Degree Name
MA (Master of Arts)
Program
English
Date of Award
5-2018
Committee Chair or Co-Chairs
Scott Honeycutt
Committee Members
Jonathan Briggs, Daniel Westover
Abstract
When Tennessee Department of Education adopted Common Core in 2010, Tennessee implemented New Critical ideas associated with the college classroom, but did not present this connection to English teachers. Comparing high school education reforms like A Nation at Risk (1983) and TNCore to the New Critical works of Cleanth Brooks, T. S. Eliot, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, reveals that New Criticism is the literary method grounding current ELA education reform. Referencing Deborah Appleman’s Critical Encounters in Secondary English (2015), Diana Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System (2010), and questionnaires completed by Tennessee teachers, this study tracks New Criticism’s influence from the college classroom to the high school classroom. Presenting English teachers the history behind what and how they teach will equip them to explain their methodology to students.
Document Type
Thesis - unrestricted
Recommended Citation
Grindstaff, Seth, "New Criticism—Not So New to Tennessee’s High School English Teachers" (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3408. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3408
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.
Included in
Literature in English, North America Commons, Secondary Education Commons, Secondary Education and Teaching Commons