Book City Project to Go Ahead

This from Bernama :

The Book City, which the government plans to set up by end of this year, will provide an avenue for publishers and writers to expand the scope and quality of their work, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said.

He said that the project, coordinated by the Education Ministry, would also be an avenue for the country's literary fans to enjoy quality books and spur the country's book industry to greater heights.

"We already have a building in Kuala Lumpur which will be turned into a Teachers' Museum and Book City. We will start the project by end of this year at the cost of RM20 million ..."

He said interested parties could rent a space to display their publications at the Book City.

Muhyiddin who is Education Minister, also said that the ministry was carrying out studies to improve literature curriculum in school.

"We are looking into the types of books to be used and for which level. Literature is taught in secondary school and at university level, so we want to coordinate the curriculum so that there will be continuity," he said.

To a question, Muhyiddin said the government normally would not block the entry of literary works from abroad so long as they did not create problems for the readers.

The Book City project was proposed back in 2006, and I had several questions and reservations back then. (And I have to point out, splitting semantic hairs, that a single building is hardly a "city" ...) But I do hope that something good comes of this ...

I am also glad that studies are being carried out on the study of literature in schools. Let's hope for some texts the students can really enjoy and plenty of support for teachers. But I'm not too clear what the Muhyiddin means by saying the Ministry plans to coordinate literature studies in schools with those at the universities :

... to ensure the teaching of literature in schools remains relevant to the aspiration to build a nation that is not only progressive, but united and peaceful ...

Can, and even should, literature be looked at in these terms?

It's good that a journalist asked about the censorship of foreign books (yes, keep up the pressure!) but what exactly does "as long as they did not create a problem for readers" actually mean? Vague vague vague!!

Updating the Syllabus

On The Millions blog [found via] a high school English teacher called Gene writes in to ask for suggestions to update his syllabus (which already includes great reads like Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and essays from the likes of David Foster Wallace.

The blog's contributors and other blog readers weigh in with their suggestions, making this a very useful guide to what's best in American C21st fiction. Enjoy!

(And doesn't one actually envy Gene's students with this literary diet? They didn't make school syllabuses like this when I was at school.)

No Freedom for Writer's Diary

Just when I thought this society couldn't get any dumber, any less compassionate... along comes news of a teacher who actually cares to educate in a meaningful way being railroaded by a system designed to strip us all of our voice.

says author Ivan Sanchez.

How many times, over how many centuries, do Americans like Connie Heermann have to fight for freedom of expression and thought in their own country?

asks Richard LaGravenese at The Huffington Post .

Let's take a break from getting angry about restrictions on freedom of expression in Malaysia and look at a jaw-droppingly ridiculous case from the US of A where Indiana teacher Connie Heermann has been suspended from her job without pay for 18 months for using the book The Freedom Writers Diary in her classroom to motivate her students.

She says in today's Guardian :

If you read the whole book you will see how these inner-city students grow and change and become articulate, compassionate, educated young people who want to do something good in their lives despite the environment in which they were raised I thought my students would very much relate to those kids.

I blogged some time ago about this inspirational book (based on the experiences of idealistic novice English teacher Erin Gruwell and her students) about how creative writing has the power to transform lives when it first came out, and bought it soon after. My copy's still waiting to be read, but I have dipped into it and found the entries by the students alive and vital. And of course being an English teacher myself, I'm fascinated by any account from the chalkface about how kids can be turned around.

The book was also made into a film starring Hilary Swank.

Heerman chose the text after attending a Freedom Writers workshop and got permission from her head teacher and from parents to teach the book.

So why all the fuss? Apparently one member of the school board objected to swearing and racial slurs in the book and persuaded the other six officials to ban Heermann from teaching the book.

But Heerman was charged with "insubordination" when she decided to ignore the ban for the sake of her students, and was initially threatened with dismissal. Her union now has to decide whether to take the case to court.

It's certainly a cock-eyed world when a teacher is penalised for doing the best for her students ...

Improving Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise ...

