On Literature and Teaching

A rush of thoughts is the only conceivable prosperity that can come to us (Emerson) In the numerous debates around AI that have been taking place lately, we have all heard ‘ tout et son contraire ’, as we say – we heard everything in all directions, for all arguments. Some say it will save the world, some that it will destroy it; some claim AI will make us better, or freer, or more creative, or more intelligent, while others will claim the exact opposite – time gained will be spent on scrawling, not learning, we will forget simple stuff, we will lose ourselves and what makes us who we are. Bertrand Russell wrote (I think in the 30s?) a little book on how we would all benefit from having 4-hour work- days: instead of slaving away behind a desk or at a machine for eight hours each day, let’s work less and create time for ourselves. Russell’s hope was that we’d use that time to educate ourselves so as to become better people. A claim many AI-supporters replicate today, in all shapes a

  There sometimes seems to be a misconception around the use of literature (= fiction) in class as regards the time needed, the nature of the texts used, the activities organised around it, and the way we teachers can work on citizenship-related issues. Very broadly speaking (as I know for a fact that many teachers devote hours and hours of their own time to devise a curriculum), we could say that many schools: ·        See fiction as an example of a time-period or a context, where a text becomes a fact ( who, when, what about ), an exemplar – the text is not discussed because essentially it is a label and a cultural-historical object (for example: Byron was a romantic, we’re having a project on Romanticism, so Byron’s name is mentioned as one of the romantic poets; nothing further is done with his texts than showing one of them). ·        See literature classes as isolated from the rest of the world, and therefore the curriculum (this week, we’re having a literature project! Aft

  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 Citizenshi

  ‘Learning without thinking is useless. Thinking without learning is dangerous’ (attributed to Confucius)  There is an on-going debate in the Netherlands about the place to be given to citizenship education – Burgerschapsonderwijs in Dutch. Citizenship ( burgerschap ) is in fact a required part of secondary schools’ curriculum; that is, all schools are legally required to teach it. Since teaching something necessitates first defining that something, the problem starts with a simple question: what does one mean with Citizenship and citizenship education? While at first it may seem redundant to ask that question (after all, don’t we all know what being a citizen means?), it quickly becomes clear that it isn’t, as it turns out we don’t all agree on what citizenship means, nor what teaching citizenship entails. I’m not exactly interested in tracing back the history of that subject, so suffice it to say that so far, one camp has dominated the Dutch discussion – something that is v