Putting on those context spectacles

Context is such a tricky aspect of English teaching. Too much emphasis on context causes students to offload spurious facts and details. Too little emphasis on context and students make random statements and lots of misconceptions. How many times have we seen students proclaim that ‘all’ Victorians felt or thought something? The idea that society is just one collective thought and feeling is slightly chilling.   

I don’t deny that contextual knowledge is useful and helps to frame understanding, but its problem in English usually stems from the concrete nature of things. If we are thinking of knowledge in English, then the easiest knowledge students can secure is knowledge around context. The problem for English is that a lot of English is forming inferences. The key inferences we ask of students in English relate to three areas usually: 

• Inferences around the writer’s intent;

• Inferences around the reader’s reaction; 

• Inferences around the characters in the texts. 

Yes, you do need a lot of knowledge to form those inferences, but the thinking isn’t quite ‘concrete’. There’s a lot of supposition, guessing, and relating to past knowledge. A lot of the knowledge surrounding this stems from experience rather than direct teaching. This reminds me of a book I read and in it the character reacted the same way.  Contextual knowledge often sounds good in the students head but doesn’t relate to the inferences needed in most English essays, inferring the writer’s intent, the reader’s reaction or the character’s thoughts and feelings. That’s why we get knowledge dumps in essays. 

The other alternative has been to focus on the text as the source of contextual information. The text is simply a product of its time. This tends to be the way the exam board prefers, but it doesn’t make things so easy. If students are not used to exploring the text as a product of its time, then they don’t see it as that. Put any old show or film before a student and they’ll notice the dated effects, fashion, technology  or language. They don’t really explore the people and how attitudes towards gender or class have changed. Exhibit A: they all remember the word ‘squiffy’ in ‘An Inspector Calls’. Astute students can spot the aspects that reflect the time, but that’s a minority. 

I personally think there is a balance to be had. Students need some knowledge, but not too much and certainly not knowledge that is going to over complicate and problematise understanding. What do I mean by knowledge that problematises understanding? Take, for example, Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Often, students are informed about the contextual history surrounding homosexuality in the Victorian age. This then, for some students, warps their understanding of the text. Instead of it being one possible interpretation of the text, it becomes the glue that links all ideas together. We can do more damage with some pieces of knowledge for some students. I think there should be a greater discussion of problematic knowledge in the same way we talk about misconceptions. They have the power to override all thoughts. 

It is the relationship that this contextual knowledge has with the writer and the text that needs to be at the forefront of the teaching. And, we need to work on making the writer a person and a concrete aspect. More concrete than the knowledge related to context. 

So, how, in theory, do I introduce context and make the writer seem concrete when discussing texts? 

Step 1 - The basics 

Firstly, I get students to watch a video as homework. I ask them to watch it before reading the text. I inform the class that I am going to test them on what they learn from the video. 

An Inspector Calls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fXw8lWWtlA

A Christmas Carol 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xRonangfz0&list=PLQTtyDJWDJDZns579hi1OGlYtktiFwstn&index=6

Then, I start the next lesson with a test. The link is below.  https://www.dropbox.com/s/mehkq1sxgncziiq/11%20Homework%20Questions%20to%20Context%20Video.docx?dl=0

This document is used repeatedly over the course of GCSEs. It forms revision and works as a constant reminder of key threads in the story. Initially, we throw the first copy away as students get quite a few wrong on the first go. The next time we do it, about a week later, I get them to make it neat as it will be the one that stays in their books. 

I start with this approach rather than use lots of exploratory texts, because students need a grounding of knowledge in the first instance. Whilst I think it is lovely and nice to show a few texts related to the period, it is rather ‘pin the tail on the donkey’. I could spend a lesson exploring hoping students would pick up attitudes towards class or I could tell them that attitudes towards class was an issue and then get them to explore how that idea is developed, explored in a painting or text. 

Step 2 - building the writer 

Unless you routinely get students to salute and bow to an image of the writer, the writer is a ghostly presence in the room. Some can see him/her. Others cannot. English teachers need to help students form a construction in their heads of the writer. They need a construction of the writer that makes them seem like a real person. Someone with an active presence in the text and the lesson. We are reading that writer’s manifesto. 

To construct that writer, I use the context sheet. If this was the world you were growing up in, what would you think? What would you want? What would you do in your writing to make society change? 

From this, we are able to construct ‘a construct’ of the writer. Of course, we are making inferences. 

Dickens was… 

• Protective of children and saw children as losing their childhood 

• Lost his childhood and so didn’t want others to lose theirs 

• Angry that there were very few options for the poor 

• Felt that the government wasn’t doing enough to help the weakest 

• Conscious of how money affected society 

• Felt that money controlled all aspects of our lives 

• Angry that the rich were profiteering from the poor 

• Interested in politics and read government reports 

• Aware of how easy and quickly someone could become poor 

• Aware of how people are determined to stay rich

From this, we had constructed an idea of this person. Students had an idea of who Dickens was as a person. They had this mantra for the book: 

Dickens thought Britain was broken and saw that his book could be the message to fix it. 

It became the default response when reading the text.  

Why does Dickens make the setting cold and foggy? Because Britain was broken, Dickens wanted to suggest how cold society was. The fog symbolises how they couldn’t see the problem and so there was no sense of things improving.  

By securing an initial understanding of the writer, we have something to frame ideas around. Therefore, their inferences developed and extended throughout the reading of the text. They’d start understanding that Dickens cared for the poor, but notice how he wasn’t really against the rich. But, what they had was a starting point to build inferences around the writer’s intent, which they can use to build and create their own. If students have knowledge of the primary intent, then they can explore secondary intentions. 

We spend so much time on character construction that we fail to address the biggest thing we want students to talk about - the writer. 

Step 3 - exploring the text 

Now that we have some threads to work with, I return back to this sheet and the construct of the writer routinely when looking at the text. They have a compass to guide their thinking and to work with. We put a lot of stock on their memory, but whilst reading a text we need to keep working on building connections. After reading a section, I will get students to link to the context or construct somehow. Or, I will start the reading with the idea from the construct: We know Dickens was political and supportive of the poor so what is he trying to do in this section? Politically? Socially? 

We talk about the writer as a person we are familiar with. As if he has just stepped out of the classroom and we are talking on his behalf. There is a presence in discussion. He isn’t an afterthought, which the teacher has to keep returning to when analysing the text. He is a fully rounded person to them. 

How we use knowledge is important in English. However, I think we need to use it carefully. Knowledge can build more knowledge, but we need to think more about how that knowledge builds. We need to work on demystifying the writer and we need to help students to form and create inferences on their thoughts, feelings, ideas and perspective. The biggest problem students have is talking about the writer’s intent. That’s because they have no concept of writers as real people. Let’s start helping students to see writers as real people, even if they might have been dead for a few years. Inference works on knowledge and we have to work on the two aspects in lessons.

Thanks for reading,  

Xris