We are now fortunate to have the eminent professor Elizabeth Rata and some key Ministry of Education officials who support a curriculum that is based on rich knowledge and critical thinking rather than post-modernism and decolonization.
Traditionally, teaching English literature involved reading prescribed prose and poetry texts. We now welcome a wider view of what is great literature – Bob Dylan won his Nobel prize for song lyrics. Literature can be set to music and supported visually. A stunning introduction to English poetry in a musical form is Alfred Tennyson’s The Lady Of Shallot
Illustrative examples of specific authors and content to include in an English curriculum could be Charles Dickens (Great Expectations), Herman Melville (Billy Budd), George Orwell (Animal Farm), WB Yeats (The Second Coming), Robert Frost (The Road Not Taken) and John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath and The Log from the Sea of Cortez.)
Shakespeare is the foundation for English literature. He invented new words and metaphors and made extensive use of functional shifts of syntax. Functional shifts involve the use of a semantically appropriate word in a syntactically inappropriate way. Examples include:
An adjective made into a verb: “thick my blood’ (The Winter’s Tale)
A pronoun into a noun: ‘the cruellest she alive’ (Twelfth Night)
A noun made into a verb: ‘He childed as I fathered’ (King Lear)
Liverpool University academics have demonstrated how Shakespeare’s functional shifts can cause surges in measured brain activity.
The Shakespearean canon that all should know includes Hamlet, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Midsummer night’s dream and The Merchant of Venice. The Tempest and As You Like It are great plays, and those seeking one big verbal fireworks display are recommended to read Love’s Labour’s Lost.
All 154 sonnets are masterpieces; sonnets 18, 29 and 116 should be memorised by everyone.
Great literature translated into English from other languages helps foster universalism. Crime and Punishment, Doctor Zhivago, and extracts from Homer, Virgil, Catullus and Goethe could be included in our “English” curriculum. Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice written in 1797 highlights the risk we take with new technology that we may lose control of – think Artificial Intelligence.
What, if anything, should the English curriculum do to promote New Zealand literature? Tusiata Avia’s work might, in Alexander Pope’s time, have earned a mention in the Dunciad Variorum. However, Puhiwahine Te Rangi-hirawea could be more widely read. Her powerful imagery is memorable from a single reading: “who can raise the dead from their graves, no one but almighty God, who guards us in this void, this terrible void, this dismal void. Who first caused this void? For seven long years the patu has opposed the sword and loaded gun. Be prepared, be prepared, the worse is yet to come. We eat in silence, eat standing and shelter from the spider’s wind.”
The challenge is often to spark the latent power in literature to open up people’s minds. Few people can engage with writers such as Walt Whitman, and ever be the same person again.
Dr Peter Winsley has worked in policy and economics-related fields in New Zealand for many years. With qualifications and publications in economics, management and literature. Peter blogs at Peter Winsley - where this article was sourced.
Traditionally, teaching English literature involved reading prescribed prose and poetry texts. We now welcome a wider view of what is great literature – Bob Dylan won his Nobel prize for song lyrics. Literature can be set to music and supported visually. A stunning introduction to English poetry in a musical form is Alfred Tennyson’s The Lady Of Shallot
Illustrative examples of specific authors and content to include in an English curriculum could be Charles Dickens (Great Expectations), Herman Melville (Billy Budd), George Orwell (Animal Farm), WB Yeats (The Second Coming), Robert Frost (The Road Not Taken) and John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath and The Log from the Sea of Cortez.)
Shakespeare is the foundation for English literature. He invented new words and metaphors and made extensive use of functional shifts of syntax. Functional shifts involve the use of a semantically appropriate word in a syntactically inappropriate way. Examples include:
An adjective made into a verb: “thick my blood’ (The Winter’s Tale)
A pronoun into a noun: ‘the cruellest she alive’ (Twelfth Night)
A noun made into a verb: ‘He childed as I fathered’ (King Lear)
Liverpool University academics have demonstrated how Shakespeare’s functional shifts can cause surges in measured brain activity.
The Shakespearean canon that all should know includes Hamlet, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Midsummer night’s dream and The Merchant of Venice. The Tempest and As You Like It are great plays, and those seeking one big verbal fireworks display are recommended to read Love’s Labour’s Lost.
All 154 sonnets are masterpieces; sonnets 18, 29 and 116 should be memorised by everyone.
Great literature translated into English from other languages helps foster universalism. Crime and Punishment, Doctor Zhivago, and extracts from Homer, Virgil, Catullus and Goethe could be included in our “English” curriculum. Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice written in 1797 highlights the risk we take with new technology that we may lose control of – think Artificial Intelligence.
