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...

  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...

‘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....

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 t...