The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi Education Correspondent
LITERATURE is not a special reserve for the average student, those struggling in mediocrity, the riff-ruff, the scum that remains after the best have settled for Pure Sciences. Mind the ‘‘You- cannot- handle- STEM or COMMERCIALS-please fill up the Literature class’’ sort of thing you hear from your teachers and school heads. Poor guidance and Counselling! Poor Career advice! Perhaps not wrong, but certainly not correct enough! If you cannot handle STEM, you might as well not be eligible for Literature.
Literature is not an option for those who think things are what they are and nothing beyond. That is a mind-set for Scientists. They don’t see into what things ought to be and or must be. Figures and scientific facts (Maths, Physics, Biology and Chemistry) like History and Economics are tied to facts-nothing beyond. Literature stretches horizons beyond what you are reading. There is sense between lines and there is speech in silence. Even imagination helps to explore sense and meaning.
Literature is not a learning area for or with fixed answers. Scholarliness in Literature depends on level of intellectual analysis and judgment, a student’s depth of analysis or appreciation and personal response, delicate intellectual sensitivity to issues, not faith in answer books or commentaries.
Literature is not a cram-subject where a learner assimilates the teacher’s own understanding and interpretations or rote-learns the arguments and opinions expressed by commentators in published commentaries. The examination seeks your own ideas, understanding and judgment. Students, candidates, get marks for independent thought not plagiarised comments or notes. Do not fill students’ books with notes to do with your own interpretations and opinions or from a hidden (unseen) commentary. Unless you are supplying names or terms describing techniques; maybe adjectives describing characteristic behaviour in a story or play etc.
Literature seeks an intelligent exhibition of skills of literary appreciation, not tricks.
Literature is not a theoretical subject. It is a practical subject where a student is apprenticed under an able or competent expert, who guides, not one who tells or forces his views down their throats.
The guide (teacher) guides, apprentices, until the learner is able to take over for him or herself.
Literature is not about the Past. It is about Today, about the Present. It is an exploration of real truth: True fiction!
When studying Literature the greatest pleasure comes from its ability to bring us back to realities of human situations, problems, dilemmas, fears, anxieties, feelings and relationships.
Literature educates us, not only in our private pleasures or personal philosophies, but sharpens our critical thinking, our capacities for discrimination, judgment, reflection and decision.
Literature contains a whole body or adequate body of material upon which a complete intellectual training can and is based. All subjects (learning areas) offer this but Literature offers special possibilities in a particularly convenient, systematic and concentrated way. Literature throws students entirely upon their own faculties, their intellectual resources, not anyone else’s outside themselves.
The primary aim of Literature is to pit learners unaided against both anonymous (unseen) and known (seen) passages of verse and prose. This is precisely what the examination tests.
The skills of literary appreciation or Practical criticism are not easy or automatic. To be able to receive and understand the impression that a piece of literature (poem, drama, dialogue, prose) effectively communicates we need to be thoroughly trained, educated in the arduous discipline of Literary Appreciation.
To be able to answer intelligently, “Do I understand the idea, picture, character, situation or theme communicated?” A student of literature needs to read carefully, observe, reflect, imagine, compare and contrast impressions.
It is important for a serious student of literature to appreciate and be able to balance or maintain extremes of scale and know or prove that some pieces of writing may seem beautiful and skilful but trivial; others serious but untidy or clumsy; others effective and penetrating etc, the lawyer’s verdict let’s call it.
Literature brings the whole global community closer and closer to achieving an understanding of each other’s mental processes and cultural experiences. The value of Literature in life is priceless.
Finally, as we teach or learn, it is critical to remember the complexity of English as a language. Every word in the vocabulary of the English language carries a peculiar richness of significance. Poets in particular, depend hugely on this characteristic of the English Language. Accordingly students whose acquaintance with English will automatically or easily be able to enjoy with understanding the feeling of this richness. This is a polite way of saying, Students with a higher command of English Language often do better in examinations than those who find it difficult, funny or sticky.
We must always remember that most writers never wrote for school boys or girls. So they have not consistently resorted to simple language. They wrote to please or impress, to interest, to make money out of their writing from the reading public of their time. Forget the simplistic tendency. That is not human. Human beings enjoy expressing their ideas and individuality by ingenuity, magnificence, originality, colour, extravagance, even by confusing, puzzling and startling their readers. As such it was fashionable for many writers, especially poets, to make their poetry deliberately difficult or unclear.
While students may not be expected to appreciate the extravagant levels of fanciful writing, they will certainly be expected to identify and appreciate simple indirect expressions like irony, witticism, sarcasm, metaphor, and others within commonplace reach.
Finally, if you study Literature and master its skills, your thought processes will never be the same.
