Kybernetes

Teaching and testing the understanding of literature: A continued dialogue with Heinz
von Foerster
Herta-Elisabeth Renk
Article information:
To cite this document:
Herta-Elisabeth Renk, (2005),"Teaching and testing the understanding of literature", Kybernetes, Vol. 34 Iss
3/4 pp. 460 - 470
Permanent link to this document:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03684920510581648
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

Downloaded on: 03 July 2016, At: 22:13 (PT)

References: this document contains references to 21 other documents.
To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 262 times since 2006*
Users who downloaded this article also downloaded:
(2005),"Learning how to learn", Kybernetes, Vol. 34 Iss 3/4 pp. 471-484 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1108/03684920510581657
(2005),"Heinz von Foerster in the art department. A collide-oscope in four parts", Kybernetes, Vol. 34 Iss
3/4 pp. 485-489 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03684920510581666

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:210680 []
For Authors
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for
Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines
are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.
About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com
Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company
manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as
providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.
Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee
on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive
preservation.

*Related content and download information correct at time of download.

 The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0368-492X.htm

K SECTION 3: LEARNING
34,3/4
Teaching and testing the
understanding of literature
460
A continued dialogue with Heinz von Foerster
Herta-Elisabeth Renk
University of Eichstätt, Munich, Germany
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

Abstract
Purpose – To apply Heinz von Foerster’s ideas on learning and testing to the teaching of literature in
German higher education.
Design/methodology/approach – Based on a lengthy interview and on his published talks von
Foerster’s ideas are applied to the teaching of literature in German higher education.
Findings – The distinction between decidable and undecidable questions, the reflection of
knowledge on a meta-level, student responsibility for defining their areas of study and research, as
well as their needs for factual information, the assessment of work by self-assessment, reciprocal
assessment or the presentation of work in performance or publication are analysed as instruments of
an education that is informed by Heinz von Foerster’s spirit: respect for the individual, curiosity and a
permanent reflection of the contents and forms of teaching and learning, “from a higher point of view”.
Originality/value – Provides an assessment of how von Foerster’s ideas would change the teaching
and testing of German literature.
Keywords Cybernetics, Literature, Curricula, Germany, Teaching
Paper type Conceptual paper

Evaluations and the crisis of teaching

Whenever we met or talked on the phone, Heinz von Foerster would bring up the topic
of examinations. He knew me as an ally in his favourite crusade of: “tests test tests, not
students” and he urged me to launch a symposium, better still, a research-project on the
matter. “Neurologists, psychologists and teachers should meet and seriously discuss
tests and what in fact they are testing. Everyone knows my opinion that tests test tests,
not students” (Renk, 1999a, p. 29, translated by Herta-Elisabeth Renk).
Eventually we wrote an article on the problem of tests and examinations (Renk,
1999a, pp. 19-42) but what was an issue to us, was not necessarily one to the rest of the
world, particularly when it came to grants and sponsors. Many clamour for evaluation
and competition, but few want to touch the delicate question of contents, of what can or
should be learnt and examined; since testing focuses on the essential contents of
teaching, these contents come under scrutiny whenever we analyse tests. Things
seemed to change in 2002, when the results of PISA shocked the German public: an
international ranking saw German schools struggling in the rear. Fifteen year-olds, it
turned out, could not summarize a short text. At a screening of outstanding students
Kybernetes for a scholarship we had encountered the same problem. Those academic prodigies
Vol. 34 No. 3/4, 2005
pp. 460-470 were apparently unable to get the gist of a one-page-paper. Actually they were probing
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited what we wanted to hear – and freely admitted so later. Heinz told me, how his sons
0368-492X
DOI 10.1108/03684920510581648 would not even bother to solve a problem in a maths test, assessing – correctly –
 which of the offered solutions had to be the correct one. On a less playful note he tended A dialogue with
to exclude the “straight A’s” from his research institute because they could only think Heinz von
within a given framework and proved utterly helpless with problems outside of it
(Renk, 1999a, pp. 26-7). He was grimly amused by the guessing games played in the Foerster
testing of literary interpretation in Bavarian schools (Renk, 1998) and we both felt the
need for a systemic change in teaching and testing, particularly in subjects such as
theatre and literature. So I was curious whether PISA would turn the tide. 461
Jürgen Kluge the head of McKinsey-Germany took the PISA cue and a hard look at
German schools before he reached this verdict: the kids had lost interest, would “opt
out, drift in class” because they “were not allowed to find their own results”, because
“the result of each lesson was cut out for their teachers from the start”, who, in turn,
“would eliminate anything jarring with their concept” (Kluge, 2003, pp. 82-94).
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

