Why literature should still be taught at school -An educator’s view

We people in the book world know without a shadow of a doubt that literature, spread across numerous genres and sub-genres, should be taught and read at school, now and forever. But we don’t always pinpoint or articulate our numerous reasons for this conviction.

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To start with the obvious: the digital context. Whilst numerous learners purportedly ‘read online’, the concern is that they may not be reading extended text. Thirty-five characters in an SMS, tweet, insta-post or WhatsApp does very little for the development of whole language in its extended forms, as exemplified in literature. Exposing learners to varied examples of extended discourse does not only impact on language development (in its many aspects including vocabulary, syntax, and symbolical and literal meaning), but also on learners’ capacity for conceptualising skeins of interconnections between big ideas and between groups of ideas. In other words, true cognitive development and its indispensable cousins, critical thinking and creativity, are best acquired and modelled through the types of elaborated and interwoven discourse provided by carefully selected literature. In this context, literature may include hybrid genres such as creative non-fiction. Choosing, dare I say, well-written works of literature which have relevance to learners and which engage their interests and propel them to read further and more, will never not be the recipe for development.

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Many thinkers argue that literature offers a ‘window on the world’, giving readers access to visions of other cultures, contexts, eras and peoples to which learners may not otherwise be exposed. This exposure goes to the very heart of offering humanist values to learners. Preaching diversity and knowledge of social differences may remain abstract, unless the vehicle of reading extended texts (among other strategies) proliferates the worlds and people which readers can see in their mind’s eye. Opening literature’s window onto other worlds, and keeping it open, brings me to another idea: literature as a transcultural bridge. Exploring fables and myths of various lengths and styles from several cultures invariably shows how different cultures ask the same or similar fundamental questions of themselves, about humanity, society, language, the planet. Stories, then, show our likenesses and resonances across cultures whilst also narrating our unique differences.

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As for narrative: exposing learners to different kinds of telling, perspective and viewpoint, as literature richly does, surely attunes readers to the nature of telling, to the ways that language constructs versions of truth? In the age of the ‘influencer’, noticing (via literature and media studies) how telling is contingent upon positionality, agenda, intention, power and audience is surely an indispensable tool in the development of critical intelligence itself?

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We cannot forget one of the greatest gifts literature gives us: extended access to, and evidence of, imagination. Yes, of course! But how often do we mindfully pause and usher imaginative activity into the room? This miraculous human faculty doesn’t only reside in creative literature, though indeed it crystallises there in vivid, sensuous and metaphoric ways. It is found in the many other disciplines we capture in books, too: business, science or education, for example, where disciplines may be re-imagined and told afresh.

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So yes, we keep literature’s window on the world open because readers’ worlds would shrink, become breathless, become stale and stuffy if ever we were to close it.

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Dr Karen Lazar is an English educator of matric and tertiary students, an expert in professional literacies, a writing coach and author of three published works of literature.

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