Firing the Canon

Recently I’ve been engaged in a discussion with David Didau regarding the blog he wrote about redesigning the English curriculum for KS3 and beyond, and utilising the ‘Literary Canon’. David is someone for whom I have a huge amount of respect (his blog on Slow Writing for example was an absolute game-changer for my year 8 creative writing lessons recently) and I consider him an important and relevant voice in the endless debates about how best to do this most wonderful of jobs.

I read his blog with interest, because I think the KS3 curriculum could do with looking at, and in the schools I’ve worked in it has been a constant source of debate and discussion. That’s not to say that I think our current KS3 curriculum is fundamentally flawed, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be improved.

One thing on which David and I seem to agree and disagree at the same time (somehow) is the idea of increasing the students’ cultural capital – exposing them to a cultural understanding of the world that they would otherwise be denied if only taught simple modern literature. If we’re going to teach English, shouldn’t we give the students access to the best of English Literature? It’s hard to argue with that, and as David says on his blog, “Knowledge is power. This isn’t really a debate: the more you know, the better equipped you are to think, and no one is seriously arguing against the idea that pupils should be taught to think.”

While I think this curriculum is inspired, and the ideals behind it are both realistic and commendable, I think we disagree fundamentally on the merits of the canon itself. I am all for cultural capital, and think it's vital if we're going to be considered 'proper' English teachers, but my worry with the canon is that works of great merit would not be considered 'worthy' for a number of reasons.

I'd like to preface this rather long-winded diatribe with the assertion that I think students should be exposed to the ‘classics’. For some people, the books they read at school will be the only books they ever read, so they may as well be good ones, and ones that give them some insight into the wonderful history of our subject. As for 'Literary Canon', it's a term that screams elitism to me, although I don't think for a second David is applying it with a pejorative nature. I don't deny the need for students to be immersed in the great texts; my issue comes with what those texts are. After all, ‘great’ is a relative term. Wasn’t Dickens the soap-opera of his day, serialised in the newspapers telling grim stories about life in London as if he somehow predicted Eastenders’ arrival? I don’t worry about which texts are in the canon, but which are left out, and how to balance a need for retrospection with a need to move forward, as Literature does.

David’s curriculum finishes in the 1940s with ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’. On a personal note, if I never teach that particular book again then it'll be too soon, but that's by the by. If you're teaching Dystopia though, what's wrong with ‘The Hunger Games'? Yes, it’s of its time, and yes it’s arguably a children’s book, but then we are teaching children, and it’s not simple sentences and immature concepts by any stretch. Come to think of it, what’s wrong with ‘Fahrenheit 451’ or several other texts published in more recent decades that speak to similar themes? If you're teaching the Gothic tradition, why not an exploration of how it has continued in modern times through 'The Woman in Black'? On that same Gothic note, if you want to teach about the dark forces at work when man plays God, is ‘Frankenstein’ really better than ‘Jurassic Park’?  The instinctive 'literary' answer to this is "Yes, of course it is" - but on what grounds? I've read both books several times, and while I don't deny that 'Frankenstein' is a brilliant piece of work, it didn't change my life. ‘Jurassic Park’ opened my eyes to a whole new way of cognitive reflection, chaos theory, hubris and the perils of man's arrogance in the face of nature. Admittedly, one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much the first time was because there were dinosaurs and gory deaths in it, but is that so bad? I was 12 years old and I would never have dreamed of going near a text like Frankenstein at that age. However, once I'd read ‘Jurassic Park’, I began to explore Shelley off my own back, and found it an enjoyable read, albeit not one that particularly made me feel like I had more culturally relevant references at my fingertips.

Similarly at A-Level, I was amazed by the cultural impact that 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' had on me - and found Thomas Hardy's 'Return of the Native' one of the most genuinely painful experiences of my education. I never went near Hardy for a good 5 years after that. Now, that's not entirely Hardy's fault, nor is it necessarily a good point to apply to the majority of people who study English Lit, and perhaps with better teaching, I would have enjoyed it more (though I doubt it) but in terms of which text I'm more culturally rewarded by having read, Corelli wins every time. There are many other times when a ‘classic’ has left me cold (not least my battle with Middlemarch at University) but I won't list them now!

At my last school getting students to read was a monumental challenge. Year 7,8 and 9 students should be shown that Literature is not just a relic from the past - that great stories that can enrich their lives still exist and are being written right now. David and I had this debate briefly on Twitter before regarding 'kids' books vs 'proper' literature, and I still don't think the gap is as wide as some would suggest. What is culturally irrelevant about the Harry Potter novels? Are they really a weaker allegory for the Jesus story than ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’? If we judge the canon on what we as a society have judged worthwhile, then surely sales of 450 million over 8 years must go some way towards suggesting that Rowling’s stories were no flash in the pan? Mind you, the Sweet Valley High books have sold nearly 300 million, so maybe that’s not the best criteria on which to judge. It’s all very subjective, I suppose. Or is it?

David’s blog says not:

“Personal preference doesn’t come into these decisions. Just because you might not happen to like a particular text and would like instead to propose one of your favourite novels for inclusion misses the point.”

Even with the caveat that there ought to be enough in the canon to make substituting one text for another, and the fact that there are ways in which a prescribed list of texts could be extremely helpful, there's no getting around the fact that by its nature the canon is exclusive. I don't think the students we teach ‘should be given a diet of transient but appealing modern texts because that is what is most relevant to their foreshortened little lives’ but surely there's a middle ground?

At the end of all this - fundamentally, I agree with damn near every word of David’s blog - but I'm always concerned about a tendency to black-and-white situations in education, which is an impossibility. We all need to understand the nuances of the students we teach and the contexts in which we teach them, and they should be challenged by great works of Literature, but I don't think we should be too prescriptive about what those works are.