"Entitlement" / 48

Coles shares his story of how he came to apply to medical school in the introduction to his collection of literary essays titled That Red Wheelbarrow (1988). He was an English major at Harvard University, and wrote a paper on William Carlos Williams. Apparently, the piece came across Williams' desk, and Williams soon became his mentor. Coles' interest in literary scholarship became a source of research in his work with child psychiatry:

The more I had to write, then, with respect to the children I was coming to know, the more reading of novels and poems I did; and soon enough, I was beginning to write about that reading, to respond to particular novelists or poets with the comments that an essayist or reviewer makes. Eventually, I began to realize that this aspect of my writing life was no mere diversion; I very much needed the help of certain novelists as I tried to figure out what I was observing and hearing in the course of my so-called fieldwork, all those visits to homes and schools. (xiii)

WRA points out that "Williams taught Coles how to listen to his patients and let them teach him about their ailments" (48). Reading literature informed his everyday work, and literature continues to inspire him to reflect on how people relate to one another. Coles is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and was awarded the nation's highest civilian honor by President Clinton in 1998, the Medal of Freedom (http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/01.15/RobertColesWins.html). You might read a review of his The Moral Intelligence of Children: How to Raise a Moral Child (http://www.sppc.org/sppc2000//sppc2000bookstore/bookstore/moral.htm), or a very good bibliographic essay by Scott London titled "A Way of Seeing: The Work of Robert Coles" (http://www.scottlondon.com/articles/coles.html) for some valuable background information about this teacher and author.

In "Entitlement," Coles challenges you to ask yourself what you are entitled to in life and why, and if what you're entitled to is different than what your parents are entitled to and why. This is the subject of much of the literature Coles uses in his own teaching, for instance, Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," Tolstoy, and Flannery O'Connor. He often examines topics like human worth, love, patient experiences, hospitalization, communication, empathy, and blindness.

As you read this essay think about these topics, and think about your definition of "entitlement." Coles uses the term "[. . .] to describe what, perhaps, all quite well-off American families transmit to their children--an important psychological common denominator, I believe: an emotional expression, really, of those familiar, class-bound prerogatives, money and power" (50). Entitlement is now recognized by the National Association of Independent Schools and education psychologists as a major factor in education today (http://www.nais.org/pubs/ismag.cfm?file_id=539&ismag_id=14). What does class have to do with entitlement? Consider problems you've had communicating with others lately. What did you observe in your peers? What might they have observed? What did you hear? What did they hear? How is what you observed and what you heard different than what was actually said?

The short stories in the companion critical reading section here are the type Robert Coles uses in his teaching.