“It's not what you expect”: teaching irony to third graders

Conclusions

The purpose of the above analysis is to emphasize the crucial relationship between the teaching and theoretical research done at the university level and the teaching of literary criticism to children. The gaps between what is done in university and school classoroms can be bridged and should be bridged more often. An adult understanding of the nature and function of literary irony is crucial to an understanding of children's stories and is the first step towards the effective presentation of ironic stories to young readers. When I first taught Swift's “A Modest Proposal” to university freshmen, I was surprised to find that several were shocked at what they thought to be that essay's sadistic message: they had read Swift literally and not ironically. Should my third grade students become university students, they are not likely to make that mistake. As Kenneth Burke stated (in a quotation used as one of Wayne Booth's epigraphs) “We cannot use language maturely until we are spontaneously at home in irony” (p. xxvi). But preparing future university students is not the main goal. Rather, I want the school children I work with to be able to perceive the ironies inherent in the stories they consume and, as a result of their perceptions, to arrive at fuller understanding and, therefore, fuller enjoyment of those stories.