientific and clear job of explaining why this happens.  In English studies, we place the emphasis on the text itself, we believe that it is all there to figure out, students just need to take the time to tease out the meaning.  We do not give credit to the multiple reading strategies we have internalized over the years that we are able to call up and apply without realizing.  Students, who do not have the experience we have, are not able to see a text the way that we do, their thought process is blind to things happening automatically in ours.

Bub is not an expert on cathedrals, he is an expert on seeing in general.  What Bub is trying to teach is how to “see” a cathedral, not just memorize random facts (as Robert already has).   Similarly, most of us are not experts on every text that we teach, but we have a general knowledge of English studies.  Also, it is more important for us to teach our students to see a text the way we do, than to memorize random facts like the number of plays Shakespeare wrote.  Bub starts off trying to teach Robert what a cathedral looks like from his, or a sighted person’s, point of view.  He says that cathedrals are “tall” and “have these supports” that “remind me of viaducts,” all of which is completely useless information to Robert.  Robert sits there and smiles politely.  Just like our students sit there and nod their head while we go on about literature using all the knowledge we learned in college, not realizing that this information is useless unless we frame it some way that they can understand.

Eventually, Bub is able to comprehend that the way that he has tried to go about teaching Robert to see a cathedral is not going to work.  They are able to work out a strategy that will allow Robert to learn what a cathedral looks like.  Just as important however, is the fact that by looking at a subject that he has taken for granted (his sight) in a new light, Bub is able to learn something new about the subject and himself.  Similarly, if we form new pedagogical techniques to help our students “see” a text better, we will most likely learn something new ourselves.