Poetry Should Be Taught and Written in School
Why Poetry should be taught and written in schools
← “rendering of profound philosophical thoughts locked in magnificent imagery.” By: Rev Gideon Cecil (http://www.stabroeknews.com/2008/opinion/letters/08/05/martin-carter’s-poetry-should-be-taught-in-schools/) ← To encourage language and literacy skills; in ways which make meaningful contact with a range of curricular subjects; and with proper attention to technical detail. Light verse accomplishes many of these non-poetic purposes as well as any other genre. But until education theory asks itself what poetry itself is, and therefore what the teacher is trying to get across, poems will continue largely to figure as teaching aids, exercises and - for teenagers - increasingly tedious, somewhat arbitrary puzzles whose role is to raise pupils' scores in public exams. ← Poetry, in every era and culture, has operated as a heightened discourse, more pleasurable - beautiful, memorable, imaginative, disobedient - than the daily. It has always been the language of ritual and liturgy, of song and special occasion. These things seem almost too obvious to say. ← Why does this matter? One, utilitarian, response would be to say that it's because, as child-centred learning demonstrates, a young (or for that matter an older) person learns more of what they enjoy, and learns it "better". Another is that such sources of pleasure - complex ones, not the single-pointed pleasures of the chip-bar in the canteen - are essential in the shared, public environment which is a school.
← affords complex pleasures, such as the concatenation of sound and sense, which model and enable just this kind of development. And young people are engaged by those very qualities which "make poetry work" beyond the classroom: mystery, glamour, the space to dream. ← Brings different feelings to each person ← Creationalism = making poetry ← Can express one self ← Relise anything that someone is
← “rendering of profound philosophical thoughts locked in magnificent imagery.” By: Rev Gideon Cecil (http://www.stabroeknews.com/2008/opinion/letters/08/05/martin-carter’s-poetry-should-be-taught-in-schools/) ← To encourage language and literacy skills; in ways which make meaningful contact with a range of curricular subjects; and with proper attention to technical detail. Light verse accomplishes many of these non-poetic purposes as well as any other genre. But until education theory asks itself what poetry itself is, and therefore what the teacher is trying to get across, poems will continue largely to figure as teaching aids, exercises and - for teenagers - increasingly tedious, somewhat arbitrary puzzles whose role is to raise pupils' scores in public exams. ← Poetry, in every era and culture, has operated as a heightened discourse, more pleasurable - beautiful, memorable, imaginative, disobedient - than the daily. It has always been the language of ritual and liturgy, of song and special occasion. These things seem almost too obvious to say. ← Why does this matter? One, utilitarian, response would be to say that it's because, as child-centred learning demonstrates, a young (or for that matter an older) person learns more of what they enjoy, and learns it "better". Another is that such sources of pleasure - complex ones, not the single-pointed pleasures of the chip-bar in the canteen - are essential in the shared, public environment which is a school.
← affords complex pleasures, such as the concatenation of sound and sense, which model and enable just this kind of development. And young people are engaged by those very qualities which "make poetry work" beyond the classroom: mystery, glamour, the space to dream. ← Brings different feelings to each person ← Creationalism = making poetry ← Can express one self ← Relise anything that someone is