creative writing

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

DOI: 10.1111/j.1754-8845.2007.00004.x

‘Personal’ and ‘critical’? Exam criteria, engagement with texts, and real readers’ responses

Fiona Richards-Kamal Our Lady’s Convent High School, Hackney

Abstract This article explores how exam criteria require pupils to engage with texts at once ‘personally’ and ‘critically’. It theorises this dichotomy, suggesting problems it presents in a classroom. Observing that dwindling opportunities for creative writing impede personal engagement, it considers the possibilities suggested by the imaginative writings of two pupils for resolving the dichotomy.

Keywords Exam criteria, reader response, ‘licensed readings’, ‘informed readings’, creative writing

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

53

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

‘Personal’ and ‘critical’?

Introduction Early in my Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), a one-year initial teacher education course for university graduates, I became interested in what children were doing with ideas about themselves when they related to texts. This arose out of the coincidence of two events. First, while reading with my mixed-race 18-month-old daughter, I noticed she pointed to the white baby in the book and said ‘Mila’ (her own name), when reading with me (I am Caucasian) but, secondly, to the brown or Chinese babies when reading with her father (who is half Iranian, half Chinese). This was interesting, suggesting her perception of her own place in the story changed according to whom she was reading with. I also began teaching Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to a Year 8 class predominated by pupils from Africa and the Caribbean. One task was to storyboard the opening scene to tell the audience about Scrooge’s character before he had even spoken. Taye asked, ‘Miss, can Scrooge be Ghanaian?’ I answered, ‘Of course, why not?’ then began to consider the implications of the question and the response. If Scrooge were Ghanaian, in an overwhelmingly white Victorian England, the nuances and motivations of the story would be completely changed. If he were transplanted to Ghana, these might remain more or less intact, but the Dickensian flavour of the work, implicitly valued by the National Curriculum for imbuing a sense of English literary heritage, would be utterly transformed. More interesting were the implications of the question. Why was it so important to this pupil that Scrooge should share his ethnicity? Ebenezer Scrooge is hardly a character to embrace as a champion, as this particular pupil knew, having played Scrooge in a junior school pantomime. Was this why he asked – because he had already identified himself intimately with the character, and needed to replicate the relationship in his reading of the text by changing Scrooge’s ethnicity to make the fit? Or was there another explanation? As my PGCE year progressed, my awareness of the practical and theoretical implications of this conundrum increased. I repeatedly heard teachers bemoaning pupils’ inability to engage personally with texts, their failure to tick the higher grade descriptors in National Curriculum Key Stage 3 tests (commonly known as Standard Assessment Tests or SATs) and General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examinations, because they could not explain the effects of a text upon themselves as readers, or conjecture why an author might have chosen to create such effects. In short, pupils were unable to envisage a relationship between themselves as readers, the text as the National Curriculum would have it read, and the author, in terms sufficiently satisfying to meet the exam criteria. Was this simply, as most teachers assumed, because the vast

