On Literature and Teaching

  Short, even very short…but powerful One constant problem for teachers of literature at secondary schools is to do with preparation: that of the learners as much as that of themselves. Learners, when asked to read a text in advance, will usually turn up not having done so; or if they have, it was probably just a glance, or a quick read-through, maybe a few minutes only before the lesson started. (To be fair, I’ve know the opposite albeit only rarely, when a student would read the texts so much in advance that they’d sort of forgotten everything about them when lesson-time came round). We all know the consequences of that non-reading-in-advance problem: what to do in class if no-one’s read the text? Some solutions spring to mind of course, like handling the text then and there when class starts for example. But that often leads to more problems because those texts will usually be too long to be read in class, or will at least take up so much time of said class that there will...

  Those apparently 'simple' tasks we delegate to Chatgpt will end up costing us more than we know In his 1994 noir novel ‘Gun, with occasional music’, the American writer Jonathan Lethem thought up a bleak version of the future in which the State makes the taking of a certain drug compulsory: that drug is called ‘Forgettol’, and it basically erases your memories, short or long, and makes it impossible to remember even basic facts about yourself, let alone others. That then leads to the invention of the ‘memory-box’: a device characters use to effectively externalize their brain. That memory-box stores all those memories your brain can’t handle; in fact, it stores all the information your brain can’t handle. The benefits for the state are obvious (no possibility of rebellion), but the effects on people and society are terrible: a fragmentation of one’s consciousness which leads to a fragmentation of the social fabric. Sounds familiar? When the printing press started to spre...

  Over the last few decades, a lot of publications have appeared on the importance of using literature at schools – or, in more general terms, the importance of literature tout court . So variously, literature has been found to be good for empathy, perspective-taking, language development, culture, historical knowledge, personal growth, critical thinking, citizenship or both at the same time . Of course, we are all aware that at the same time, reading is declining (for example in England , in The Netherlands , in France ), parents and educators complain young people don’t read, can’t read, won’t read, even if we can all see that those same parents and educators must, by definition, form part of this non-reading public. Do as I say, not as I do. So we can see it coming, not because we can predict the future but because that future is already here: reading literature is a niche activity, one undertaken by a very small subset of our populations and largely upheld by education syst...

  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...