In Chapter 9 of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the increasingly devious Roger Chillingworth, as he exacts revenge on the man with whom his wife conceived a child. Hawthorne writes:
“ So Roger Chillingworth—the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician—strove to go deep into his patient’s bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up.”
In the same chapter of SparkNotes, a reader would read the following passage:
“Even more ominously, the man’s face has begun to take on a look of evil. A majority of the townspeople begin to suspect that Chillingworth is the Devil, come to wage battle for Dimmesdale’s soul.”
In the analysis section of the Chapter 9 SparkNotes, a reader will find a portion of the passage above, but none of the text before or after it that sets it up and further develops the idea. In Hawthorne’s text, nearly every sentence is constructed at the reading level of the above Chapter 9 passage, and reading these sentences over the course of an entire novel is what builds our own language recognition and development. A SparkNotes version of the novel may contain one actual Hawthorne sentence (maybe two) in the entire summary and analysis of a whole chapter. While the text of SparkNotes may help us understand the plot and purpose of a novel, it does little to cultivate our own vocabulary and language skills. We must remember, the purpose of a high school English class is not just storytelling. SparkNotes tells us a story, but reading, deciphering, and closely examining complex vocabulary, sentence structure, and figurative language actually builds skills – this is the true purpose of reading literature in a high school classroom.
Like much of life, there are short term goals and larger, bigger picture goals. While a student’s short term goal may be to get an A on a reading quiz, or even an A for the marking period, there should certainly also be a bigger picture, longer term goal of learning how to comprehend, understand, and interpret complex language and thought. If a student is only concerned with the short term goal of a 90% on a reading quiz, that same student runs the risk of forever being at the mercy of people with whom he or she will interact whose vocabulary and ability to manipulate the language is more advanced than that former student. The result – the student with minimum language skill will lack the skill to interact on that high level and perhaps will lack the ability to recognize when someone is manipulating him or her through simple use of advanced language.
Since I am an English teacher, I like to speak in analogies, so if the previous paragraphs have done nothing to convince you, try this parallel:
If I am a high school student-athlete with a desire to play college sports, I will likely at some point go into the weight room to bench press. If I increase the amount of weight I am lifting to a point where it is difficult to perform eight reps, but I push through it, sweat it out, breath it out, and really exert myself, I can put that weight up and I will legitimately get bigger and stronger. It certainly wouldn’t be easy, but I would be better for it. Perhaps I find that I cannot put up that much weight eight times, and perhaps I do need a spotter to help with that last rep, or maybe I do need to scale back on the weight just a bit. But I will certainly do everything in my power to put that weight up myself, and eventually, I may be able to put up twice that much weight, and what I had once struggled with will be something I will eventually do with perfect ease.
However, I could also go into that same weight room to the same bench, and have two of my friends hold each end of the bar and lift it up and down for me for 8 full reps, while I just hold my hands on the bar. If I do that, I can say I did eight reps of a high weight; I can say I went to the gym and worked out; I can record my weight and the amount of time I worked out; I can tell my coach I was there. However, I will not feel the burn, I will not push through the struggle, and I will not get much stronger. Eventually when I get out onto the field, the effects of my pseudo-workout will manifest themselves in my inability to perform. My short term goal of getting into the weight room and filling out my chart will be realized, but the bigger picture goal of playing collegiate sports will likely never come to fruition.
The physical burn in the muscles that one feels after putting up that last rep is the same burn in the mind that one feels after struggling through a difficult text and then coming to an understanding of what the language means. In both cases, it is the struggle and the “burn” that are the necessary components of true intellectual or physical growth respectively.
SparkNotes will lift the bar up and down for you, and even that might cause a sweat, but SparkNotes will not give you the burn, and it will not give you the gains.
It is important for students to remember the real purpose of a high school work load. While grades may be the short term measures of the performance on that work, it is the skill building and the intellectual growth that will matter the most in the long term. The question, then, that one must ask is, “Is my work ethic enough to build those components that really matter the most?” For some, it is easier than it is for others to achieve both the short term and the long term goals, and ideally we would certainly all like to be able to have both.
Regardless of the outcome, it is important to avoid SparkNote-ing our way through our endeavors, or certainly we can all but guarantee we will not fulfill that long term growth.