Literature as aesthetic knowledge: implications for curriculum and education

Abstract

This paper presents an argument for aesthetic knowledge in the arts and more specifically, for an aesthetic model of literature to be central in the curriculum. I argue that there are important distinctions to be made between the everyday experiences unique to us as individuals, and the universality of human experience. In the English Literature curriculum, this important difference is manifested in the status of the text because it is through a triadic engagement between educator, text and pupil that the meanings of experience can be evoked objectively. Through changing cultural and policy contexts in the post‐war period, the text has been marginalised in the curriculum. This has contributed to two detrimental effects. The first is that direct personal responses and experience have been overvalued in the English Literature curriculum. The second is that the idea of objective knowledge in literature has been misconstrued as knowledge of its linguistic substratum. Consequently, an important form of aesthetic knowledge is largely absent in Britain's secondary curriculum. The paper is organized into three sections. Section one describes main shifts in the cultural and policy contexts. Section two provides a brief empirical example of how shifts at the macro‐level have been re‐contextualised within the implied curriculum found in examples of national exams. Section three elucidates the deeper significance of these changes in light of a theoretical discussion of Kantian aesthetics and implications for a social realist approach to knowledge, curriculum and pedagogy derived from Durkheim.

Preference, Passing and Fresh Perspectives: Text Selection by Secondary School English Teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…However, at the same time, many of these writers agree that social realism has "struck a chord" (Yates et al, 2019, p. 58) with scholars of subject English, as it has highlighted the ways in which the question of what students should know in English has all but been removed from both curriculum documents and the broader discourse, "in favour of an emphasis on skills and outcomes" students in English classrooms should master (Docke & Mead, 2018, p. 254). In what follows, what could be seen as the 'existing' account of subject English under social realism will be outlined, mainly by drawing together what Young and Muller have said about the subject, as well as on the work of Cuthbert (2017Cuthbert ( , 2019, who attempts to develop Young and Muller's ideas. I will then simultaneously critique and build-upon this vision to reach the 'modified social realist position' this thesis will operate from.…”

“…Cuthbert (2017), who attempts to develop some of Young & Muller's ideas, writes that literature offers powerful knowledge in that it offers access to universal ideas "through the particular" (p.108) -i.e. unlike a scientific theorem, a novel is both a particular depiction of particular events, characters and so on, and, through this particular depiction, also an insight into something universal (see also Cuthbert, 2019, where she makes very similar arguments). These universal ideas allow students to transcend their daily realities, just as the abstract concepts of STEM subjects do, though the ways they do this are different.…”

“…English and the academy. Social realism's answer to 'what texts should be taught' is to turn to professional disciplinary communities (chiefly in universities) and to the canon (Cuthbert 2017(Cuthbert , 2019Young, 2014). Again, in many respects this is a reasonable claim.…”

“…They are particularly useful when attempting to consider whether a text is historically significant or influential in a given literary tradition, i.e., whether it has had a significant impact on later texts. They may also offer useful guidance around the aesthetic quality of a text, as Cuthbert (2017Cuthbert ( , 2019 argues. However, as Yates (2017a) highlights, and as has already been discussed, "social and political values" (p. 46) inevitably shape which content university academics in the humanities might prioritise in a way that is much less likely to happen in scientific fields: whether they are a Marxist or a postcolonialist, for example, will inevitably shape their ideas about which texts are most powerful, most important to read.…”

Preference, Passing and Fresh Perspectives: Text Selection by Secondary School English Teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…However, at the same time, many of these writers agree that social realism has "struck a chord" (Yates et al, 2019, p. 58) with scholars of subject English, as it has highlighted the ways in which the question of what students should know in English has all but been removed from both curriculum documents and the broader discourse, "in favour of an emphasis on skills and outcomes" students in English classrooms should master (Docke & Mead, 2018, p. 254). In what follows, what could be seen as the 'existing' account of subject English under social realism will be outlined, mainly by drawing together what Young and Muller have said about the subject, as well as on the work of Cuthbert (2017Cuthbert ( , 2019, who attempts to develop Young and Muller's ideas. I will then simultaneously critique and build-upon this vision to reach the 'modified social realist position' this thesis will operate from.…”