Delighted I am that one of my favourite singer-songwriters, Joni Mitchell, has recorded a new album, her first collection of original songs since 1998.

Anyone who has been through English SPM exam in the past few years will recognise the lyrics to the last track - it's a musical interpretation of Rudyard Kipling's classic poem If. Mitchell says of the poem:

It gives me optimism. It's a good grocery list, very difficult to live up to. The thing about this ... is that you can't really change the world, the only thing you can do is work on yourself.

But she felt that she needed to "improve" on Kipling's words as she felt that Kipling's emphasis on endurance was overly macho, compounded by his concluding "you'll be a man, my son". (And I would agree too, as someone who found herself teaching teachers how to teach the poem!):

To endure is important, but that's not how you inherit the earth. My experience tells me that the earth is innocence, with wonder and delight, which is renewable. I wanted to get the feminine principle into the poetry. ... It needed rewriting.

The Kipling Estate agreed with her and let her make the changes.

You can listen to the song here.

The Pleasure Killers

Did learning literature at school kill the joy of reading, particularly when you had to deal with set texts for public exams? Jean Hannah Eidelstein raises the question on the Guardian blog.

I think I must have been exceptionally lucky (judging by the reader comments on the page). My teachers radiated an enthusiasm that was contagious, and some of the texts we had to study for exams have remained my favourites including Hardy's Tess of the D'Ubervilles, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India and King Lear.

The teacher I think makes all the difference, and I must confess that when I've taught lit, I have tried my best to make the subject enjoyable. But that can be tricky with an exam breathing down your neck.

Hmmm ... former students of mine ... did I squash your pleasure of the texts?

Facelift for Literature Syllabus

We talked the other day about the teaching of literature as part of the English language syllabus, but revisions have also been made to the SPM* syllabus for literature, Hariati Azizan points out in an article from the Star's education supplement.

English Literature SPM is an elective subject for Forms 4 and 5, taken by only a very small number of students (about 1,000 nationwide, I understand). For many students an already crammed time-timetable or a lack of teachers for the subject in schools means that they have to study the subject out of school with a tuition teacher.

Head of the English Language and Literature Unit and assistant director at the Education Ministry’s Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) Dr Mohamed Abu Bakar reckons that another factor in the small number of students taking up the elective is that:

Most students today are more visually inclined and don't like to read; those who are still reading and writing are doing it on the Internet.

(I wonder. It actually seems to me that young people here are reading more than in the past, especially as there is access to a lot more bookshops.)

Anyway, these are the texts chosen, and as the article points out:

The new syllabus for the elective subject for Form Four and Form Five, like the old one, is aimed at developing an ability to read, understand and appreciate literary works. However, while the old syllabus emphasises the universality of issues and concerns, the new one revels in the diversity of the texts selected.

I find this rhetoric interesting - can you teach literature at all without "universality of concerns" coming into the discussion?

But it seems to me that the new syllabus has some very interesting texts that the students (and their teachers) should enjoy.

It goes on to say that:

Films, multimedia learning software and audio books, although not new, will now be an integral part of the new programme.

I'm a little sceptical about using "multimedia learning software" to teach literature, but that's because I haven't seen any locally produced educational software that's impressed me and a whole lot that doesn't. (And it's terribly expensive to produce!) A good teacher is the ultimate interactive resource.

But I am enthusiastic about the use of audio-books and film versions in the classroom. Purists might baulk at the idea (and I'd always want students to tackle the book first) but I think the film of the book can enhance enjoyment and understanding and lead to further discussion ways of interpreting the text. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and Holes by Louis Sachar have both been filmed.

There's a delicious irony about teaching Farenheit 451 in these book-banning days that I don't think was lost on those who set the syllabus!

*SPM is Sijul Pelajaran Malaysia, the exam students sit for at the end of Form Five, a sort of 'O' Level equivalent.

Dead Crows or Inspiration?

