Grouping Knowledge

Human beings like to categorize stuff. We sort things alphabetically and by color. We notice differences in size, shape, and texture. We differentiate between salty and sweet, loud and quiet, hard and soft. Give a little child a bag of toys and it won't be long before she organizes it according to some kind of system. It might be as simple as "toys I like" and "toys I don't like" but still...it will be sorted.


It's no surprise, then, that we find it useful to create themes for studying literature. Grouping texts by a pre-determined common feature gives us a starting point for critical analysis and generating meaning. Looking back on my own experiences in high school, most of my classes grouped literature temporally or geographically (what Tchudi and Mitchell call the historical/chronological approach): 20th Century American Literature; British Literature; World Literature (which basically meant anything not American or British). Sometimes, there were mini-themes within the class focused on a single author. In college, texts were often grouped by genre or author.


In college, classes were still grouped temporally, geographically, by genre, or by author. A few classes focused on an aspect of the author's identity or the identity of the texts' intended audience, usually gender or race. Although I recall comparing and contrasting texts, I don't remember any teacher or professor asking me to engage with texts as part of a broader thematic discussion.


The funny thing is, throughout my life there have been definite thematic categorizes for the books I read outside the classroom. For a long time, I loved anything involving kids solving mysteries: Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, the Boxcar Children, and Trixie Belden. Then, I loved books with magic (I still do). I went through a phase where I read a lot of romance novels. Interestingly, I never much liked romance novels with magic or paranormal elements, although I did enjoy the occasional romantic subplot in my fantasy novels.


I think this is how many people choose books to read for pleasure: thematically. It makes sense to me that we would also organize language arts instruction around a theme. As Tchudi and Mitchell point out, why should we focus so much energy on the structure of the text or when it was written, rather than on its content and meaning? If we begin with "human experience as [our] starting point" I think a thematic approach makes a lot more sense.