A Failure of the Imagination.

I once observed a lesson on Camus's The Stranger that was touted as very imaginative-a studentcentered, engaging way to tie up the novel. A mock trial was held for Meursault in which students performed as lawyers, witnesses, and such. 'What a clever idea!" my colleagues said. "How the kids responded to that lesson!" said an administrator. "How creative!" said the apprentice teacher who observed it. I had second thoughts. It may well have been imaginative, clever, and engaging, but it created a confusion about the meaning of the book. The trial is beside the point. Meursault is guilty. He has killed a man in cold blood. His is not a Tom Robinson case as in To Kill a Mockingbird, where the evidence has been skewed or ignored. This book is about the paralysis of existential angst and the burden of freedom in a godless universe, not about social injustice. Thus, though students may very well have enjoyed the trial and their dramatic roles in it, the lesson may have created a confused impression of the meaning of the text. The teacher's imagination in creating the assignment, the kids as they imagined their roles and their strategies for the trial-these activities had undermined the meaning of the book. Many of my colleagues thought the lesson was imaginative-and it was. But imagination for its own sake, in this instance, was harmful to the understanding of the book. Similarly, many teachers have students write letters from Romeo to Juliet while he is away in Mantua. This imaginative activity may help students express their understanding of the passion and youth of the characters, but it might also confuse them about the timeline of the play. Romeo is not gone for weeks, as such letters might imply (though Juliet asks that she "hear from [him] every day in the hour," and he promises to "omit no opportunity that may convey [his] greetings .. to [her]" III, v, 1.44-50). He is gone for two days. Neither does he nor his servant have access to Juliet for delivery of such missives. Such an assignment might leave the impression that there was an Italian postal service in Renaissance Verona and that Juliet would have private time to receive and read such love letters.