Nurjehan's story in last week's Sunday Times about the introduction of literature into the English syllabus for Malaysian schools was interesting (well certainly for me, with my teacher-training cap on).

The literature component was first introduced in 2001 at lower secondary level. The feedback to it in the article is extremely positive. I was particularly interested to learn that one of Universiti Malaya Professor Lim Chee Seng's postgraduate students, who is doing a study on the teaching of literature in the English language syllabus for the national curriculum:

... found that about 70 per cent of students across Malaysia love the literature component that has been inserted into the English language syllabus.

70%!

That statistic interests me, and I'd love to take a look at the methodology used to arrive at that figure.

In my previous reincarnation I was preparing my students to work with those texts in the classroom. So many of the pieces chosen for the syllabus were gloomy and too far from the kids' own experience to really be accessible without a lot of help. Just to give one or two examples:

A Samad Said's The Dead Crow might be a much better poem in the Malay original, but it's very limp in its English translation. Haven't stronger poems been written on the theme of pollution?

While Macbeth's Life's Brief Candle soliloquy is great stuff, will young adolescents be able to take on board the utter despair of it, and what more when it is taken completely out of context? (Who is this bloke Macbeth anyway?)

Don't get me wrong, I do whole heartedly believe that Shakespeare should be taught in schools, but the only brush with the bard at Upper Secondary levels is Sonnet 18. I've sat at the back of innumerable classrooms watching sweating kids kids under ceiling fans struggle with the concept of finding a hot, sunny day desirable (when, of course, they long for cool overcast ones).

I've watched students struggle with a particularly gloomy choice of text Emily Dickinson's There's Been a Death in the Opposite House, not so much because the description of the funeral is so foreign to our Malaysian kids, but because it necessarily opens up some painful discussion in the classroom ("Tell me about a funeral you recently attended") which needs to be handled sensitively.

I'm not arguing that young people should not be exposed to texts that are difficult or outside their own experience - literature should stretch us all, should take us to places we've never been before. But if for most kids the component is going to be their only brush with literature - why shouldn't the texts be enjoyable and accessible and directly relevant?

As it happens the component is currently being reviewed. I was asked to go and take part in the selection of texts, but got waylaid by other things I'd promised to do. I'm very proud to see that the team includes one of my former teacher-training students, and I'm sure they will do a good job.

Methodology - how the subject is taught - is another issue, of course.

While I was goggling around I came across this piece by Amir Muhammad which originally appeared in the New Straits Times in 1999 about the literature component (and it gives a complete list of texts used at different levels at the end). Amir raises one of the most important questions - teaching literature in the classroom effectively demands a move to greater democracy in the classroom, a move away from the teacher as font of all knowledge. Personal response and personal opinion, matter far more.

But how far is this possible when students are examined on their knowledge of the texts? Most of the questions (as I remember) are multiple choice. I've also heard (from a chief examiner) that in the open questions brighter students who give imaginative answers run the risk of losing marks because they don't give the examiner what they expect! Just regurgitate what your teacher told you and you will do fine.

Having thusly ranted, I must say that I am still glad that literature is on the syllabus and I'd like to see teachers making even more use of literary texts in their classes - for fun, for enjoyment, to touch the students' hearts. Because no one (apart from parents) can build the initial love of books as teachers can.

I'd particularly love to hear from some of the younger readers of this blog who have studied the literature component in school - how did you find it? Would you consider yourself in that 70% that love it? Why? Why not?

Parents, teachers ... anyone, your views are very welcome too.

Zephaniah and Me

I have to tell you this story.

I had just a minute or two to chat to Benjamin Zephaniah before the Central Market gig and managed to ask him the question that had been burning inside me ever since I read that he came from Handsworth in Birmingham. Did he know the school I'd taught at?

Know it? Why he had been a student there. (Though a few years before I got there.)

And I had been a teacher in my first year of teaching, terrified out of my wits at being thrown into this inner-city multi-cultural environment.

