Secondary Education Commons^™

It’S Kind Of A Curious Incident In The Bell Jar: Using Literature And Discussion To Advocate For Mental Health Education In The High School English Classroom, Margaret Keefe

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Literature has served as an outlet for those who have both written and read it, powerfully describing all aspects of the human condition—even the mental disorders we suffer from. Language Arts classrooms provide students with the ability to access and critically analyze this unique outlet for expression and understanding. Given the high rate of mental disorders among young adults and students, this often stigmatized issue cannot be ignored inside or outside the classroom. The purpose of this project is to analyze how texts which discuss mental disorders might be taught in the high school English classroom. This will include not …

“Higher” School: Nineteenth-Century High Schools And The Secondary-College Divide, Amy J. Lueck

English

This article traces the emergence of nineteenth-century U.S. high schools in the landscape of higher education, attending to the gendered, raced, and classed distinctions at play in this development. Exploring differences in the conceptualization and status of high schools in Louisville, Kentucky, for white male, white female, and mixed-gender African American students, this article reminds us of how these institutional types have been situated, socially inflected, and structured in relation to broader political and power structures that transcend explicit pedagogical considerations. As a result, I argue for the recognition of high schools as historically significant sites in the history of …

A Blend Of Absurdism And Humanism: Defending Kurt Vonnegut’S Place In The Secondary Setting, Krisandra R. Johnson

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

This essay argues that Kurt Vonnegut blends a unique humanist stance into his absurdist plots and characters, ultimately urging readers to confront the absurd with a kindness and human decency his protagonists often find rare. As a result of this absurd and humanist synthesis, I defend and promote Vonnegut’s place in the secondary English curriculum, despite his rank on many banned books lists, since his characters’ journeys correlate thematically with the growth and process of postmodern adolescents and encourage moral responsibility without sentimental manipulation.

Focusing on Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and Slaughterhouse-Five as primary sources, specifically …