Statistics showed that only one in four students would read a book voluntarily.
Unaware of their nation’s myths, songs and fairy-tales, how could they ever become
immersed in a national civilisation or “Kultur”? (Why Kluge cavalierly dismissed
plays, novels and poems, after all the bulk of literature and certainly part of any
national heritage, remained his secret).
Kluge saw “frontal” teaching and rigid teaching concepts at the root of the problem
and his therapy spelt more evaluation, more competition of students, teachers and
schools and – you guessed it! – more examinations! Which happily fell in with the
demand of politicians, administrators and journalists to make them work, the lazy lot,
evaluate the hell out of them!
Alas, Kluge never asked why teachers cling so obstinately to results and concepts,
why the outcome of their lessons is fixed in their heads: clearly they need a factual
basis for examinations and grades – which are frequently taken to court by desperate
parents.
Kluge, who is a business manager, not a literary critic or a teacher does not discuss
factual contents of the teaching of German language and literature. Referring to
15-year-olds he demands reading -and writing skills, familiarity with songs, fairy-tales
and myths – which is more or less the standard learning children should achieve at
ten, particularly when they go on to higher education, which means another 8 or 9
years of schooling that are a complete blank in Mr Kluge’s concept; as indeed in most
politicians’ and journalists’. Like so many others Kluge confuses two separate
problems. One: what skills, knowledge and approaches to language and literature
should students acquire? Two: why is it that many 15-year olds still have difficulties
with the basic skills of reading and writing when it should not take a child of average
intelligence more than 3 or 4 years to reach proficiency? The latter is a problem
scenario, whereas the former is the basic curriculum question of what can and should
be learnt, what can and should be tested in the subject of German language and
literature. The problem cases are likely to be related to the way a subject is taught, but
they cannot be a guideline for the rest of the students.
In other words, I am not going to speculate why some kids still cannot read at 15 – I
want to know why the majority of those who can, do not do it. Which to me seems the
bigger problem.
Heinz and I had the same suspicion: kids resent being turned into trivial machines,
they want to embark on their own literary adventures. And I suspect teachers, too,
 K resent being turned into trivial machines of teaching, testing and presenting material
34,3/4 that is not their own responsible choice.
When we spoke about examinations Heinz seldom mentioned second-order
teaching or second-order learning, just occasionally “Wissen vom höheren Standpunkt
betrachtet (knowledge looked at from a higher point of view)”; but the examples he
gave and the suggestions he made could be summed up in his definition for
462 second-order cybernetics: “the cybernetician, by entering his own domain, has to
account for his or her own activity. Cybernetics then becomes cybernetics of
cybernetics, or ‘second-order-cybernetics’” (von Foerster, 1990a, p. 3, 1992).
Teachers and students need a clear idea of what they are doing when they involve
themselves with literature, why and how they do so. What follows is a continuation of
the dialogue we had so often and the obvious question to start from is the one, which
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

we never discussed, because we both took it for granted: why do we need literature in
the first place?

Why do we need fiction?