I was, of course, white, middle-class and had scarcely any friends that didn't fit the same mould. I hadn't seen much of the world. Hadn't travelled overseas. I came into teaching with a B.Ed degree in my hand, a lot of idealism and very little practical knowledge of how to manage a classroom.

The kids at Broadway were difficult to say the least. One of the classes I was given was an underachieving class of 16 year olds who made my life hell. The whiteness of my skin made me the enemy as soon as I walked into the classroom. Most of the kids were of Jamaican descent, were Rastafarians (though dreadlocks were of course not allowed in school) and insisted on speaking patois among themselves. I had serious discipline problems, caused as much as anything by my total inexperience. (None of my teaching practices, which had all been in Worcestershire schools, had prepared me for inner-city Birmingham.)

The kids learned ... absolutely nothing with me. I was just trying to survive from lesson to lesson. On one occasion a chair was thrown at me. One student threatened to knife me after school. In the depth of Winter I got bombarded with dozens of snowballs walking to the classroom, some of which contained stones.

Another time I was late for a class because the school was on three campuses and we had to take a minibus between them and it was often late. I found that the kids had broken into the stockroom and set fire to the English books. Fortunately teachers saw the smoke on fire and rushed to put it out. On another occasion before I reached the classroom one kid stabbed the one and only white student in the stomach with a roll of newspapers, bruising her ribs, and the parents decided to take legal action against me. (The case was later dropped.)

The teachers were a mixed-bunch. Some very concerned about the kids and able to reach them. Others horribly racist: they would talk about the West Indian girls in the staffroom for example as "jungle-bunnies". Some ruled their classrooms by force, and at times this particular campus felt more like a borstal than a school.

My head-of-department decided one day to come and show me how to restore order, picked the main trouble maker up by the scruff of the collar and slammed him against the wall, issuing threats against him if he stepped out of line. The whole group were as quiet as lambs for the next forty minutes ... but not in subsequent lessons.

Truancy was through the roof. After school riots were common with gang fights between kids of neighbouring schools, and the police were always called in before the damage to property got too bad.

I wish I could tell you that I turned my class around. Like in a Hollywood movie.

I didn't.

I failed miserably and was miserable. I felt the kids didn't give me a chance. I felt the school didn't help me. I felt my B.Ed degree didn't prepare me.

I lay awake at night terrified about the next day. I got depressed. Called in sick too often. My boyfriend of nine years decided to leave me - partly because this daily fight left me with nothing left over for myself or for him, and his own star was rising in the rock-star firmament.

I wanted out of teaching completely.

But this story has several happy endings.

I know the kind of environment Zephaniah (a self-confessed bad boy, a gang member who carried a gun ... and didn't even learn to read and write until he was 21!) comes from. I can see how far he's travelled, what he's had to overcome ... and I'm incredibly proud of him, the way he's taken all that anger and directed it to says things that should be said.

I hope the kids I tried to teach and failed all those years ago made something good of their lives.

I'm grateful now for all that they taught me about myself (how narrow and parochial I was!) and about what teaching needs to be.

I left the school but spent some months doing "supply teaching" which meant spending time in many different city schools. I think that observing a wide range of schools and teachers gave me a solid framework on which to build my own teaching.

I went to Nigeria as a volunteer teacher, and had such great kids there that I realised that teaching was, after all, what I really wanted to do.

I spent a spell in another inner-city Birmingham school after Nigeria, and found teaching there a real pleasure. I had grown and changed in the time I'd been away. These kids respected me, and I could, at last, begin to teach.

Jacob Sam-La Rose Rocks It!

Jamie Khoo talks to poet Jacob Sam-La Rose in StarMag. He says he finds the teaching of poetry in schools:

... somewhat backward. Students are usually forced to read very ‘heavy’ poets. ... I was a geek at school so when we had to study the works of poets like Seamus Heaney and John Keats, I enjoyed it. But even then, I was looking for something relevant to me. ... What we need to do is to start with poets that do engage students. It’s a matter of presenting poetry as something that is wild, fresh and new. Then once you get their interest, once you get them to understand why you play with form and metre, once you get them writing, then you refer them to Shakespeare and Heaney.

