The idea of poetry being taught in our primary schools may come as a surprise to some. How would poetry fit into Ofsted’s tick boxes, after all, how would it be tested in the Sats? Actually very well - the way that the government has stipulated it be taught.
I remember vividly teaching poetry to my Year 2 class of six and seven year-olds. The point of the exercise – and it was very much an ‘exercise’ – was not to enjoy the content of the poetry but to determine the 'technical' differences between a piece of poetry and a piece of prose. How can you be sure, class, that this writing on page 6 is a poem? Length, check; rhyme, check etc. The content, those carefully chosen (all importantly class, few) words were almost a potential distraction from what we were supposed to all be focusing on.
Dissecting poems in this way seemed not just irrelevant but a sure-fire way to kill any interest in actually reading poetry. This is not to say that, for a while at least, the children did not enjoy this spot the difference, focus on form exercise – they did, in the same way that they enjoyed identifying 3D shapes. But the question is, is there any value in this mechanistic treatment of poetry at primary level?
No, says Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen. Talking to the BBC, Rosen has responded vociferously to an Ofsted report which has found ‘room for improvement’ in the teaching of poetry. Rosen’s own thoughts on poetry teaching are considerably more critical:
‘The effect of Sats,’ comments Rosen, ‘and indeed the whole literacy strategy, have to my mind, been disastrous for poetry. Poetry is either sidelined or subjected to pointless questioning on the supposed 'facts' of a poem and children spend their time counting metaphors and proving what that this or that makes a poem effective.’
Schools’ Minister Andrew Adonis' response is cheerfully optimistic:
‘I want to see a generation of young people who know their poetry from Auden to Zephaniah and their sonnets from sestinas.’
If poetry teaching continues in the current vein, pupils may well know their sonnets from their sestinas; but we can be fairly sure that they will have been given little opportunity to enjoy either.
Comments (2)
There's surely nothing wrong with finding out how poems are made. What is annoying about today's methods is that they are random and ignorant and fail utterly to bear in mind the total effect of the work. Equally, they forget that the music of words is an end in itself. An "imaginative" approach is indeed probably more conducive to appreciation at an earlier age. This, however, should be balanced with some information as to poetry writing technique. Many children love rhyme and metre but dogmatic "progressivism" has banished this approach. Formal lit crit, which is what these bean counting exercises are trying to mimic, is not for six year olds.
Posted by Simon Denis | December 10, 2007 10:54 AM
Posted on December 10, 2007 10:54
You and Rosen are right. But I am still trying to parse the approach to poetry in the country of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth. What has gone wrong? What causes such a pointless and destructive standard? Yes, as a student and teacher of literature my entire adult life, my notion of England is bookish--but so should England's be of England, and thus in the constant reading of English poetry from the earliest age for pleasure...
Posted by Palladio | December 8, 2007 1:00 AM
Posted on December 8, 2007 01:00