Literature is critical

Reflection 4 

The State of Literature in your school

For TP2, I am very lucky to be posted to a school different from my TP1 school. My TP1 school did not have Upper Sec Literature, and my Literature CT did not seem to like teaching Lit very much, often treating the Lit text like an advanced comprehension passage. Her Lit lessons consisted of chapter by chapter fill-in-the-blanks worksheets and test at the end of a couple of chapters. This time round, it is very obvious that the teachers who teach Lit are passionate about it (and are actually trained in Lit). There are 3 teachers who teach Lit, the 2 who teach Sec 1 have Lit as their 2nd CS (their 1st being English) and the Lit coordinator, Izzan, only teaches Lit, taking Sec 2, 3 and 4. While he is an excellent teacher, he is also a BT - one year our senior. For a BT to take on so much is extremely challenging, and it is rare for BTs to take graduating classes, but the school lost their Lit teacher of 12 years Mdm Irma due to a transfer and as such, Izzan had no choice but to take it on. With such a heavy workload, I hope he is able to stay passionate and continue inspiring the kids without burning out, because I think, more so than any other subject (other than maybe Art), Lit teachers must stay inspired and passionate if they want to feel the subject. For Sec 1, both Express and Normal do Bridge to Terabithia, which I think is a lovely choice to introduce them to Lit - the language is simple enough, yet the ideas of a fantasy world and children's problems of dealing with parents, peer pressure, bullying and teacher crushes are dealt with in the text. For assessment, my Lit CT focuses a lot on getting the students' opinions and personal response, using questioning to get them to discuss orally, and giving them opinion questions for them to work on writing out their opinion (e.g. Why do you think he did this? instead of What did he do?). For Sec 2, the students do The Merchant of Venice. The Sec 3s (17 of them) are currently doing Everything but the Brain by Jean Tay, while the Sec 4s (23 students) are doing Boom, also by Jean Tay. The Lower Sec students will be doing poetry and prose from Mining for Meaning textbook in the upcoming terms, while Upper Sec will be doing Telltale: 11 Stories.

Referring to Dr Dennis Yeo's note on Facebook 'Teaching Literature: A Teacher's POV', I guess I can understand why my previous Lit CTs had difficulty in teaching the subject and resorted to compre-style lessons - it is not for the faint of heart and I agree with Dr Yeo that Lit is the most difficult subject to teach, given the extreme time constraints, diverse student profiles etc. Perhaps cynicism and weariness were also factors that led to the drop in quality of Lit teaching - if so, I do not blame them.

The principal seems to support Lit. She was a Lit major and Lit teacher herself, who started off teaching Lit and GP at Pre-U, then taught in secondary school, before moving to primary school. She enthused about introducing Lit even at primary school. During the Lit lesson study, I learnt that she also seems to give her opinions about Lit teaching, as she had expressed her disapproval at using images to help students' envisionment when teaching poetry.

My English CT does current affairs, and one of the things that came up was Literature since it's being discussed in the papers. She asked them why they didn't choose Lit, and for the N/A students, they felt it was too difficult (they take Art or F&N or POA instead), and for the Triple Science Express class, they said that they chose Triple Science "for a brighter future", implying that they think there is no future in taking Lit. I don't blame them - they can't help that they're part of this kiasu society with its misplaced elitism, myopic thinking and obsession with money.

I asked the Sec 3 Lit students why they chose to do Lit. Some of them said 'because I qualified' (there was a requirement for them to have had at least A2 for Lit and B3 for English at Sec 2 to be able to take Lit). But I could tell from their class that they actually like doing the subject, and it's students like these who will be the fuel that keep us going as we fight this (losing) battle for Lit.

The Lit Debate

I wanted to cry reading Dr Poon's article again, because she so astutely and cleverly turned the argument on its head.

"Ironically, not publishing the distinction rates in the case of O-level humanities subjects has led to the perpetuation of erroneous ideas about the alleged difficulty of a subject like Literature. Literature thus has the dubious distinction of being the policy victim of both an over-emphasis on academic achievement and the move to de-emphasise grades. Failure to discern the irony just proves my point that Literature as a subject should be strongly encouraged, and not needlessly allowed to be collateral damage in the false name of greater curricular choice."

It's my favourite line out of all the articles pertaining to the Lit debate - "Failure to discern the irony just proves my point that Literature as a subject should be strongly encouraged". How many of our Lit students would actually understand and appreciate irony, one of the most difficult concepts to teach and understand? Without the benefit of Lit, would people actually appreciate irony? And so many of life's little nuances that Lit strives to appreciate and grapple with? How dull would conversation and life be, without us not being able to use literary language to express ourselves? We already do it unknowingly, through conceptual metaphors, but being able to better understand metaphors will help us better extend and express ourselves through them.

Lit is life
I love that little Allison had wisdom far beyond her years when she wrote that "literature ... does not feel like a subject at all; it is more like an initiation into humanity and life itself". Lit makes you feel things, feel being human - and this is what makes us human, is it not? I don't think any other subject, other than maybe Art, can inspire as much as Lit can - when we face extreme emotions, we turn to beautiful words to even attempt to express how we feel. Inspirational words and poetry, I would argue, are interchangeable - words that inspire are poetic, and poetry, being 'the best words in the best order' can be inspiring. So without Lit, how can we be an inspired people?

'Critical'
Dr Suzanne Choo's article in The Sunday Times also highlighted Lit's value to teach values. Her headline read 'No literature? Sadly, a missed opportunity to teach values', but I felt it should have read 'critical values', given her brilliant argument, lining out historical factors that led to the current state of affairs, and the need for critical values education in the 21st century, now more than ever before. Like Dr Poon, Dr Choo's clever wordplay was moving - on one hand, 'critical' referred to questioning and challenging and critiquing. On the other hand, the use of the word 'critical' in its capacity of being something vital and of utmost importance also reflected how she felt that moving away from 'utiliarian education' and 'restor(ing) the centrality of literature education' is imperative.

People power
As such, individual Literature teachers and people who have the authority to make change are vital if we want to turn things around. Ms Indranee Rajah mentioned that there are enough Lit teachers to go around, but I question, given my experience, whether some Lit teachers actually want to teach Lit and/or have even been trained in the discipline.

I think the way forward for now is to pander to the ignoramus, and as much as I hate it, package Literature as a means of improving English language, as suggested by some of the forum writers. This can be started even in primary school, as one writer noted that our 'textbook answer' culture stems from primary school. Then we who know better sneakily get students to question status quo, read below the surface and see that there is more to life than just money. No longer can the Ministry get away with producing passive, unthinking machines. But all this is so much easier said than done. Can we recruit enough good Literature teachers to fight the good fight? And keep those good teachers passionate and not tainted by cynicism and disillusionment from all the obstacles they face, Lit-related or not?