What's the "new theme"?
Metacognition, theme, and empathy
I had a professor in college who I would frequently visit in her office. We would pick a time to meet and she’d end up coming 20 minutes late, angry about the world, trudging in with Panera in her hands. She was so outspoken and chaotic; I took every word she said as if it were gold.
I was sitting in her office - stack of books everywhere, stacks of paper on the floor, couldn’t see the face of the desk - with her one time when she pulls out a notepad and pen and says “Tell me what you were saying about ‘theme’ in class. I liked what you said, I want to write it down.”
What I had said was that I think the term “theme” is overused. Why are teachers constantly asking us to identify the theme in the texts we read? Not everyone is an English major, so here for you all: why are people constantly asking us to tie one idea back to another?
I think it takes years of critical thinking practice to expect that people’s minds can grasp that the purpose of theme is the connect a bunch of different loose ends and then synthesize
I think there is something to be said for looking at an idea in its singular form before connecting it to another
Thank you, dictionary.com:
Theme - the subject of a talk, a piece of writing, a person's thoughts, or an exhibition; a topic. Ex: "the theme of the sermon was reverence"
Okay, but how about:
Metacognition - awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes.
But let me throw in:
Empathy - the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
When I was in high school no one was asking me “Why are you learning this?” I love how this is now a natural part of learning and it is what teachers are teaching (both at a high school and college level). The purpose and reasoning behind content provides personal meaning and connection to the students learning the content. It makes sense that students will do better if they understand things more, and most likely if they understand things more it is because they paid attention, and you are more likely to pay attention to things if you enjoy what you are learning. The WHY piece of thinking is so crucial. This is why I bring up metacognition, having the awareness and understanding of how you think (which comes before theme) is what you need to establish when you formulate the first idea, you need to sit with it alone and go through this process. Then, I brought up empathy, I think it is a popular word used right now, an important, but popular word that most can identify. I will claim that English is the study of empathy. The act of identifying a theme is in fact being empathetic in a way. You are connecting ideas and working to understand them, and empathy is working to understand ideas of another.
So - what’s the “new theme”?
Well, I don’t think we need to abolish “theme” but maybe we need to change what we are asking people/students. Why was this created? What is its purpose? I am kind of asking what the action is before the subject here. There may not always be a role or but I think metacognitive steps (the awareness piece) need to be added to the English teaching [insert any field here] thinking process to fully make the connections and identify them (theme step here) and then be empathetic. I added a pre-theme identifying step, awareness.
I think metacognition, theme, and empathy are connected in a classroom setting. I also think this can be translated in other practices like business/consulting, anything were you are communicating with people and formulating ideas.