On Literature and Teaching

  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....

  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 Citize...

  I work in an area – Education – where the latest developments in AI technology have had an immediate impact – and yes, the same has happened across the board, I know. Since last year and Chatgpt’s arrival on the world scene, everyone – from pupils to students and teachers – has been using it. By ‘Everyone’ I obviously do not mean literally everyone, but it is clear that will soon be the case. Pupils use it to get their homework done, or pass tests; students ditto ; teachers to prepare lessons, develop material, design tests and have them marked – among many other things. Unsurprisingly, all those people claim that technology is great and helpful – well, they would, wouldn’t they? And to be fair, ‘great’ and ‘helpful’ are reasonable words to use in this case. So that’s not the problem. Equally unsurprisingly, those users will make sure to remind you of two things at all times: AI is not intelligent as we know and understand that word – it’s mindless, really – just a mach...