Evidently men and women have needed fiction ever since they emerged into history.
Epics and histories were recited and read, poetry and songs were woven into rituals of
daily life, citizen flocked to theatres to watch or perform plays. What they did not need
were critics and teachers of literature. If there is an elementary desire for stories and
poetry, there is, apparently, no such desire for literary criticism. Athenian citizens
awarded prizes at the Theatre-Agons and – without the aid of a jury – had the good
sense to recognize the genius of Sophocles or Euripides. Literary life needs very little:
an author who imagines and creates fictitious worlds (“Fingieren” – to feign) and a
reader who recreates or imagines them (“Imaginieren” – to imagine), both relating the
fictitious world to their everyday reality. Or, in the more choice words of Iser (1993,
p. 3): “The triadic relationship among the real, the fictive and the imaginary is basic to
the literary text, and from it we can extrapolate the special nature of the fictionalizing
act. Whenever realities are transposed into the text, they turn into signs for something
else. Thus, they are made to outstrip their original determinacy”.
This is clearly a way of world-making (Goodman, 1978). We construct fictional
worlds much the same way that we construct our everyday reality, by responding to
signals and stimuli. However, unlike Iser, I do not believe that they lose their everyday
determinacy in a text. In fact it seems to me that it is just the other way round: a good
reader brings the imaginary to – physical – life. As readers and actors know, the
reality of a fictitious story can become more real than our surrounding everyday
reality. Following a story or just sinking into a poem we can weep, fear, laugh and
experience many different physical sensations. Catharsis, too, whatever it may be, is
just another response to a fictional world that is moral, aesthetic and physical.
Not only the tangible reality is real and fiction is not “just fictitious”: we construct
our everyday reality as a life-story, a piece of fiction, using motifs, plot-elements,
images and symbols taken from literature as well as the lives and images of everyone
and everything that cross our paths.
We are all authors of our own life-stories (and consequently, we also co-write the
stories of our spouses, our children, our close friends and even colleagues and, yes,
indeed, we also write stories of our community’s history); the reality of literature is only
a few degrees less “real” than our everyday reality. The degrees differ with different
 individuals and it seems to me that people who can immerse themselves intensely in A dialogue with
fiction are often the same that can invent and reinvent their lives with great gusto. Heinz von
(This does not deny the potential of a “trial-reality” that Iser explores.) Poets and
psychologists have always known how we construct our lives as stories from a Foerster
beginning to an end (Gergen, 2001). Some start with an image, a sound or a word –
“Citizen Kane” unfolds on the word “rosebud”; the boy “Parzival” is struck by the
image of knights in shining armour and sets out to become a knight himself. Some are 463
touched by the fleeting image of a fireman, a judge, a performer, even a father or
mother. Many are moved by other life-stories to become another Alexander, a Romeo,
an Albert Schweitzer or an André Kostelany. Look at a bride, stroking her dress and
smelling her bouquet: Smell and touch are life-real, but just as real is that girlhood role
of hers that she is now playing out. It may have sprung from a magazine, a real
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

wedding or from Jane Austen, who knows?

Does a neurologist have to tell us that the world in our heads can be as real as the
one we are touching, if we allow it to be? Every actor knows that. “What’s Hecuba to
him or he to Hecuba that he should weep for her?” Hamlet asks himself, when an actor
breaks into tears. And he describes the situation between reality and fiction: “This
player here, but in a fiction, in a dream of passion, could force his soul so to his own
conceit that from her working all his visage wann’d, tears in his eyes, distraction in his
aspect, a broken voice, and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit?” You
can sweat and weep and laugh and work up your heartbeat, using nothing but your
imagination. We are always shuttling between different realities, some of them
springing from our heads, others real to the touch.
It seems to me that this may be at the root of our human need for fiction – which
even Kluge’s statistics on book-lazy kids cannot disprove: they find their stories, too, in
video-clips, in movies and TV-soaps, chat-rooms and magazines. Yet, when stories,
images, metaphors are part of our human make-up, why then, need they be taught?
And can they be taught?