On the healing power of poetry, he says:

I’ve seen poetry save people’s lives. Some kids have been in danger of being excluded from the school system and were brought back into school through poetry programmes. Now, they are teaching English and passing on to others what they had gained.

And on performance poetry:

It’s not about reading the poem back to the page but making a connection with the audience and communicating with them.

Kate Owen (now British Council Malaysia's Acting Director) also shares her thoughts on promoting performance poetry in Malaysia.

Bangsa Malaysia in Lloyd Fernando's Green is the Colour

I very much enjoyed this piece by David C.E. Tneh in The Sun on his experience teaching Lloyd Fernando's Green is the Colour :

Three weeks ago, when the entire political landscape of Malaysia was embroiled in the perennial debate over the meaning, definition, and concept of "Bangsa Malaysia", I had in my hands a dog-eared, silverfish-infested 1993 copy of Professor Lloyd Fernando's novel entitled "Green is the Colour".

Being entrusted to teach a course on Malaysian literature in English, I was really gung-ho about it. I pictured myself as Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) being given a mission impossible task to complete. Saving the world and an Asian beauty in distress while overthrowing an eastern European nuclear warlord with a penchant for world domination and a weakness for leather gloves would be a lesser challenge that teaching this course in the short semester.

While a baker's dozen or so local denizens from a political party south of Malaysia was debating intensely over the semantics of the term "Bangsa Malaysia". I imbibed myself in the essence and spirit of Fernando's novel and pondered over the coincidence and timing of such an academic endeavour.

Fernando is the first Malaysian to be a Professor of English and played a significant role in promoting Malaysian literary status in his illustrious career at University of Malaya's department of English. Published in 1993, the novel centres on Yun Ming and Siti Sara falling in love with each other in post-May 13, 1969. Never mind that both are from different racial backgrounds and faiths but both are also married at the same time to different people and thus committing adultery during a very traumatic period of Malaysian history. This only spells triple disaster for them. Furthermore, Siti Sara's father in the novel is a respected religious figure. (I rest my case.)

Written 13 years ago, Fernando's novel was considered the first English novel to be ever written on the May 13 incident and it remains the only novel that offers a possible solution to inter-racial conflict and race relations in 21st century Malaysia.

While I was explaining the intricacies of the background and plot to 35 English major undergraduates, the greatest challenge for me was to convince my students of the importance and relevance of Fernando's novel to nation-building and to Life itself. During my lectures, I treaded carefully on issues like the May 13 racial riots, the New Economic Policy, inter-racial relationships, religion, and racial integration in Malaysia.

Could my students comprehend the complexities of the love-hate relationship between Yun Ming and Siti Sara or the amoral, heinous, and Machiavellian Panglima, an up and coming government official bent on creating a "homogenous" society devoid of cultural differences and religious diversity? Could I make my students see what fear, hate, jealousy, ignorance, fanaticism, and intolerance could do to multi-racial Malaysia by people like Panglima? Or perhaps the different manifestations of the theme of Power and the tolerance of Siti Sara's father, who saw beyond race, religion, and status, and blessed Yun Ming and Sara's relationship.

I was indeed happy when my students could see and relate to Fernando's vision of a world free of prejudice, religious bigotry, and cultural intolerance. It is a world where green is the colour of innocence, new hope, a new beginning, a primeval and natural state of existence - a return to Nature. And like Nature that does not discriminate, paradise on earth is not elusive but attainable if individuals love one another indiscriminately like Yun Ming and Siti Sara. Perhaps this is why, bearing the present circumstances, that Fernando's timeless novel is more relevant and appealing in the present than when it was published in 1993.

In all sincerity, it was satisfying teaching Malaysian literature in English to this wonderful group of multi-racial students who could take stock of what was happening to their beloved country. In the glint of their eyes, I could feel the intensity of their longing for an idyllic world of love, tranquillity, and understanding, a world that is free from oppression, obsession, and intolerance. They were truly "colour-blind" to one another's differences and this was truly encouraging.

