Ada's Reflection IV

As you all have already read from “A School-wide approach to implementing Literature in a Neighbourhood School” by Mrs June Henry, my school, Pasir Ris Crest Secondary School made a bold move in introducing Literature as a compulsory subject for all upper secondary students back in 2007.

Six years since that bold move, the state of Literature in my school is still very much alive thanks to the supportive school environment even though, Mr James Ong, the principal who introduced such a drastic move, is no longer the one helming the school. His successor, Mrs Woo Soo Min, continues to be a strong advocator of Literature as she firmly believes in its potential to teach students of life lessons beyond the classroom. Even though she was a history teacher before, she strongly believes in the values and skills that Literature is able to afford for the students. In fact, just on Monday, she addressed an article from The Sunday Times, “Reigniting the spark of Literature” which claimed that Pasir Ris Crest Secondary School may have prioritized the Triple Sciences over Literature. Over morning assembly the very next day after the article is published, she reiterates that the article from the Sunday Times may have left out an important part, such as how the school made Literature an elective for the students (those who are taking Double Humanities, Double Sciences, Double Maths, English and their Mother Tongue) who took Music as an additional O-level subject. That way, these students who are keen to learn Literature would only have to take 9 subjects at the very most and not be burdened by 10 subjects if literature is not offered as an elective. 

That issue aside, after reading some of my friends’ posts on how Literature is relegated to the backseat in their schools, I must say that Literature does not suffer the same fate in Pasir Ris Crest Secondary School.  In fact, it is quite the opposite as Literature is very much vibrant and not on the brink of death. While I would not deny that there are students who dislike taking Literature, most of them are genuinely interested in the subject because they had fun learning Literature at the lower secondary level. This is largely due to the dedicated teachers who were really passionate about teaching the subject to their students, who in return, participated actively in the class discussion that often results in a lively debate about the main issues found in the texts. For example, students managed to raise the issue of the gang-rape incident in India and link it with the plight of women in Fasting and Feasting by Anita Desai. On top of that, when they did The Outsiders by S.E Hinton, students also talked about the teen violence and paralleled it with the Downtown East stabbing incident that happened a few years back. These examples would then illustrate why learning Literature helps to promote social awareness of the world and develop students’ ability to be a discerning observer of the world around them. This would then reinforces one of the learning outcomes in the Literature Syllabus which seeks to encourage students to “make meaningful connections between texts and the self, texts and other texts, and texts and the world”, which Literature teachers in Pasir Ris Crest Secondary School are striving for.

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Looking at the debate that surrounds the decline in the number of students who chose Literature, it would perhaps be wise to see the reasons behind the plunge of the number of students who choose to take Literature over others in the recent years. The articles seem to surface many points behind literature’s decline and Dr Poon’s article mentioned that one of the main culprits behind the subject’s slow death is the failure to publish “the distinction rates in the case of O-level humanities subjects [that ] has led to the perpetuation of erroneous ideas about the alleged difficulty of a subject like literature.” This is indeed true as students and parents would often get the idea that Literature would be a stumbling block to achieving academic excellence. 

It has also been repeatedly said that literature plays an integral role in creating the platform for critical values and skills education in the 21^st century. Unfortunately, Literature does not seem to offer instant results. Values like empathy and compassion could not be taught over night. However, despite all that, I am truly glad that Pasir Ris Crest Secondary School along with many other schools mentioned in the articles still believes in the benefits that Literature brings, especially on the “power to humanize the students” and teach them how to relate to people and the world. 

One small trouble about the discussion is perhaps the point raised by Ms Indranee Rajah in urging schools to be less grade-conscious. In a highly pragmatic society which stresses academic excellence above everything else, changing such a mindset would not be easy and it would also require some time. The question would be how long more before Literature suffers a far worse fate? Of course, this could just be assuming that the numbers of students who choose to take Literature continues to decline further. However, looking at the efforts of writers and teachers who are prepared to do their part to reverse the decline of Literature, I am hoping that the subject would not die a slow death like it is today.