(Past) Uses of literature in German Schools

“Germanistik” and “Deutsch (German)” as subjects of study at universities and in
schools have been in existence for about 200 years. Their founding fathers were less
interested in the search for personal identity, but the identity of an emerging German
nation and of its educated middle class. Leading intellectuals such as Wilhelm and
Jakob Grimm saw the German heritage as a crucial bond in the process of
nation-building. The nation’s soul was alive in her poetry and music, in theatre and
fairy-tales, the great writing and thinking of the past. When Wilhelm von Humboldt
was asked to reform the Prussian educational system he introduced a humanist
education, based on the German poets from the Middle Ages to Weimar and on the
Greek and Roman classics that had essentially informed the Weimar classics. The
humanistic middle and high school (German: Das humanistische Gymnasium)
functioned on the belief that an aesthetic and literary education would implicitly also
be a moral and a patriotic one (Bollenbeck, 1994). Eventually a canon of classical and
German literature became part of the identity of the “Bildungsbürger”
( ¼ well-educated citizen) and an element of integration for the middle class, an
“Integrationsferment der deutschen Bourgeoisie” (Fuhrmann, 2002).
 K All this is history. In Germany today, a little less (so far) in Austria and Switzerland,
34,3/4 the middle class consensus on “Bildung” (education) has almost vanished. The rich and
famous, the opinion leaders and mass media flaunt their ignorance of all that used to be
dear to an educated citizen: correct grammar, a wide vocabulary, knowledge of books,
music, theatre, history, the arts, philosophy. Now books listing “What you have to
know” are top-sellers precisely because the general public does not know (Schwanitz,
464 2002). And, incidentally, there is no consensus for a science-based education either,
considering the dwindling numbers of students in related disciplines (Fischer, 2001).
The society is only agreed on economic necessities: what do we need to know to ensure
high productivity and an equally high standard of living. This is precisely the line the
McKinsey manager takes in his criticism of German schools: PISA is a danger signal
for the economic competitiveness of the country. Literature, the arts and a lifelong
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

process of personal education – “Bildung” (education) – are no longer essentials, and

often considered a waste of time; unless they are turned into status-symbols of the rich
and successful, best consumed in festive events or, as the McKinsey analyst suggests,
provide a cosy familiarity with songs, myths and fairy-tales, nothing beyond the
intellectual challenge of a kindergarten. Schwanitz, who has written one of those
bestselling handbooks on all “that one has to know” justifies his slim body of literary
texts with their impact on history and, consequently, on “where we are today”
(Schwanitz, 2002, pp. 7-8 and cover text). Historians argue that “Bildung” (education)
has to make sense of the past for the present, “zwischen Vergangenheit und
Gegenwart, zwischen der Überlieferung und je neuen Gegebenheiten zu vermitteln”
(Fuhrmann, 2002, p. 88, “mediate between the past and the present, between tradition
and new circumstances”). However, history is never written objectively; sense of the
past is usually made with a specific present in mind – just as Humboldt and the
Grimms took the past to forge the humanist citizen of the 19th century. It is a circular
argument: my selective view of the past can authenticate and nurture my partisan view
of the present. Ernst Peter Fischer as a scientist tells of a past that hardly exists for
Schwanitz, the former professor of English literature and, consequently, takes a very
different view of the individual’s role in the present (Fischer, 2001, p. 10). Schwanitz
excludes science from his concept of “Bildung” as mostly irrelevant, Fischer retorts
that Schwanitz simply excludes what he does not understand.
It is more than obvious that our society has no good and consensual reason why,
how and which literary texts should be read. Nor have teachers or ministries of
education. Nor, indeed, have literary critics.

The disappearance of “The Correct Interpretation” or: how to account for

the teaching of literature
Just as we are not agreed on the role literature should play, we disagree on how it
should be read, on its “correct interpretation”. Most scholars will accept the fact that
each text has many meanings and answers different needs and different questions
(Eco, 1990, 1992). Initially philologists researched the author’s intentions; eventually
they looked for all possible or potential meanings and today structuralists and
postmodernists are fascinated by their highly personal interpretations, regardless of
traditions or even the coherent logic of a text (Eco, 1990, 1992, Chapters 1 and 2).
Postmodern productions are rampant on German stages. At the Salzburg festival
of 2003 Stefan Herheim presented his version of Mozart’s “The Abduction from
 the Seraglio”. Mozart’s praise of constant love unto death was turned into a satire on A dialogue with
the horrors of bourgeois matrimony and the war of the sexes, a main character and the Heinz von
seraglio were cut, lines added and reassembled. Today literary critics, artists and
scholars pursue widely different approaches to literature, “anything goes” and the Foerster
choice is a highly personal one. Literature may still fulfil social needs, but it is mainly
accepted as a means of personal expression and authentication.
When neither politics, idealism, ideologies nor literary criticism can arrogate 465
literature and insist on specific readings, we are free – and obligated – to ask our own
questions. And teachers have to account for the questions they ask in class.
They certainly should ask the didactic question, which takes the matter to the
meta-level: why, how and to what end do we teach literature in schools? How do we
account for this subject of literature, for its teaching and testing?
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

