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Jayne Dowle: Let children learn to love our literature
I'VE been reading bedtime stories to my children since they were babies.
However exhausted we all are, I love the ritual; the choosing of the book, the delight as they learn to recognise words and anticipate the next twist of the plot, eager to turn the page.
But I've never seen Jack, who is seven, be quiet and take notice like he did when we went to see Jim Carrey in A Christmas Carol (with his four-year-old sister, Lizzie, and two friends). The terrifying ghosts and special effects left them speechless.
Lizzie took one look, fell asleep and woke up to a happy ending, just the way she likes it. Several friends thought I was mad, taking such small children to such a scary film. But the English Lit graduate in me wanted them all to experience – and remember – their first taste of Dickens as exciting as the latest blockbuster.
Too many children think that "books are boring". Almost a third of teenagers failed to take English Literature at GCSE last year. Novelist Josephine Hart is leading a campaign to reinstate the importance of literature at the core of the curriculum. She believes that our
literary canon is in danger of becoming the preserve of the educational elite, with thousands of young people in state schools missing out on the books which tell the story of our nation.
In many schools, studying literature for its own sake is being phased out in favour of a joint qualification combining it with language, with "extracts" rather than full-length novels on the menu. How can this encourage children to really savour books? And as importantly, how can it teach them vital transferable skills such as concentration, perseverance and interpretation of personal stories and big ideas?
Well, if Ms Hart decides to march on Parliament, she can count me in. English Literature transformed my life, shaped my beliefs and made me who I am. If it did it for me it can do it for other young people.
Until I was 13, my reading was mostly limited to Enid Blyton, my mother's Catherine Cooksons, and, when I discovered where she had hidden them, her racy Jilly Coopers. Then an inspirational English teacher introduced me to DH Lawrence and George Orwell. Suddenly I saw my own life reflected back at me on the page.
In the first Lawrence short story I read, The Odour of Chrysanthemums, about the death of a miner, I recognised members of my family. In Orwell, I began to understand how our society was put together. I was off, on a journey that was to take me from a Barnsley comprehensive to Oxford University, to a house full of books, and two children getting their first encounter with Dickens before they can do joined-up writing.
I'm not remotely elitist about books. I enjoy a Jackie Collins as much as sitting down and trying to work out, for the hundredth time, TS Eliot's The Four Quartets. But a lot of people are snobbish, and I think that if we are to keep English Literature alive, we have to get rid of this class divide. Too many people in high places believe that ordinary children won't "get" serious literature.
They are wrong. But it needs good teachers, supportive parents, a flexible attitude and a committed curriculum. My friend, an English teacher in a local comprehensive, tells a story about a boy being questioned on Macbeth by a grand examiner from Harrogate. She asked him what he thought of it, and he replied: "It was a reight story, full of blood and guts and thunder. It's a cracking book Miss. Have you ever read it?"
So, I'd say, don't make assumptions. Find ways of bringing books alive –through films, plays, television adaptations, acting in class – that will really engage young people. As EM Forster said: "Only connect."
So I want my children's teachers to be allowed to make those connections. If the only way to get children interested in Jane Austen is to compare it to Hannah Montana, then do it.
Give the teaching of literature a point, and a perspective. Children always want to know "why?", so let pupils appreciate the wider historical context of why a book was written when it was written.
Encourage them to see the words as part of their shared British heritage, whatever their own background. From Monica Ali to William Blake, we are so lucky in this country to have such a rich collection of writers who tell our story, in so many different ways. We should celebrate that, embrace it and encourage our children to enjoy it, not just in the classroom, but at every opportunity.
So that is why, when I've finished this, I'm going to go and find my special book of Christmas tales, and put it on the coffee table with the chocolates and the nativity scene.
There is one big story at this time of year, but it isn't the only one. So let's all give our children the gift of literature this Christmas.
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Tuesday 22 May 2012
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