Looking at writers - does he ever stop smoking?

Today, I am writing a eulogy for someone very close to me. Like most people, I’ve put things off. For example,  I’ve been tempted to search the history of using ‘a’ instead of ‘an’ when forming the phrase ‘a eulogy’. I won’t bore you with the details. And, of course, writing this blog is another way for me to put off the inevitable. Anyway, a eulogy is about creating a sense of a person and what they mean to you. 

This sense of a person is something I feel we have lost within English. I’ve been part of lots of discussions around how English should change and what’s the problem with its current form, but I’d argue that our sense of humanity and our sense of humans has been lost. Texts have become collections of techniques to find and catalogue. Texts have become things to highlight and pick out things. Texts have become these things that float in nebulous space that have no relevance or currency in the real world. 

Texts in the English classroom cannot escape being picked apart and overly scrutinised. It isn’t the obsession with knowledge that is at the root of the problem. It is this default method that everything we do in English has to be linked or connected to the spotting of something. How many lessons go by without there being a highlight or comment on a technique used? We’ve got to the point where we are our own worst enemy. We only feel comfortable if students are talking about techniques. 

The writer has become a forgotten entity. 

Instead of reading texts to discuss a writer’s ideas, we are seeing things through the prism of techniques. And, to be honest, that is such a narrow view. It strips the person away from the discussion. We are thinking about things rather than people. 

How many times do we show pictures of writers? In fact, how often do students see images of the writer? For most of the time, we don’t show a picture of the writer. We want students to make inferences, assumptions, opinions about the writer about the text, yet we don’t actively show writers. We don’t actively help students co-construct a view of the writer. A person that thinks and feels something. 

For the past year, I have actively made students actively construct a writer in their head. And, the key way to do that is to constantly remind students visually of the writer. Instead of making the writer this shadowing figure that they have to construct like a séance and the techniques are a form of a Ouija board, we’ve put photos against every text. They can see who wrote it and that seeing the writer is important. 

Here is one such poem I recently discussed in lessons. 

The Dunce 

He says no with the head
but he says yes with the heart
he says yes to what he loves
he says no to the teacher
He's standing
we are questioning him
and all the problems are posed
suddenly he felt a crazy laugh come over him
and he erases the whole thing
the numbers and the words
dates and names
The sentences and the traps
and despite the master's threats
under the boos of child prodigies
with chalks of all colors
on the blackboard of misfortune
it draws the face of happiness.

Jacques Prévert

Interestingly, Prévert is never photographed without a cigarette in his mouth. For me, that just typifies the rule breaker he is. 

Once we started introducing photographs alongside writing we saw other interesting things. The building up of an interpretation of the writer. But, also, a personal dimension to the discussion. He must think … He feels … It is interesting that a long time ago one strategy we used was a ‘character on the wall’. On a big sheet, we’d have an outline of a body and we’d write bits about the character as we read a text. It seems a shame that we never did that for writers. Because, by the end of the text, a student should know what a writer thinks or feels about something, yet often they don’t. We’ve placed the emphasis on the character, the plot and the themes. Dickens bludgeons you over the head with ideas. Shakespeare is a bit more subtle. Our obsession with the text means that we work on the students’ understanding of the text and not the students’ understanding of the writer through the text. Just look at how students think in terms of texts and not in terms of writers. That speaks volumes. The text dominates. The writer is hidden. Students will talk about Macbeth and Charge of the Light Brigade,  but they don’t talk about Armitage or Weir. In fact, they barely recall the writer’s names at times. 

One of my favourite activities to build on this is to look at this poem about Rosa Parks. 

Rosa 

How she sat there, 

the time right inside a place 

so wrong it was ready. 

That trim name with 

its dream of a bench 

to rest on. Her sensible coat. 

Doing nothing was the doing: 

the clean flame of her gaze 

carved by a camera flash. 

How she stood up 

when they bent down to retrieve 

her purse. That courtesy. 

Rita Dove 

After reading the poem, I ask students to discuss these things: 

What does Rita Dove think of...

...what happened? 

...how Rosa was treated? 

...the people moving Rosa? 

… the other people on the bus? 

And, then, I flip it with these questions: 

What does Rita Dove feel about ...

...what happened? 

...how Rosa was treated? 

...the people moving Rosa? 

… the other people on the bus?

Students naturally talk about devices and words around the poem, but first and foremost they are talking about the writer. Making inferences about what they think and feel. From the beginning they explore the poem through the writer. The writer is a clear and strong presence. And, not some random faceless unknown. We are getting students to construct an interpretation from the beginning and not as an afterthought or as something that has to be taught as knowledge. 

Every day students are making inferences about the people around them. Their friends. Their teachers. Their parents. We are constantly thinking about what the other person feels or thinks. That’s what English is partly about: understanding people, situations and events. If we don’t work hard to make the subject about people, then it won’t be a subject for people. 

Thank you for reading. I have digressed enough, but you’ll probably be able to make some inferences from reading this about me as a person. 

Xris