It was this quality of teaching as a second-order activity that always fascinated

Heinz von Foerster. He insisted on taking his own teaching and testing to this
meta-level (von Foerster and Renk, 1999a, p. 29), even when he had to persuade his
students to follow him (von Foerster and Renk, 1999a, p. 21). He liked talking to
teachers, although he was not always understood (von Foerster and Renk, 1999) and
when he met some self-appointed “supreme fascists” (von Foerster, 1990a)[1] in full
possession of the absolute truth he was truly amused, a very Viennese form of
mild-mannered sarcasm.
He was passionately committed, however, to a different form of teaching “vom
höheren Standpunkt“, from a higher point of view and it is a sad loss that his clear and
consequential analysis of some key-elements of teaching has so far been neglected by
most members of the teaching profession.

Decidable and undecidable questions in the approach to literature

Questions are the main element of teaching and testing and Heinz von Foerster took
pains to explain that there are two types of questions. “‘Only those questions that are in
principle undecidable, we can decide.’ Why? Simply because decidable questions are
already decided by the choice of the framework within which they are asked. . . .
answers to decidable questions are forced through necessity, while for those to
undecidable questions we have the freedom to choose. But with this freedom of choice
we must assume the responsibility for our choice. . . . In other words, tell us how the
Universe began, and we tell you who you are” (von Foerster, 1990a, p. 12).
He would also speak of “discovery” – finding the right answers within a given
framework – as opposed to “invention” – finding one’s own framework for
undecidable questions. “Mathematicians dwell in two distinct worlds that are
irreconcilably separated by deciding differently the in principle undecidable question
‘Are the numbers, the formulas, the theorems, the proofs, etc. of mathematics
discoveries or are they our inventions?’ – . . . Let us consider children growing up in
these two different worlds: In the world of discoveries they must learn to repeat what
others were by the Supreme Fascist permitted to glance from the ‘Book’; in the world of
inventions they are invited to play a game in which they write the rules, invent their
mathematics, from which mathematicians may learn one thing or another” (von
Foerster, 1990a, pp. 12-13).
How does this concern us when we read a novel or a play? Obviously, it is the
undecidable questions that make a piece of poetry into a litmus test for our own
 K identity and life story: what does a poem mean to us, how do we respond to it? Clearly,
34,3/4 the undecidable questions of literary texts keep them alive for every new generation.
Medea, Antigone or Oedipus are as challenging to us as they were to Sophocles’
Athenians.
And yet, when we are enthralled by a Sophoclian play, our curiosity will bring up
other questions, too, decidable within a specific framework. How does the author
466 develop his story, what kind of theatre does he use, what kind of language do his
characters speak, how does his play compare to other versions of the same plot?, etc.
These very different types of questions – in a nutshell – explain some of the
confusion and paradoxes in the teaching of literature. Since the quality of literature is
inextricably bound up with the personal involvement of readers and with their
response to undecidable questions, teachers are trapped into expecting “decidable”
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

(and easily gradable) answers to undecidable questions. On the other hand, accustomed
to the business of literary history and interpretation, they are often blinded by
familiarity. One of the unintended blessings of postmodernism is a heightened
sensitivity to the haphazard and often wilful frameworks of traditional literary
criticism: just because we have been told so often what Goethe’s “Faust” is about or
how to define “tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral,
tragic-historical, tragic-comical-historical-pastoral”[2] such pearls of wisdom don’t
have to be forced on every reader, who happens to be a helpless victim in a literary
class. Respect, good manners and efficiency demand that teachers and students
negotiate the frameworks they want to explore – establishing the information that can
be asked within a clearly defined frame of reference. It is clearly nonsense to test
student interpretations and expect them to come up with predetermined responses to
undecidable questions, as I see done regularly. It is equally nonsense to ask for
terminology, structures and other informational bytes without clearly stating the
referential framework.