Amidst the laughter, smiles, and bashfulness of my final lecture, I realised that I was slowly discovering myself, and I saw, just for a fleeting moment, a vivid glimpse of Fernando's world in my class of 35, where indeed, Green is the Colour.

Set Texts

More influential than prizes, or time on the best seller list, or the applause of the critics in determining the lifespan of a literary text is its inclusion in the school syllabus.

John Mullan in the Guardian looks at how exam texts are chosen in Britain and the knock-on effect on the publishing world.

The two biggest novelists turning up on UK syllabuses turn out to be (surprise, surprise) Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan.

What set texts do you remember having to study? I had to do E. M. Forster's Passage to India, Shakespeare's King Lear and Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles for 'A' Level, all of which I loved. I suppose we read some poetry too, but I can't remember what.

I've also done a fair amount of teaching of set texts over the years, for O Level (in the UK and in Nigeria), for 'A' Level (UK), and Matriculation (here). My favourite book to teach? William Golding's Lord of the Flies: it stands rereading and is as contemporary and relevant as when it was first written. Runners up: Anita Desai's Village by the Sea, and Chinua Acebe's Things Fall Apart.

I'm really happy to see the move towards more contemporary texts in the classroom (in Britain at least). There is a serious need to revise the Malaysian syllabus - I know that a date has been set for it, and hope I will have more news on that before long.

Related Post:

Shakespeare the African (15/3/05)

Fear and Loathing in Kuala Lumpur

Waxing philosophical here and on my soapbox.

Moral values.
Positive moral values.
To turn kids into model Malaysian citizens.

When I was teaching teachers here (in my previous life when I was a respectable upholder of societal norms) I was supposed to check my students' lesson plans for the inclusion of "moral values" and make sure that they were slipped into the lessons at the approriate point. Moral value included? Tick the box.

Literature lessons too, of course, were supposed to have a moral message for the kids. Texts were supposed to be morally uplifting. Every ounce of moral message was supposed to be wrung out from the words and soaked up by the kids' souls.

"What's the moral value for today, class?" "Tolerancepatiencepatriotismcleanlinesshelpfulness".

It seems to me that a whole generation got hung up on that literature-has-to-equal-morality gig.

Which is terribly sad, because heavily laboured morality turns most kids off.

And, (shock horror!) literature at its best is deliciously delightfully wonderfully subversive.

And if we become better people because of reading, it is not because a text has preached at us, but because we've learned how it feels to step inside someone else's head and life.

Related Posts

Matric Blues (24/5/06)
Malaysian Anti-Semitism (11/6/05)
To His Coy Mistress (24/4/06)

Teacher Man

Teaching's no Mr. Holland's Opus as I've said before.

You teach thousands of kids in the course of your career, plan tens of thousands of lessons, mark millions of exam papers and homework exercises, get fallen arches in your feet and varicose veins from standing too long, and ruin your throat with all that talking. For not a great deal of renumeration, scant respect and very little thanks!

But when the teacher-student relationship works out, the job has to be the best in the world. There's no headier feeling than knowing that you've made a difference to other lives.

Few writers have really got the classroom down to the page and I treasure those who have:

There is of course E.R. Braithwaite's autobiographical To Sir with Love, which tells of a black teacher's attempts to teach difficult teenagers in a London school in post-war Britain.

There's Ursula struggling with her classes as a student-teacher towards the end of DH Lawrence's The Rainbow. I'd also add his poem Afternoon in School - the Last Lesson to the list.

There's New Zealand writer Sylvia Townsend-Warner's excellent Spinster, the story of a teacher working in a largely Maori school. (Note to self: must reread this soon!)

And now I'd put beside them Frank McCourt's latest volume of memoir, Teacher Man which I'm currently enjoying very much indeed. What I appreciate most about the book is its honesty. McCourt details both his sucesses and failures in the classroom, including the kind of embarassments most teachers would want to downplay even to those closest to them.