What, if anything, should the English curriculum do to promote New Zealand literature? Tusiata Avia’s work might, in Alexander Pope’s time, have earned a mention in the Dunciad Variorum. However, Puhiwahine Te Rangi-hirawea could be more widely read. Her powerful imagery is memorable from a single reading: “who can raise the dead from their graves, no one but almighty God, who guards us in this void, this terrible void, this dismal void. Who first caused this void? For seven long years the patu has opposed the sword and loaded gun. Be prepared, be prepared, the worse is yet to come. We eat in silence, eat standing and shelter from the spider’s wind.”
The challenge is often to spark the latent power in literature to open up people’s minds. Few people can engage with writers such as Walt Whitman, and ever be the same person again.
Dr Peter Winsley has worked in policy and economics-related fields in New Zealand for many years. With qualifications and publications in economics, management and literature. Peter blogs at Peter Winsley - where this article was sourced.
11 comments:
Well said, Peter. Surely our national curriculum must embrace the finest literature from our diverse New Zealand populations.
Shakespeare is great from many points of view, not only strictly as literature, but also in his insight into human nature and in his evocation towards justice and fairness. His great works must continue to be celebrated. From The Merchant of Venice:
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.
What a wonderful lesson for all of our young people!
David Lillis
Peter, let us agree sonnets should not be quoted on football sidelines-Mark
The sooner our entire Western Culture comes to acknowledge
the cause of the destruction of our educational institutions and curricula , the better.
The main architect of this iniquitous Progressivist Educational ideology was an American John Dewey an aggressive atheist , humanist and socialist who saw schools primarily as a vehicle for promoting socialism
His hatred of Christianity meant he derided and cancelled also the western foundations of traditional education including being liberal and its accepting atheism. In contrast Progressivism believes ,like Marxism that religion must be cancelled because it is the cause of all evil in the world. It is an illiberal belief system and ideology.
Hence in NZ and other western countries any literature with Christian themes have been iconoclastically removed and ridiculed.
Cunningly Progressive education is now allowing the promotion of some of the traditional methods of Traditional Education because recent cognitive has proved they are correct but refusing to acknowledge they were responsible for knocking them out in the first place.
These time tested methods of teaching effectively like phonics , grammar , handwriting , spelling , rote learning , acquiring knowledge and in fact most aspects of traditional teaching methods are being introduced back a little., slowly.
This is only half the battle won since the other, since I think to be the most important aspect , and the theme of this article is the content of Traditional Education needs to be clawed back .This includes Greek mythology and Biblical stories which were texts before about 1970 . When I was at a state school in the 1960s , we read the book of Job and Donne's poetry .
The tremendous evil of Progressivism was not only the annulling of religion but methods that destroyed effective teaching that allowed students to acquire high academic standards in the basics particularly literacy enabling them to read more difficult texts like the classics.. So called Ptrogressivism has been regressive suppressive and dumbed us .
King Lear??!! No modern youth will tolerate such protracted tedium. Who but the most introverted reclusive book worm denied a phone has time for any but msybr three from the list? Many would prefer a course in te reo where the questions likely to be easily met with platitudes.
I simply can't agree with those who advocate bringing archaic English into the school literature curriculum. We are seeing the English language continuously being degraded through the americanisation brought about by ICT from the internet to spellchecks. I'd rather spend class time on getting youngsters competent in real English as opposed to the obnoxious cottonfield creole being universally imposed on us. To add Shakespeare to the hotch-potch does not serve the purpose of language at all.
Gawd, the practically the only women in this this piece are Tusiata Avia, consigned to Pope's 'Dunciad', and the subject of the Tennyson poem. When I taught that poem, it had nothing to do with veggies: the Lady's island was 'Shalott', not 'Shallot'. There is of course Prof Rata, and I've no quarrel with her, but politically she and Lester Levy seem to have become the righties' current solution to everything. Perhaps the committee could get daring and include Jane Austen in a syllabus?
These are my favourite lines from Merchant of Venice was well David.
Agreed!
Touche on the mispelling of Shalott - a very palpable hit. However, -more of my paper quotes from Rihi Puhiwahine than from any other author with the exception of Shakespeare. I'm not aware of Elizabeth Rata being used by "the righties" much out of her core educational expertise - within her field I regard her as the only genius we have got. I agree with you on Jane Austen.
Shakespeare invented around 1700 new English words as well as hundreds of new metaphors, turns of phrase, insults etc. If you are speaking good English you are speaking modernised Shakespearean language.
For Joanne: use the visual for the " "screen-hooked" generations. The ditsy film "Clueless" is based on Austen's Emma. The TV series "Succession" has elements of King Lear but requires some intellectual application. Then work back to the language... which is the hard part.
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