Undecidable questions, the meta-level and tests à la Heinz

Probably the most important – undecidable – question for teachers and students of
literature concerns the definition and extension of the subject under investigation.
Across the centuries and civilisations widely different writing was called “literature”:
history, philosophy, essays and journalism, travelogues, diaries, autobiographies,
prayers, letters, lyrics of songs and opera, treatments and dialogues of movies. When
Heinz had his students write a book on cybernetics he got them started with the
second-order question: What is cybernetics? How do we define it? How do others define
it? “I gave lectures in the first semester. Then we formed groups again and in the
second semester they did the book.They wrote to big scholars asking them: ‘Can you
tell me what cybernetics is?’, etc. Fortunately, they got answered. The result was a
dictionairy of cybernetics. When they presented the same term to four different scholars
to get their opinion on it, they received four different answers. That alone was already an
incredible insight: the definition defines the person who defines it more than the term,
which is to define” (von Foerster and Renk, 1999a, pp. 24-25, translation by
Herta-Elisabeth Renk).
This seems to me the proper way to evoke personal interest in any area of study and
certainly in one so rambling and untidy as literature. Why should students not spend
half a year finding their own concept of “literature”. They would have to read,
 interview, discuss, to find their own criteria of interest and aesthetic satisfaction and A dialogue with
their own body of texts. They would have to decide which books they wanted to know Heinz von
more closely and why.
Instead, curricula go the opposite way: they present texts to their students as Foerster
literature and then proceed to teach the students, why the texts are literature, according
to criteria that are beyond debate or hidden in some cryptic academic consensus.
This could also stop an unhappy trend in German schools: a fast shrinking number 467
of literary texts is read in excerpts or summaries but swamped in literary history and
interpretation. Considering the notoriously “brief history of German literature”
(Schlaffer, 2002) students may read nothing written before 1750, reducing the
time-span to half of what is covered by French, Spanish, or British teachers, who will
certainly include Renaissance, Baroque and even Medieval poetry. Literary
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

appreciation in schools should open doors into the world of story-telling and poetry.
Students following their own curiosity can be much more adventurous in their choices
than curriculum planners who are constantly told to cut back. Why should they not
include Shakespeare, Racine, Monteverdi or Mozart, pop lyrics or movies? They would
probably be more intrigued than intimidated by great names, that teachers are almost
paranoid about “doing justice” to. When I was six my father, who was the leader of an
opera orchestra placed me between the conductor and himself for 3 hours of Wagner’s
“Lohengrin”. I certainly did not “understand” it, but I was completely enchanted and
have loved opera ever since.
Apart from defining the subject matter, there are undecidable questions, that keep a
text alive. Sometimes they are as apparent as the puzzle of a crime: what happened
between Hamlet and Ophelia? What did queen Gertrude know about the murder of her
husband? What part did Polonius play? Why does Hamlet hesitate to kill his uncle but
not Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? Is Hamlet crazy, depressed or an eccentric pain in
the neck? What exactly does the ghost want from Hamlet? There are no definitive
answers to any of these questions, so we are thrown back on ourselves. As my friend
Patricia commented on a recent Hamlet-film: “Another of those male directors who
keep wagging their finger at Gertrude. Has anyone ever considered what an
insufferable bore old king Hamlet must have been, what a clumsy brute? And to be told
at fifty that she is old and revolts her son with her sexual desires. How dare he, that
neurotic whimp!”
The undecidable questions of literature will challenge each reader differently, but
they can be shared and negotiated in class. I have written about such processes, for
example, reading B. Brechts “Galileo Galilei” with grammar-school teenagers in
Germany and with Peruvian students in Lima. In interpretations for the teacher this
play is often presented as a model of Brecht’s views on science, ideology, politics and
religion and as an example of Brechtian theatre.
Dramaturgy, ideology, political conviction provide frames, which will produce
foreseeable questions and answers; but that was not what my students in Europe and
Peru saw in the play. The Bavarian 17-year-olds read it as a struggle between the
young and the old, a story of older men with authority manipulating helpless
youngsters. They saw little difference between the way Galileo treated his daughter
and his dumber students and the way the pope and his clergy treated their flock:
arrogant old egomaniacs! Their sympathy was with Galileo’s daughter, they identified
with the weak and young in the play whose lives were shaped by
 K teachers/parents/priests/scientists. They were clearly frustrated, too, young men and
34,3/4 women who longed to be adults, not school-kids under tutelage and that was the
message they took from the play (Renk, 1999a, pp. 99-136).
The Peruvian students, on the other hand, read the play as a farce on the human
inability to think and act logically, on the persistent need for superstition, irrationality,
prejudices. They, too, saw their lives reflected in the play: “is it not amazing and a little
468 sad, that even as students, we sympathize with irrationality, not with logic?” Both
groups found an existential message in the play, which was hotly debated and
negotiated and developed in physical improvisations, presentations and discussions.
Both groups answered the – undecidable – question of what Brecht’s play meant to
them, in a unique way.
Obviously such teaching necessitates a very different range of methods; but it is
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

