Page 27 - The Gonzaga Record 1990
P. 27
·Even in England they have recognised long since that the essay ...
is an outmoded literary form. It is a form of writing that does not
make a powerful appeal to most readers. least of all to th e majority
of young people of seventeen. £t is education of this kind which giv es
people a permanent and justifiable di slik e for everything that is
.. literary ... that can be labell ed ··culture ..... ·
Now. I should say at once th at in th e course of eighteen years I have
ta ught some of those ssays with pleasure. seen them inform both content
and sty le of some boys · writing. The point to be made. however. is that
these \'ery essays v\'ere examined for the last time only in 1990. and that
the canon which kept them in place for so long also excluded mu ch else
of equal educational va lu e. just as it delayed until 1986 the introduction
of an extended pool of modern drama. Young minds must nev er be denied
the right of access to Shakespeare. Wordsworth. Hardy through the
syllabus. if they are ready for th em and th e teacher capable of delivering:
but there is an awful lot else (as th e Junior Certificate acknowledges) that
they could be reading pleasurably. without too much difficulty. and with
unquestionable educational advantage.
I had better finish quickly with negative definition. Gone are the days
when texts were ransacked for examples of litotes. synecdoche, transferred
epith et and enjambement (or 'enjumblement'. as an ea rly mentor of mine
once found in a ch ild 's essay). Nor do we st ud y lit erature to make 'writers·
of our students.
And the successful exam candidate? What has he achieved?
Unfortunately there is still reason to suspect that. for many. the exam
remains a test of 'memory or cunning', to quote 'Men Speechless' once
more. That does not offer much comforting va lid at ion of th e work in
teaching I iterature. There is much debate at present as to how to make
the exam a test of the candidate's 'genuine personal responses' to literature.
Clearly. that needs a lot of thinking out; it would never do for it to become
a test of umwored responses. It seems to me to be as potentially dangerous
as the suggestion that every pupil shou ld be encouraged in the 'uninhibited
use of hi s own language'.
It 's th ere I stated a case. What does, then, give literature (some
qualifications made) a special place in the curricu lum , an educational
valu e? I think the answer still li es (as it always has) in what Fr Veale
had time only to allude to: the 'valuable humani stic formation' of 'reading
wid ely and with enj oyment '. By that r take him to have meant, broadly.
that literature belongs among the liberal, non-utilitarian areas of the
curriculum, and that it 'humanises'. This is not th e place for a defence
of the humanities in the current economic climate: such defences tend
to be strident, rhetorical (in the pejorative sense) and unbalanced, and
the reader of the Record can be pres umed to be already a convert. Suffice
it to say that the spirit of Gradgrind is alive and thriving, that hard-nosed
economic wisdom rules the wisdom of heart and imagination. It can be
25
is an outmoded literary form. It is a form of writing that does not
make a powerful appeal to most readers. least of all to th e majority
of young people of seventeen. £t is education of this kind which giv es
people a permanent and justifiable di slik e for everything that is
.. literary ... that can be labell ed ··culture ..... ·
Now. I should say at once th at in th e course of eighteen years I have
ta ught some of those ssays with pleasure. seen them inform both content
and sty le of some boys · writing. The point to be made. however. is that
these \'ery essays v\'ere examined for the last time only in 1990. and that
the canon which kept them in place for so long also excluded mu ch else
of equal educational va lu e. just as it delayed until 1986 the introduction
of an extended pool of modern drama. Young minds must nev er be denied
the right of access to Shakespeare. Wordsworth. Hardy through the
syllabus. if they are ready for th em and th e teacher capable of delivering:
but there is an awful lot else (as th e Junior Certificate acknowledges) that
they could be reading pleasurably. without too much difficulty. and with
unquestionable educational advantage.
I had better finish quickly with negative definition. Gone are the days
when texts were ransacked for examples of litotes. synecdoche, transferred
epith et and enjambement (or 'enjumblement'. as an ea rly mentor of mine
once found in a ch ild 's essay). Nor do we st ud y lit erature to make 'writers·
of our students.
And the successful exam candidate? What has he achieved?
Unfortunately there is still reason to suspect that. for many. the exam
remains a test of 'memory or cunning', to quote 'Men Speechless' once
more. That does not offer much comforting va lid at ion of th e work in
teaching I iterature. There is much debate at present as to how to make
the exam a test of the candidate's 'genuine personal responses' to literature.
Clearly. that needs a lot of thinking out; it would never do for it to become
a test of umwored responses. It seems to me to be as potentially dangerous
as the suggestion that every pupil shou ld be encouraged in the 'uninhibited
use of hi s own language'.
It 's th ere I stated a case. What does, then, give literature (some
qualifications made) a special place in the curricu lum , an educational
valu e? I think the answer still li es (as it always has) in what Fr Veale
had time only to allude to: the 'valuable humani stic formation' of 'reading
wid ely and with enj oyment '. By that r take him to have meant, broadly.
that literature belongs among the liberal, non-utilitarian areas of the
curriculum, and that it 'humanises'. This is not th e place for a defence
of the humanities in the current economic climate: such defences tend
to be strident, rhetorical (in the pejorative sense) and unbalanced, and
the reader of the Record can be pres umed to be already a convert. Suffice
it to say that the spirit of Gradgrind is alive and thriving, that hard-nosed
economic wisdom rules the wisdom of heart and imagination. It can be
25