McCourt bemoans the fact that his teacher-training course did not prepare him at all for the realities of the classroom. But there's no-one-size- fits-all-quick-fix for teachers that you can pass on in training, and it takes time and hard-won experience to find out who you are in the classroom. (Took me years and much pain.) McCourt lays out his own personal journey for us, detailing nearly 30 years of teaching in American high-schools and eventually discovering that his stock of stories about growing up in Ireland was his greatest classroom resource. That and the kind of quirky imagination that dreams up assignments like getting students to write their own excuse notes and obituaries!

And empathy. Of course, empathy. What teacher can survive without it? McCourt has bucket loads of it.

I'd love to see this book made compulsory reading on all teacher training courses, but the book is a damn good read even if you don't have a particular interest in things pedagogic. It's beautifully written, moving and funny by turn.

Would you expect anything less from the author of Angela's Ashes?

(Reviews of Teacher Man from the Guardian and the Independent.)

Malaysian Anti-Semitism

Bloghopping (great word!), came across Asiapundit's entry about Malaysian anti-semitism, from where I stepped across to Ranjan's entry, from where I stepped across to this little story in the Traveller's Tales section of the Far Eastern Economic Review:

What Are Malays Reading?

Entering the bookstore in the check-in hall at Kuala Lumpur airport, the first book we saw on the table near the door was Hitler's "Mein Kampf." Odd. Then our eyes were drawn to a cover with a caricature of a Jewish financier straight out of Nazi propaganda. Yup, it was Henry Ford's anti-semitic tract, "The International Jew," with the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" thrown in for good measure. Elsewhere on the table was "The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How America's 'Neo-Conservative' Trotskyites Came To Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire" by Michael Collins Piper. Mr. Piper is a Holocaust "revisionist" and JFK assassination conspiracy theorist. It would appear that former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's complaints about the Jews have had their desired effect on Malays' reading habits.

I really am surprised that this issue has not been brought up before.

I am not at all one for censorship, as anyone reading my blog will know, and I believe that it's necessary for readers to read their way round all sides of an argument come to their own conclusions about what they're reading. Just because I don't approve of a book doesn't mean that I want it banned.



Henry Ford's ugly piece of anti-semitism The International Jew (written in the 1920's for heaven's sake!) sits there on the shelves of major bookshops in this country and positively screams at you from the counter of almost every little newsagents shop here even when they have scarcely any other books to display.

And it makes me furious! Just as I would be furious if I came across anti-any-racial- or-religious-group propaganda. Here or overseas.

(I've not yet confronted a bookshop owner, not because I'm afraid of speaking my mind, but because I am afraid of how far over the edge my anger would carry me ... Sharon is a formidable force of nature when roused!)

But I have been appalled by how deeply anti-semitism runs in this country.

Let me give you this example:

I was teaching literature to students on a B.Ed matriculation course here a few years ago. I took to class some poems for them to discuss - personal favourites - to sharpen their interpretive skills. The subject of the holocaust came up. I was stunned to discover that none of these 20 year olds had ever heard of it.

Then one student said: "Why should we care? Anyway they were Jews ...".

My blood froze. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and told them so. What are these kids being taught in schools?

A couple of days later I booked one of the teaching rooms with a video-player and loaded up a couple of episodes of The World At War, the BBC documentary with war footage and interviews. They saw concentration camps for the first time. And yes, were chastened by the experience, and able to answer the "Why should we care?" for themselves. Thank goodness.

We need to be reminded of the holocaust. Lest the same thing happens again.

It's such a pity that the film Schindler's List got banned here. I think a naked boob could be seen in one scene. (Shock horror!) Spielberg refused to make the cut. So the film was never shown at the cinema, although it circulated in pirated copies. But I think Spielberg made the wrong decision - a little cut would have meant a much wider audience for his film, and a chance to educate a new audience about the holocaust.