perfectly possible to deal with undecidable questions in a professional way.

And it is equally possible to assess the quality of such work.
You have suggested three ways, Heinz: the students can publish or demonstrate
their own research and analysis in a publication, in a presentation or performance.
They can be asked for their self-assessment and the assessment of others (von Foerster
and Renk, 1999, p. 25).
Just as Heinz had his students publish a book on cybernetics it would be possible
for a class in school or at the university to publish their own “canon of literature” with
all the interviews, the research and arguments that went into it. Assessing such
work students and teachers might negotiate, as Heinz suggested, a variety of vectors
for quality: originality of ideas, quality of presentation, linguistic, physical or
symbolic inventiveness, logic, clarity and organisational skills, empathy and acute
observation, etc.
There are obvious advantages to this. If I mark myself down – or another student –
it might re-enforce my argument: I was not able to present it properly, but it might still
have been a good idea. If we are not satisfied with our shared presentation/publication
we might have done better. And in each case the reasons for dissatisfaction become the
potential for improvement. I found, just like Heinz, that students are much harsher
critics than their teachers.

Some frameworks for decidable questions

While the existential meaning-making of literature occurs on the level of undecidable
questions, it may also be profitable and fun to deal with decidable questions, as long as
we can choose our own frameworks of interest. Do we want to know, what the author
has actually written? Do we prefer critical editions to some rotten folios? Do we want to
understand his language, connotations and allusions? Then we will probably prefer
critical and annotated editions and may want to know how they are compiled.
Are we curious about the ideas or personality of an author? Do we want to dig
deeper into his/her cultural, personal or economic background? Does a story belong to
a distant civilisation so that we long for a guide to take us there?
In pursuing such interests we become aware that the answers to decidable questions
are no unassailable facts but always related to a frame of thought. Just as the students
realized with the Brecht-example, that there is no such thing as “the Brechtian
dramaturgy”. Brecht changed his views on the theatre frequently while he was writing
and rewriting “Galileo Galilei” and the productions in which he participated are proof
 of that. Even those views, however, cannot be taken out of the theatrical context of his A dialogue with
times, of realism, naturalism and political agitprop on German and American stages. Heinz von
What he had to re-introduce as “alienation” for instance, had been a prominent element
in baroque theatre. Foerster
Great literature, it should also be remembered, is never exhausted by decidable
questions and logical frameworks; but it can certainly be vastly enriched by them. Yet,
when a book does not touch us, the most ingenious comments and information will not 469
awaken our interest.

Conclusion
Let us see, Heinz, how your ideas would change the teaching and testing of German
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

literature?
There would be no unreflected curriculum: students would research and analyse the
body of texts they want to read and negotiate the interests they want to pursue. And
they would publicly take responsibility for it.
There would be a clear distinction between decidable and undecidable questions,
students would be encouraged to negotiate their response to the open questions of a
text and to focus on frameworks for analysis, feed-in information and further research.
Testing and assessing this work might follow your three categories of
publication/performance, self-assessment and assessment by fellow-students and it
would certainly include a variety of individual vectors of excellence. This would make
students’ grades more telling about strengths, weaknesses and room for improvement.
It would require a host of new teaching methods and a flexible approach to literary
analysis, which may come more easily in these postmodern times. Experience of
literature would not be regarded as a social accomplishment but as an existential need.
In the final analysis it would introduce a dose of your spirit, Heinz: respect for the
smallest kids, their inventiveness and boundless curiosity; intellectual humility that
takes nothing for granted, not academic or social frameworks nor taboos. It would lay
the foundation of accountability for the knowledge taught, “from a higher point of
view”.
It might help the process, if we could muster some of your bubbling enthusiasm and
your sense of humour that could tolerate (and often convert) fools laughingly.

