The Web of Textuality-Pirie

Pirie begins this article by showing two examples of classrooms in which different lenses were used to discuss create discussion in the English classroom. The first classroom is discussing the elements of a television program and the context clues that are available. In the second class, students are discussing a short story. Pirie says that the greatest difference that he notices in the two classes is that the television program class, which is supposedly comprised of average students, talks about the program as it is ficition, which it is. They realize that the things that occur in the program are different from real life because they are occurring on the television. The second class, the supposedly more gifted class, is not able to remove themselves from the short story. Everything that is discussed is as if they are in the story with the characters and they speak about the events as if they were there.
In the article, Pirie notices that the first class is able to understand that although the programs attempted to achieve a "realistic" show, they are still representations of events that could be real, however they are not. It does not seem that the second class has come to this conclusion. Pirie says that students in the second class seem to transport themselves into another world where the story occurs. One possible reasons for these differences according to Pirie is the fact that the first class was led by the teacher, while the teacher in the second class simply sits at the back and allows the students to take over the discussion. Another possible reason for these differences is the fact that students spend much more time watching television than they do reading.
Pirie next talks of textuality as a web. As a person fits into the social web of the world, each individual text has a place in the web of textuality. This web allows readers to put similar experiences and reactions together when they read a text. One example that Pirie gives is the connection between Rambo and Macbeth. Pirie says that these are connected because of the showdown between the individual and the collective. Pirie argues that it is the job of the English teacher to add to each students web.
The next point that Pirie makes is that as teachers of English, we do not have to force students to read classical literature in order to give them a good education. Pirie says that it is not these great works of literature that makes students educated and better people. Being able to understand literature and the motives of authors and the intended audience is much more important for the education of students.
The next aspect that Pirie discusses is the frame through which we are able to look at each media. For instance, students are able to learn something different about family life through comedies, movies, cartoons, paintings, textbooks, or novels. There is a certain window that each of these media are viewed through and those windows change the view that we have.
The next issue of textuality that Pirie discusses is audience. Pirie says that in the English classroom audience means something more in depth than it does outside the classroom. In the English classroom, Pirie says that audience consists of the demographics that partake of a certain media and the type of people that a certain media was intended to please. By understanding these two aspects of audience, students are able to understand a great deal about the media. Pirie states that different types of media and different stories are capable of being connected through the audience that they have drawn or the intended audience.
In conclusion, I find this article to a be a bit confusing. In my opinion, Pirie never fully explained textuality and what it meant. However, Pirie does give some examples of textuality and how it may be applied. In this article, I can see the examples of textuality and understand how they take place in the classroom but I do not understand how I should take this and apply it to my own classroom. Audience, frame, and linking texts are things that happen in English classrooms daily and in this article I do not see a unique approach to these techniques. In my opinion, there are many things that could be added to this article to create a more helpful article. Examples of how to apply these concepts in the classroom by perhaps using new media and technology would help this article be more beneficial to me.