UC Berkeley

What does the average middle schooler know about close reading?Launched in 2010 and adopted by forty-three states and the District of Columbia, the Common Core State Standards read like a Well Wrought Urn for kids—a New Critical primer for a new generation. From kindergarten through grade 12, close reading is the backbone of literary curricula. With each passing year, students perform close readings of increasing complexity—and with what feels like increasing adherence to New Critical doctrine. According to the Common Core reading standards, fifth graders must be able to “determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative language such as metaphors and similes.” They must also be able to explain “how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem” (12). By eighth grade, students must be able to “provide an objective summary of the text” and “compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style” (36). And by eleventh or twelfth grade, they must “cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain” (38). Students meeting these standards, we are told, can “readily undertake the close, attentive reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex literature” (3). In their textbook Understanding Poetry (1938), which popularized close reading across North American universities, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren announced a similar goal: “to present to the student, in proper context and after proper preparation, some of the basic critical problems—with the aim, not of making technical critics, but merely of making competent readers of poetry” (xiv).