On Literature and Teaching

‘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....

Critical thinking has been an object of study for many decades now, although of course its origins can easily be traced back to at least Aristotle. And while one single definition of ‘Critical thinking’ has not yet been agreed upon, most of those interested in the question will accept that critical thinking can be sub-defined as having two main aspects – related, imbricated, intertwined yet distinct. These two aspects are the skills (properly so-called), and the dispositions . As those names indicate, there are two operations at work when ‘thinking critically’: there is the mental attitude required, the frame of mind: the dispositions. And there is the applying of well-known rules (or mechanisms) to understand where thinking went wrong: the skills. Dispositions are basically habits we must learn to develop: open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, inquisitiveness, the desire to be well-informed, respecting others’ perspective (see E. Lai, reference below). Those dispositions, those habits ...

  Clarifying the debate: Children and Young Adult books, and the idea of ‘Literature teaching’ There’s a been something of a debate lately concerning the value of Children’s literature, and by extension, YAL (Young Adult lit.). You might have seen it coming by online, and in newspapers: something along the lines of ‘ Which books are good enough (‘rich’ enough) to be given to read to the youth? ’. Some have answered in a restrictive way, pointing out the value of ‘rich content’ books and how those can add value to the reading experience. Some, of course, advocate an ‘anything-goes’ attitude, where whichever book you get someone to read is a good thing: what matters is not really what they read, but the very fact that they read. Among those, it’s fair to say that sometimes their reaction seems informed by their own interests (see Sander Meij in the NRC, October 2024, who quotes his own books as being worthy of being read), or by a research project, or by a desire to be ecumenic...