Notes
1. The expression “supreme fascist” was frequently used by the Mathematician Paul Erdös
(von Foerster and Broecker, 2002, p. 107).
2. It seems that even Shakespeare had his share of literary criticism as a pupil in Stratford –
and uses the old bore Polonius to make fun of it.

References
Bollenbeck, G. (1994), Bildung und Kultur – Glanz und Elend eines deutschen Deutungsmusters,
Frankfurt a. Main.
Eco (1990), The Limits of Interpretation (English edition), Indiana University Press, Bloomington
and Indianapolis.
Eco, U. (1992), Die Grenzen der Interpretation, Hanser, München/Wien.
 K Fischer, E.P. (2001), Die andere Bildung. Was man von den Naturwissenschaften wissen sollte,
Econ/Ullstein.
34,3/4 Fuhrmann, M. (2002), Bildung. Europas kulturelle Identität, Reclam, Stuttgart.
Gergen, K.J. (2001), Social Construction in Context, Sage, London.
Goodman, N. (1978), Ways of Worldmaking (German Translation published in 1990, “Weisen der
Welterzeugung” by Suhrkamp, Frannkfurt), Hackett, Indianapolis, IN.
470 Iser, W. (1993), The Fictive and the Imaginary, Charting Literary Anthropology, John Hopkins,
London and Baltimore.
Kluge, J. (2003), Schluß mit der Bildungsmisere. Ein Sanierungskonzept, Campus, Frankfurt.
Renk, H.E. (1998), “Der Neue Literaturunterricht”, in Köppel (Ed.), Lehrerbildung im Wandel,
pp. 237-52.
Downloaded by University of Pennsylvania Libraries At 22:13 03 July 2016 (PT)

Renk, H.E. (Ed.) (1999a), Lernen und Leben aus der Welt im Kopf, Luchterhand, Neuwied.
Schlaffer, H. (2002), Die kurze Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, Hanser, München.
Schwanitz, D. (2002), Bildung. Alles was man wissen muß, Goldmann, München.
von Foerster, H. (1990a), Lethology. A theory of Learning and Knowing vis à vis
Undeterminables, Undecidables, Unknowables, San Marino, Seminario Internazionale
“Conoscenza come educazione”, aprile, pp. 26-8.
von Foerster, H. (1990b), “Ethics and second order Cybernetics”, Textes issus des travaux du
Congrès ‘Système et thérapie familiale’, 4-6 October, Paris, ESF éditeur, 17, rue Viète,
75017 Paris, 5.
von Foerster, H. (1992), “Ethics and second order Cybernetics”, Cybernetics and Human Knowing,
Vol. 1 No. 1.
von Foerster, H. and Broecker, M. (2002), Teil der Welt: ‘Fraktale einer Ethik. Ein Drama in drei
Akten’, Heidelberg: Carl Auer Systeme, Verlag (English Translation by Barbara
Anger-Diaz: Part of the world: Fractals of ethics. A drama in three acts).
von Foerster, H. and Renk, H.E. (1999), “Neue Prüfungen braucht das Land”, in Renk (Ed.),
Lernen und Leben aus der Welt im Kopf, pp. 19-42.

Further reading
Iser, W. (2000), The Range of Interpretation, Columbia University Press, New York, NY.
Köppel, H. (Ed.) (1998), Lehrerbildung im Wandel, Wißner, Augsburg.
Renk, H.E. (1999b), “Drama-in-Education und Lernimprovisationen – eine Chance für den offenen
Lernprozess”, in Renk (Ed.), Lernen und Leben aus der Welt im Kopf, pp. 156-92.