Burgerschapsonderwijs: Fiction for Citizenship is the real deal (2 of 2)

 

Fiction as a safe place

The great, late French historian Paul Veyne, having shown that the ancient Greeks both believed and did not believe in their own myths, asks a question: what was the use of those myths for the Greeks then? Why did senators routinely use mythical references and examples in their speech to their fellow politicians? Veyne’s answers is that it enabled them to discuss actual political matters in a roundabout way, so that political sensibilities would not be hurt by hearing a particular problem discussed openly.

In other words, senators would use a myth to introduce a question at play in Athens’ society, but which was too sensitive to some to be aired directly: it needed to be metaphorised, in a way – it needed to be about problem A but discussed in terms of Myth B.

This Fiction-as-a-safe-place is one of the great advantages of using literature in class to discuss citizenship-related issues. The Council of Europe (2018), among others, breaks down Citizenship in four categories: Values; Attitudes; Skills; Knowledge and understanding. Discussing values and attitudes – essentially, general beliefs and their social realisations - can be challenging, and confrontational, as they are personalised and individualised. A value, a belief that something is good, will often be associated with those who transmitted that value: the family environment, typically. So questioning a value, whichever it is, can quickly mean questioning someone’s allegiances – not to the value itself per se, but to those who transmitted it. And as we all know, allegiances are often non-negotiable, especially for those outside the family circle (see the previous blog).

That is one of the main drawbacks of using non-fiction in class (e.g. newspaper/web articles), as non-fiction is real, and only real; it puts your face right in it, there’s no way to escape from it, and there’s no way to discuss issues other than naming things, and people, and places – as in-your-face, confrontational and allegiance-sensitive as they come.

Fiction for us must be like the myths for the ancient Greeks: a refuge from the immediate, a step away from any allegiance, a safe place where ideas can be discussed on the basis of non-existing, invented characters and situations. Because we know fiction is also real, we (teachers) can then weave a thread between the text and our world, making sure we highlight echoes between the two. But if an idea touches upon allegiances and starts veering off towards a difficult debate, we can always go back to the text and point out: ‘Look, this is not real; it’s a story about John/an elephant/an alien/a tree’. We must use fiction as a roundabout way to talk about the here and now, the us and them: about the ‘We’. Have a look at the story ‘Sentry’, and which topics and themes could be developed on the basis of it.

 

Awakening Curiosity.

In his ‘The trial of Socrates’, I.F. Stone writes that ‘Early in the sixth century B.C. the Athenian social reformer and lawgiver Solon, enacted a law that any citizen who remained neutral and took no position on either side in a time of stasis or severe political contention and class struggle should be punished by loss of citizenship’. To be fair, that sounds a bit steep: isn’t there value in being in the middle? Why should taking side be better than not? But perhaps if we switch the focus slightly, and then ask: ‘What is needed to take a position?’, we might be able to relate to that law, and to literature.

After all, remaining in the middle can be the result of the same process as choosing sides, that is, a reflective, introspective, questioning and open-minded process. The essayist Richard Paul wrote a little book entitled ‘The art of asking essential questions’, because, he claims, we cannot be skilled at thinking unless we are skilled at questioning: ‘Essential questions are the keys to productive thinking, deep learning, and effective living’. I don’t know what he meant by ‘effective living’ (surely a rather questionable concept), but it’s certainly true that if you don’t ask questions of anything, deep learning, understanding, objective thinking: all those are going to be very hard to do.

Yet what do we want if not for our learners to ask questions? To show curiosity? To confront themselves with the realities of the world, its problems and hence its possible solutions? Do we not want our learners not to act as ostriches are said to do? Instead of burying their head in the sand, they bury it in ultra-short videos which do not give an idea of the world as it is, and which are all statements (‘this is how you cook this’; ‘this is how you dance’; ‘this is what I did this morning’; ‘this is how to apply a cream’ etc.). But statements often preclude questions, hinder curiosity, and the lack of interaction means no questions can be asked anyway.

It is then possible to posit that some social media activities are merely a distraction from that real world – after all, the great majority of people in that world do not use, say, Tiktok or Instagram. And the difference between ‘being a distraction’ to ‘being an insulation against what’s going on’ is becoming ever more blurred: if the algorithms manage what you see, by definition you will not see what they don’t show you. And if they don’t, and you don’t read the news or take an active interest in the wider world, how will you get to know what is going on? And more damagingly really: if you’re never confronted with the nuances and complexities of what it is to be human, how will you fare in this real world?

Fiction is the answer of course: its half-way existence between the invented and the real makes fiction a sort of looking-glass: pointed one way, it focuses on details and enables the asking of questions: why? What else? Pointed the other way, it enables the taking of perspectives and shows us the larger view. Have a look at this James Robertson’s short-story (‘Democracy’): isn’t that so much better as material for discussion than a lecture on what democracy is, how it works and who can exercise it?

Isn’t thinking from that story, asking questions of what happens, the perfect example that fiction serves citizenship issues so well?(I would advise you to remove the title before giving it to be read, if you can)

Told in 365 words, seemingly about animals (a nod to Orwell surely) therefore not appealing to any allegiance, it seems to be a tale half-way between Golding and Orwell, more innocuous than either, gentler: a neutral ground to investigate ideas – a safe place to start thinking about democracy, giving, receiving, partaking, living together, living with rules we didn’t choose and without other rules we’d want. It also serves to awaken a sense of curiosity, and can easily be related to real-world examples and questions – after all, that very discussion needs to be had: as I said in the last blog, a fact-based, institutions-based approach will simply not enable that discussion. It will impose democracy as the ultimate ideal, implicitly rejecting any alternative or amendment to it, and will do thing to broaden the minds of those who disagree, or at not sure about what to think.

A story like that turns a statement (Democracy is the best: respect it!) into a critical thinking activity: if it’s not the best system (as the phrase goes, it’s the best of the worst), why? Why not? What are the problems? Are they really problems? How else could we do? Are alternatives actually any better? Why, why not? The point being, of course, not to deny democracy but to make people think, learn, reflect. To ‘be against’ is easy; to reconcile nuances and complexities so as to understand is much more difficult. 

Yet it is our task, and fiction is the best help we have.

 

• Paul Veyne: Les Grecs ont-ils cru à leurs mythes? Paris, Seuil, 1983  (there seems to be an English translation)
• James Robertson: 365. London: Penguin, 2014.
• I.F. Stone: The trial of Socrates. NY: Doubleday, 1989. (I strongly disliked that book because of its tone, and its constant use of 'It might be that' and other 'We can imagine that'...still, there was a useful bit in it :))
• The short-story Sentry can be found online and in any good anthology of the magnificent Fredric Brown's works; it was originally published in 1954 in a Science Fiction magazine, and since re-issued in Brown's collections.