PARTISAN REVIEW
479
- we ask them to translate into their own understanding (their own
words) the used language of somebody else. Beside this, the student,
as he converts a common language into his medium of special statement,
must nevertheless deploy his special coherency so that its chances of
meaning, for others, are maximal. This last aspect of the translating
process depends upon accuracy and control which, in tum, depend
upon a comparatively objective embrace of language as a ready-made
tradition. Presumably, whatever literature we judge to deserve student
a~tention
will example the most inspiring kind of creative translation
we have on record.
Still another dimension of the translating process needs mention.
We are all foreigners to each other. We are all different and unknown
to each other. And, like it or not, we compose a human marketplace
of secret requirements and desires. Or, we embody requirements and
desires best termed secret unti: they have been well, or not so well,
communicated and then answered, one way or another. Mastering
our language intricately involves the public sale, the public promotion
of our interests, our private values, within the competitive drama of
society. Mastering English supports our efforts to make ourselves,
foreigners to all others, familiar, recognizable and yet desirably distinct,
and valuable as a social entity.
The process of translation falters, our mastery of English fails, to
the peril of our individual prospects for happiness. Even so, it seems
to me that every English/language department should equal the living,
the enabling center of education.
If
we cannot confidently
claim
such a
function, then we ought to close shop for a while and reconsider the
content of our teaching purpose.
Foreigners all, together and separately in constructive conflict with
language, we must maintain a striving for relevance. That is the pur–
pose of translation: Relevancy to particular person, particular place
and contemporary time.
I offer this enlarged view of curricular relevancy as the full frame
for our thoughts about the teaching of "disadvantaged students."
When we say "disadvantaged," we probably mean urban and non–
white. We certainly mean students who are, comparatively, powerless.
The
development of a personal politics of language is not generically
different, for these students. It is a difference of urgency and degree.
Even as the poet incorporates a merely extreme perspective on common
problems of language, the "disadvantaged" student merely raises the
urgent extreme of rightful demands regarding curriculum and its service.
When we approach Black students, we have to intensify our attempts
