No abstract

Plays are read aloud in parts by classes or groups; novels are read silently by individuals or aloud by teachers; poems are read more than once and recited or dissected. These are the operational differences in how the main forms of literature are taught in secondary schools. But what about the different functions of teaching these forms of literary reading? What distinct style of literary reading does each of these operations model in order to justify teaching all three formsthe play, the novel, the poem? A lull in curricular change gives us the chance to reconsider the justifications of the literary forms and what distinct sorts of aesthetic experience reading them in school can offer. This is specially true of poetry, once the most insecure of the forms, but now fashionable again and protected by National Curriculum Orders, tests, and suggestions for texts. What parts can poetry reach that other forms of literature don't? How should we deal with poetry in school t o exploit its specialness? Do poems offer more than the pragmatic appeal of being short enough to memorise, or to fit into a five-minute gap or one side of A4?Much poetry teaching encourages poems to be read only as dramatic monologues or choruses, or as specially dense, terse prose fiction.The way that poems are chosen, followed-up and tested does too little t o exemplify, model and foster the special sorts of aesthetic experiences which poems offer.The unique and paradoxical essence of poetry lies in its being what Benton et al. (1988) call a 'double discourse'. One side of poetry's coin is its aural nature. That is well acknowledged and enacted in current practice. Current teaching and materials (though not the National Curriculum Orders) do ample justice to poetry as sound. School poetry books urge reading aloud, and some of the most popular poets in school are characterised by emphasis on rhythm or a vernacular voice. But though poetry is the most auraland therefore time-boundof literatures, it is also the most visualand therefore time-freeof literatures.

The National Curriculum is bringing a systematic attention to the place of language in the teaching and learning of Art, but may be suppressing some of the liveliness of language in art. Art teaches a specialist vocabulary with benefits beyond the art lesson, but there are dangers (and opportunities) in the use of words in art which have different meanings elsewhere. Art rooms have traditionally promoted a rich variety of language uses, but new pressures could lead to formulaic didactic lessons with too little pupil discussion. One language use in art, from which English teachers could learn, is discussion about the aesthetic qualities of artefacts which pupils make or are shown. English teaching too often treats poems as documentaries, but art can teach pupils to use words for looking and thinking about artefacts in their own terms. A danger here, in art as in English, is that introducing a canon can encourage talking about art in second-hand language which does not connect with pupils' experiences. Language would drive a model of pedagogy in which experience and perception inform the formation of new concepts, then new concepts inform the search for new experience and perception, in an ascending spiral of aesthetic understanding which could also be both a pleasure and an education of the feelings.

No abstract

No abstract