54

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

Fiona Richards-Kamal

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

majority of pupils could not grasp that they must describe what a metaphor or a simile made them feel or think, then make some gesture toward the author having put it there accordingly? Or was there a more complex problem at work – one where the exam criteria demanded pupils answer from a readership position alien to their own reading experience? Most pupils I encountered during my training were of mixed or nonBritish ethnicity, or second generation British. Were they obliged, when encountering texts from the National Curriculum, to make the complicated mental accommodations to take a subject position at which my daughter’s and my Ghanaian pupil’s examples hinted? (Even if pupils happen to encounter a text from ‘their own’ country of origin, under the ‘texts from different cultures’ section of the curriculum, the experience of migration means they are changed in their relation to that country’s culture and expressions). Were the processes required for these accommodations too complex to allow pupils to meet the additional challenges of answering in terms demanded by the criteria, especially since this must be done in writing? Interestingly, pupils who had little difficulty performing the interpretive role demanded by the exam criteria were without exception keen readers, female, and predominantly white British, though the pupil most able to do so was a recently arrived Afro-American girl. These pupils did not find themselves in a more straightforward relation to the texts studied (hardly any of the texts have female protagonists, much less Afro-American females recently arrived in London), but through their extensive experience of reading, they had become adept at occupying a variety of readership positions, allowing them to engage with texts despite there being no simple correspondence between themselves and the characters or situations portrayed. This ability to perform different readership roles enabled them to take on the additional role of ‘reading’ the text in the terms required by the exam criteria. In other words, they knew how to take on various roles demanded by the criteria and the text in ways which their classmates, less experienced readers, were not able to do. The flexibility to adopt varied readership positions may be linked to a similar ability to adopt a differently inflected identity in relation to changing cultural expectations. Tellingly, it is the twice-displaced from the cultural majority Afro-American who is most at ease with a range of texts, where her classmates, in a fairly uniform Afro-Caribbean British cultural pocket of London, find it difficult to make the switch to the mainstream British readership position demanded by the exam criteria. The questions I wanted to ask about how pupils were to do the work required by the National Curriculum became ‘how do pupils construct their own interpretations, and how does this relate to what the curriculum expects?’ and ‘how do pupils relate to the additional demands of writing

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

55

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

‘Personal’ and ‘critical’?

in the way prescribed by exam criteria?’. Underlying both was the glaring, practical question: how can I help pupils relate to the texts personally and meaningfully for them, while still moving them toward ticking those exam criteria boxes to achieve the grades they need? Theoretical positioning My thinking on pupil engagement with texts is indebted to readerresponse theory, and ideas about migration across cultures and its effect upon identity. I believe pupils make meaning in the texts they read by approaching them through their own histories and experiences. The cultural mix of London schools means these approaches are often excitingly different to anything I, or an author, could have anticipated. In 1967, Roland Barthes attacked the idea of a traditional, exegetical style of reading, where the reader’s role is to unlock the ‘true’ meaning put into a text by the author. With characteristic exuberance, Barthes proclaimed ‘the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author’. (Barthes, 1988: 172) Barthes argued, as did other reader-response theorists from the late sixties onward, that a text is not a stable artefact always containing the same story, but is actualised only in the reading moment. Each reading experience is unique because each reader is unique. The distinctive interpretations offered by my pupils attest to this. However, Barthes’ article, ‘The Death of the Author’, was not the proclamation of liberty for readers it seemed. His reader was not real, but ideal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted. (Barthes, 1988: 171) For Barthes, this depersonalised, imaginary reader represents a space, conceptually necessary to allow the free-play of language in the text; their identity is dissolved. Forty years later, in the wake of identity politics, championed by postcolonial and feminist critics, it seems anathema to suggest the possibility of reading without history, biography or sociology. Yet most reader-response theorists still assume an ideal reader, to explain why some interpretations are more valid than others, and safeguard the concept of literary value. Stanley Fish imagines a reader who is ‘ideal’ or ‘informed’ – someone who: (1) is a competent speaker of the language out of which the text is built up;

56

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

Fiona Richards-Kamal

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

(2) is in full possession of the semantic knowledge that a mature … listener brings to his task of comprehension, including the knowledge (that is, the experience, both as a producer and comprehender) of lexical sets, collocation probabilities, idioms, professional and other dialects, and so on; and (3) has literary competence. That is, he is sufficiently experienced as a reader to have internalized the properties of literary discourses, including everything from the most local of devices (figures of speech and so on) to whole genres (Fish, 1980: 48). The obvious objection is that no teacher finds such a reader in a contemporary London classroom. If pupils fulfilled these criteria there would be little left to teach them. In other words, theories of reading which assume an ideal or informed reader do not account for the process of reading, which happens while an individual is attempting to become an ‘informed reader’. But, what precisely do we teach pupils to help them become ‘informed readers’, and what assumptions are we making if we do? Fish posits ‘unwritten’ knowledge of a ‘set of acceptable ways’, to interpret a text as a social given: Nowhere is this set of acceptable ways written down, but it is a part of everyone’s knowledge of what it means to be operating within the literary institution as it is now constituted. (Fish, 1980: 343) Who is ‘everyone’? Do my pupils have this knowledge? Not according to their exam results – the ability to interpret in an ‘acceptable’ way is something they are still mastering. But they do know these ways exist, explicitly through the grade descriptors I must give them, and through pervasive implicit expectations. Eagleton relates these expectations to considerations of power and dominance, communicated through the teacher: In the case of literary works, there is also sometimes a practical situation which excludes certain readings and licenses others, known as the teacher … Such licensed ways of reading … relate to dominant forms of valuation and interpretation in society as a whole. (Eagleton, 1983: 88) As teachers, we implicitly communicate ways of reading acceptable to dominant forms of interpretation, which in London schools are often different to the ways pupils and their communities interpret the world.

