Appearance of Literature lessons is one of the few things that are invariant in
almost all school programs in the world. For a reason. It is one of the main
sources of cultural awareness, it poses ethical questions, it helps in creating
multiple links between the objects and events in life, helping us to approach
the state of “experts” in reality. Before the formal literature lessons
started, I was a keen reader of fiction, both adult and children’s, as well as
popular science, geography, and similar.
However, when the literature appeared in my school schedule, my interest
started decreasing. I am coming from the Former Soviet Union, were pupils were
often asked to write essays on the books they just read, with most popular
topic template being “Why Mr X is my favourite character in book Y”. To say the
least, I would not always even agree with such statement. Writing essays is
good, but when your are constantly forced into narrow space and penalised for
violating it (that’s how marking works), you start losing motivation for
good writing and then even, by association, for reading.
In the summer following my last year in the secondary school — just before
entering university — I read much more than I usually would, and with much
more enjoyment as well.
Certainlly the tasks we were given in the school were not very well connected
to real world and our own values and thoughts. They may have served the
assessment purpose: have the pupil actually read what was demanded? As far as
the pupil is concerned, the only appreciable benefit in writing such essay is
not to get too bad a mark.
Can literature be made an attracting subject? I would say yes, and even more,
it has all the necessary elements to be: storytelling is meant to be
interesting! Simply make the pupil feel that they are invited to read and
write, not forced; connect the studied topics with real, today’s world
situations, synchronise the literature and history curricula, so that they
support each other (by the way, history lessons can also be made really
boring). Make essay grading more flexible, or, maybe, completely abandon
numerical grading in favour of some written feedback (should the pupils be
graded in subjects like Literature, Music, Drawing, or PE at all, if they are
not optional in the curriculum?).