Richard Miller's Dark Night of the Soul
Richard Miller has a lot to say in The Dark Night Of The Soul but one thing that really stuck out to me was that there is only so much we can do to try and control the behavior of students. Reading and writing isn’t going to save every one of their problems. It can have just as much of an effect on someone today as technology can. In most of the stories he shows there is this concept along with many others that have to do with reading and writing.
“ It’s reassuring to think that either the work of the legal system or the educational system can reduce or eliminate altogether the threat of the unpredictable and the unforeseen. This is why we have childproof medicine bottles, penalties for not buckling up, informational literature on family planning for students in junior high: these are all examples of responsible responses to known problems.”(421). But what Miller is saying is that there isn’t really a response to the “schoolyard massacres”. There’s only so much you can do to control every single students behavior. You don’t know their lifestyle; there are so many different backgrounds. Parents have a very big impact on a child’s life, whether it is good or bad, it can have a huge influence on a child. Even children with a strong household with two happily married parents could somehow end up troubled in the end, you just never know. “How invasive would a curricular intervention have to be to succeed in instilling a set of preferable values in those who currently feel so deeply alienated while at school?”(421). Miller is saying how far would the school have to go to all have the same values? It’s just not possible because everyone has there own values and beliefs. If you grow up thinking one way and people try to say no you’ve grown up being told the wrong things, this is the right way, you aren’t going to be open about it. Even sometimes when you are open to other values and beliefs you still have your own that probably aren’t going to completely change and that’s
“ It’s reassuring to think that either the work of the legal system or the educational system can reduce or eliminate altogether the threat of the unpredictable and the unforeseen. This is why we have childproof medicine bottles, penalties for not buckling up, informational literature on family planning for students in junior high: these are all examples of responsible responses to known problems.”(421). But what Miller is saying is that there isn’t really a response to the “schoolyard massacres”. There’s only so much you can do to control every single students behavior. You don’t know their lifestyle; there are so many different backgrounds. Parents have a very big impact on a child’s life, whether it is good or bad, it can have a huge influence on a child. Even children with a strong household with two happily married parents could somehow end up troubled in the end, you just never know. “How invasive would a curricular intervention have to be to succeed in instilling a set of preferable values in those who currently feel so deeply alienated while at school?”(421). Miller is saying how far would the school have to go to all have the same values? It’s just not possible because everyone has there own values and beliefs. If you grow up thinking one way and people try to say no you’ve grown up being told the wrong things, this is the right way, you aren’t going to be open about it. Even sometimes when you are open to other values and beliefs you still have your own that probably aren’t going to completely change and that’s
Cited: Bartholomae, David, and Tony Petrosky. Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin 's, 2011. Print. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Hannah Schindler for peer editing my paper twice, and Kim Stewart for helping me during the “Voice” activity; it really helped my paper.