Literature in my
school
I would neither say that Literature is thriving nor dying in
my school, it merely exists. The secondary ones do The Outsiders by S.E Hinton and introduction to poetry. The Secondary
twos do a collection of 6 Shakespeare’s plays, abridged version of course, and
Unseen prose and the secondary threes do Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.
The first thing my CT told me when we met was that when
she asked her Secondary 2 classes, on
the first day, if they enjoyed or even liked Literature , their immediate
response was NO!!! They apparently hated literature. And I don’t blame them. At
secondary one, the teaching of literature is mundane and dry and is basically
as formulaic as Maths. Perhaps there may be a shortage of literature teachers
in my school, which is ironic as three teachers co-teach the secondary twos, such
that the six secondary one classes are given a retired returning teacher whose
methods, let’s just as, are quite didactic. It’s more like preaching sessions
and students are just forced to learn Literature without actually enjoying it. Having observed her lessons in TP1, I know
that she basically drills students with the terms and even equated the learning
of the rhyme scheme to Maths, telling them all they had to do was write out the
rhyme scheme like a maths formula, without actually contextualizing it for
them. Likewise, alliteration was taught with a whole list of random sentences
for students to “practise” identifying the alliterated words. This was their
first lesson on poetry. I was in shock.
Thankfully, at secondary two, the situation is not so bad. My
CT and a BT are both Lit trained and they do make the lessons far more
interactive by eliciting responses from students and getting them to think
about the characters in Romeo and Juliet through questioning and pair discussions.
Since they co-teacher, which means at one time, there can be two teachers in the
class taking turns to teach, the worksheets are standardized and they do the
same thing in all 6 classes. I find it confusing that the teachers just go into
class and decide who teaches which character and I still have not fully
comprehended the rationale for co-teaching yet, since the teachers are teaching
using the same teaching style and follow the same lesson structure and do the
exact same thing, just with a different character. Perhaps it eases the marking
load.
The decline of
literature
As observed by most, the first words uttered by students
when they hear Literature are “boring”, “cannot score” and “useless”. Students seem to shrink away from it and I always
find myself asking why? Especially since I love it so much! The value of
Literature in instilling values is something I believe is possible, but I feel
should not be the goal of literature. That is what they have RICH lessons for.
Literature is definitely life, it deals with the complexities of being human, human
emotions, human relationships and society and so on and I feel that sadly, this
depth is rarely dealt with in the class. I feel that Literature is taught
following some sort of checklist- must teach those similes, metaphors, themes,
characters and so on and always linking it to the use of the PEEL structure to
answer questions. I looked at my school’s
SOW and they have many small quizzes, which in a way is good to check students
understanding, but it makes the whole process of learning mechanical. Thus,
although lessons are interactive, students are constantly reminded to use the
PEEL structure and that they have a test the following week which requires them
to write the answer in a certain way. Thus, once again, it boils down to our
education system’s emphasis on examinations and results to determine academic
success. Thus, while subjects like maths and chemistry and especially English (in
my school) are being drilled to the students, literature also falls prey and
the true potential of Literature is lost.
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