On Literature and Teaching

  Fiction as a safe place When it comes to citizenship education, a great many approaches can be taken, depending on which aspect of it you want to emphasise, or work on: you may be interested in the ‘Norms and values’ aspects, and want to come to grips with the workings of the democratic system, say. Or you may want to concentrate on the skills needed, for example communication skills; or you may focus on global citizenship, aspects of culture and inter-cultural communication and multi-cultural societies. Or you may be more interested in attending to critical thinking and its development in your learners. One issue any such approach will have, however, is that of loyalty. Loyalty to a family, loyalty to traditions, loyalty to a belief (system), loyalty to a culture. The bond that loyalty creates is strong, and will often override such notions as objectivity, multi-perspectival approach and willingness to consider different viewpoints. Thus when discussing, say, Dutch democracy...

  ‘ The aim of literary study is not to amuse the hours of leisure; it is to awake oneself, it is to be alive, to intensify one’s capacity for pleasure, for sympathy, and for comprehension. It is not to affect one hour, but twenty-four hours. It is to change utterly one’s relations with the world. Not isolated and unconnected parts of life, but all of life’ (Arnold Bennett, 1901).   ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach’. How many times have we heard that old saw? Because, really, can you teach something you can’t do? Well, yes, there is a way: by theorising that very thing you can’t do, or would like to do, or, well, that thing you teach. Or by canonising it, so you don’t have to engage with it. And here it is important to remember what happened to literature as an object of study. Despite arguments about who – and when – was the first, it is clear that there was no English Degree until late in the 19 th Century – that is, a university degree entirely dedicated t...

  Oscar Wilde: ‘It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors’ I was having a discussion with a student not long ago, about a novel and its main character, and how that character – a boy –   changes throughout the narrative. At some point, she exclaimed: ‘Ah, I see, this character has grown – he has developed!’. No, I said, it doesn’t pay to think that way. Instead, you should think: ‘That person has changed, that person has developed’- he’s not a character, he’s not made of cardboard or balsa wood, he’s not a Platonic shadow: he’s real, he lives and breathes like you and me. He’s alive . This idea that a made-up character, in a made-up situation, with made-up parents and friends and occupations, could be real, seems at first illogical. ‘No’ you say, he’s not real: he’s an invention, he’s got no blood in his made-up veins, no feelings in his made-up body and mind – he’s a character in a book of fiction, and as such he cannot exist for himself. His wo...