We not only need to be reminded, we sometimes need to be informed in the first place, of the genocide which stems from the propaganda of hatred.

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.

Old Teachers Never Die (They Don't Even LoseTheir Class)

Have you see the film Mr. Holland's Opus? Or any number of Hollywood movies which feature teachers. There's always this (obligatory) you've-made-a-difference-to-my-life scene where the students with tears in their eyes thank the teacher (with tears in his/her eyes) for turning perception of themselves and their abilities around. Hugs and smiles for everyone.

Well, real life ain't like that. Not usually. Generally a course finishes, or you change jobs. You shuffle off into the sunset. Your students embrace their bright and brilliant futures. And often you don't hear from them again. Or not usually. Though I do bump into my MCKK boys from time to time in shopping malls and weddings.

Anyway, this e-mail was in my inbox this morning and I'm going to treasure it.

salam sejahtera

we met almost 20 years ago. i was this young lad on the verge of finishing high school. you were, well, you were younger. in fact, you were then known as ms young. i was a student in your english class and we were in the malay college. it was english 1119 and you were the teacher. i was eager and excited. for the very first time, a native speaker of english was teaching me to write good proper english. i had always loved english. but i could never make much sense of my thoughts in the reports and the summaries that i wrote and especially in the rigid formats that limited the way i wanted to express my thoughts. then you introduced creative writing and that opened a whole new avenue for me to release all the pent up aching yearnings that were welling up inside of me. since that piece i wrote for you about the point of view of a frog, i have written many pieces, long and short, that won me praises and A's in numerous english and literature classes here in malaysia and the US. i've had many teachers whom i am grateful for enriching my life with writing. each one had that special touch in guiding me. each one had that unique style which captivated my interest. each one had that wholesome way of building up my confidence that allowed me to express myself freely in words. you had your way. before you came, i did not know that i could write. you showed me that i was not only good but that i could do better. i cannot tell you how much writing have benefitted my life. but i can tell you that you made a difference in my life. i thank God for you. terima kasih.


There are several teachers in my life I wish I could thank ... Perhaps I shall do it here.

Shakespeare the African

I hadn't known that Shakespeare was African, until my students taught me.

My Form Five girls were studying literature for their West African School Certificate. We'd plowed through Acebe's Things Fall Apart, grappled with aspects of negritude in a selection of West African poetry, and analysed Ama Ata Aidoo's play about an interculture marriage Dilemma of a Ghost.

But reading Julius Caesar with the class was something I dreaded. I railed against the setters of the syllabus in the staffroom. Weren't my kids finding it hard enough already to cope with even modern English, and what could a British playwright born centuries earlier possibly have to say to them?

I soon found out.

Julius Caesar is an African play.

Nigerians know all about coups and their aftermath. Superstition and black magic, soothsayers, omens and prophetic dreams is part of the currency of everyday life in West Africa. Great oratory is loved and valued.

Mark Anthony stirred the class into action in the last lesson of the day, with the girls taking turns to read his part. The atmosphere in the classroom was electric - I'd never seen my students so enthusisatic about a text before.

The bell for lunch rang. The class seemed not to have heard it. I let them read on for a while. The rest of the school streamed out of classrooms towards the canteen.

"Let's continue, Ma," said one of the girls seeing that I looked worried about holding them back.

We went on for a few more minutes until my conscience got the better of me: "Right," I said "you'd better go for your lunch."

"Ohhhhhh, so it's lunchtime is it, Ma?" said someone and the class laughed but made no move to close their books. It was a mutiny!

It was only when we finished the scene some twenty minutes later that they finally packed away their things and left the classroom. They'd missed their lunch, but no-one seemed to mind.

The story of Julius Caesar seemed to pass into legend around the school compound, being told and retold even by girls who weren't in my class. Someone composed a song for Brutus which had the words "Farewell, Brutus, farewell," sung to the tune of Two Lovely Black Eyes. (Now where on earth had they got that from?) I heard it being sung around the school compound for weeks afterwards.