I am writing in response to the column about “emotional apathy and Sept. 11.”

As a teacher of some of the literature and content mentioned in the article, I am intrigued by the writer’s reflections.

The author referred to teachers, to me, as “privileged” for being “removed” from the tragedy that inspires writing. First, I would caution the author against making such overarching statements because it’s not possible to know the personal suffering of everyone who works here. Speaking for myself—I don’t know that I wake up and feel privileged because I have not suffered. The correct word is not privileged. But I do feel fortunate. That good fortune does not afford me the right not to examine the suffering of others. In fact, it compels me to do the opposite: to learn from the events in the world and to learn from those most deeply connected to those events.

Next, the writer for the Courier and I would disagree that standardized test makers “slap” “fluff pieces” together to make an examination. I wouldn’t describe the words of Annie Dillard, Virginia Woolf, and Martin Luther King, Jr. as fluff.

I do believe there is a point about which the author of the column and I would agree: writers write about tragic events to relieve their suffering or to expose the ills of the world. They might not expect, or maybe even desire, their writings to be studied for the intricate elements of language. I can agree that writers like Elie Wiesel didn’t hope for students to study his use of metaphor, but instead had far deeper aspirations. But Elie Wiesel’s Night changed the world. He didn’t only change the world because he survived the Holocaust; he changed the world because he chose to document his survival in writing. Many survivors wrote of their experiences. As teachers, we choose to examine what makes his writing so powerful, more powerful than others, and to do so involves a study of his language.

When English teachers assign students to study specific language devices (which are not “fabricate[d]” by the College Board, as stated in the piece)—our aim is to inspire students to think about how writing is constructed, so it frames how they receive the message. I think Frank Bruni, columnist for The New York Times, put it best when he describes his experiences in a literature class in college. He discusses how his professor opened up his eyes to a new appreciation of words: “…she taught us how much weight a few syllables can carry, how powerful the muscle of language can be…She demonstrated the rewards of close attention. It informed all my reading from then on. It colored the way I listened to people and even watched TV. It transformed me.”