“Anything goes”⋯ connecting children to literature: A personal view

Abstract

In a recent article in the weekly Times Educational Supplement,Roger Knight attacked some of the various “kits” and “packages” which are currently on offer to support teachers and children in preparing for examinations in English literature. Compilers are accused of trivializing the study of literature and distracting teachers and children away from a “proper” concern with the language of the novel or poem. Some aspects of the compilations are seen by Knight as being akin to “party games from a Christmas cracker,” and in becoming involved, “the teacher for whom literature matters as literature is likely to feel ⋯ superannuated, disregarded and excluded from the party.” “Such compilations numb the texts and numb the understanding,” Knight continues, “⋯ and the mentality they so fully express derives partly from the erroneous and fashionable belief that any response to a work of literature is valuable.”

In this paper, Michael O'Hara offers a personal view on literature teaching in British schools and takes issue with Knight's view that certain approaches to the teaching of literature can be ruled out a priori. He suggests that in the right hands all kinds of approaches are possible. In short, in the teaching of literature, and as long as imagination and judgment prevail, anything goes!