Matric Blues

Hadn't taught literature for many years, but it was part of the deal when I came to teach at the teacher training college.

It was halfway through the Matriculation course and I was taking over from a lecturer they had loved. But when I mentioned poetry they said they didn't like it. Apart from Daffodils. That they had loved. And they proudly opened their files to show me the pictures of brilliant yellow flowers they had stuck in to illustrate Wordsworth's words.

Alamandas.

Which kind of misses the point, doesn't it? Daffodils are so delicate, so transient, so precious when they finally appear after the harshness of winter. Alamandas bloom all the time and are common that we take them for granted. Never mind!

This group just would not talk in class. No raised hands volunteered answers. Questions were met with painful silences and embarrassed shrugs. I suspected that the students had previously been told what they should think about the texts so that they could dutifully learn their notes for the exams. What made it worse was that the best students in the group who invariably scored A's in their assignments did not want to share their insights with the rest. I had never come across this kind of competitiveness in the classroom before! Getting contributions to a discussion was like pulling out finger nails.

So I threw away the desks.

The dynamics change when you make everyone sit in a circle without a barrier before them. Everything you do becomes more democratic and the lecturer just one of the group, no longer centre of knowledge.

We were now reading Lord of the Flies. You may remember the scenes early on in the book where the boys decide who should speak by passing round a conch shell: no-one could speak without the shell in their hands.

So I brought in a conch shell, albeit a very much smaller version, picked up on the sands of Tioman.

I kind of reversed the rule - whoever had the conch had to speak or pass it on to someone else. At first the shell got passed around quickly as if it was a hot coal. Then as the students began to feel safe, they became a bit bolder and began to volunteer opinions and ask the others questions. Then I stopped bringing the shell altogether. We didn't need it because the class had begun to realise the joy of debating the text for themselves.

But I still had their opposition to poetry to tackle.

So I threw away the walls.

We took our chairs out under the casuarinas beside the football pitch.

Poetry is subversive, I said. It's no use to anyone if it's not. And since we are going to be talking about subversive things, it's better that no-one overhears us. That won them over from the start, gave them a freedom to speak out.

And there under the trees we read the poet they liked least - e.e. cummings. I'd brought along poems they'd enjoy, even though they weren't on the syllabus, beginning with:

a politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man

which, oh my word, they could relate to. And then we worked out way through several more of my favourites including no-one loses all the time and the sexy may i feel said he.

The class was pretty much won over and happy to talk about their reactions to the poems they were reading. Better still, they were prepared to give the more difficult poems they'd encountered a second chance.

And that's what teaching lit is all about - winning 'em over and keeping 'em hooked. And to do that you must make sure that you build bridges by whatever means from the text to your kids.