On Literature and Teaching

  One aspect of the research published around the teaching of literature ( literatuuronderwijs , in the Netherlands) is how often it is conducted with the higher reaches of schools: vwo 5, vwo 6 for example. Or that research is conducted with an implicit line of development: it starts in Year 1 at secondary school and finishes in Year 6. And because only vwo go to Year 6, it’s clear that if you’re not in vwo, you’ll stop short of achieving whatever those in vwo can (or are supposed to) achieve: that’s exemplified in the oft-quoted ‘literary competence’ of Witte, which, let’s be honest, makes little sense. Why on earth would we want all our students to be literary competent? What for? To be experts at reading a niche market like literature? Why then leave visual literacy – surely a much more pressing problem in the world of social media – out of education? And the biggest problem is of course: does that mean those in vmbo or havo can have no hope – are given no hope – of reachin...

‘Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them’ (A. Huxley) We would be fools not to try and anticipate (and predict) the future when it comes to what we do and what we love. I’m a teacher, a teacher-trainer in fact, and I love books and what’s in them – and no, it doesn’t mean I love every single book ever published nor does it mean that I read everything and anything. When it comes to what I read personally, I’m pretty demanding in fact, both in terms of content and form. When it comes to teaching with a book (Teaching with literature), I’m obviously more flexible since that teaching is related to learning aims – typically, cognitive and social – and so form and content are important in what they can do to me and my students, and what we can do with them. The point is: I think those two things are massively important: Education, and Creation. Now it’s become very clear in the last ...

  One of the most famous questions asked in linguistics – and there are a few – relates to the way language might influence our perceptions, and in particular whether the language you speak restricts your perceptions, or at least forces you to perceive in this way rather than that way. That’s what is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, with more or less strong versions. And while the strong version of their hypothesis (that the language you speak influences your perceptions) has largely been abandoned, milder, so-called weaker versions have been shown to operate in the world. When Frederic Jameson, the literary critic and theorist, wrote his seminal book ‘ The Prison-house of language’ (1972), he was partially referring to that idea, something Barthes or, of course, Derrida, were keen to emphasise as well. You inherit the language you speak: from people, from history, from a culture – the language you speak every day is not transparent, it is loaded, it carries ways of thinking th...

  Yet another study on reading was published in France last week , and it’s yet another study showing the same results as observed in England a few months ago  or in the Netherlands in 2021   and again in 2022 . Briefly, young people read less than they used to (which, to be fair, has been very little for a while now), and the ratio reading-a-book vs staring-at-a-screen is inversely growing. For example, the French study found that on average, adolescents spend ’19 minutes a day reading, and 3h11 on their telephone’ . When focusing on the 16-19 year-olds, that ratio increased: ‘ 12 minutes of reading vs 5h10 on their phone’ . And perhaps even more problematic in some way, ‘ 48% of readers do something else while reading’ , like visit websites, watch videos or send messages (this goes up to 69% among the 16-19 year-olds). This had already been observed in the Netherlands, where most young readers especially (but not only) would have at least one screen on while reading....

Critical thinking has been an object of study for many decades now, although of course its origins can easily be traced back to at least Aristotle. And while one single definition of ‘Critical thinking’ has not yet been agreed upon, most of those interested in the question will accept that critical thinking can be sub-defined as having two main aspects – related, imbricated, intertwined yet distinct. These two aspects are the skills (properly so-called), and the dispositions . As those names indicate, there are two operations at work when ‘thinking critically’: there is the mental attitude required, the frame of mind: the dispositions. And there is the applying of well-known rules (or mechanisms) to understand where thinking went wrong: the skills. Dispositions are basically habits we must learn to develop: open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, inquisitiveness, the desire to be well-informed, respecting others’ perspective (see E. Lai, reference below). Those dispositions, those habits ...