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

57

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

‘Personal’ and ‘critical’?

We also explicitly communicate how one reads in order to achieve success at SAT and GCSE level, making Fish’s ‘unwritten’ knowledge concrete, itemised, and intrusive. The power differential involved in reading is clear – if you read ‘incorrectly’, the authority of the teacher and the examining board will penalise you. A cursory glance through GCSE marking criteria shows the weight given to the ability to engage personally with a text, and to express it, in writing, in terms acceptable to the ‘licensed ways of reading’ of the examining community. Strikingly, in the following sample of grade descriptors, personal response is necessary for all grades above not, as one might expect, a C, but an F; i.e. one grade above the absolute bottom, a G (U is ungraded). While reading these, it is fruitful to consider what sort of personal response one has when not ‘a competent speaker of the language’, or ‘in full possession of … semantic knowledge’ of the culture in which the text was written. Reading A*: Candidates show originality of analysis and interpretation when evaluating the moral, philosophical and social significance of a text. C: Candidates give a personal and critical response to literary texts, which show understanding of the ways in which meaning is conveyed. Grade F and above: Candidates make a personal response …. (AQA, 2007: 56-57) There is a clear, unacknowledged, contradiction between a ‘personal’ and a ‘critical’ response. This is true for me, an academic, home-grown white Briton, nationalised for generations. My personal response to Joanne Harris’s novels is to devour them as guilty pleasures, like the chocolate or alcohol which are their motifs; guilty because my critical response is they contain crude plot lines and characterisations, sloppy phraseology, and an indulgently romantic tone. I can rationalise this difference with a range of critical manoeuvres; my pupils cannot yet explain such a misfit to themselves or the exam board. Problematically for my pupils, both Fish’s and Eagleton’s explanations, and the exam criteria, assume they are part of a coherent, ‘whole’ society. How else could the grade descriptor invoke so simplistically the (singular) ‘moral philosophy’ or ‘social significance’ of a text? The word ‘originality’ implies some freedom of interpretation, but what in reality would this mean to a pupil who refused to comment on sexual connotations in Duffy’s ‘Anne Hathaway’, on the grounds they are semi-pornographic and inappropriate for a religious person, let alone a child below the legal age

58

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

Fiona Richards-Kamal

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

of sexual consent, to write about? This is a perfectly defensible moral position, but if they did so in an exam they would score poorly. I have already mentioned the pupils in my first placement, whose experience of British society suggested it was mostly made up of British Afro-Caribbeans, just like themselves. (They were stunned to discover, during a media project, that the majority of British people are white). At my second placement, most pupils were British-Pakistani, their experiences, expectations and moral universes differing vastly from their counterparts a short bus ride away. Neither group was part of the mainstream white community that dominates the production and reception of texts in Britain. Naidoo asserts: ‘reading material conflicting with a reader’s world view is liable to be misinterpreted, with readers being highly selective in their interpretation’ (Naidoo, 1992: 18). A pupil whose world view is different to the mainstream is less likely to find its correlative in set texts, placing them at greater risk of ‘misinterpreting’ texts, or producing ‘unacceptable’ readings. Applying reader-response theory to pupils learning to engage with texts, Karolides agrees, listing things which can ‘go wrong’ and prevent a pupil from reading and commenting in Eagleton’s ‘licensed’ way: The situations, characters, or issues may be outside the maturational-experiential scope of the reader, the language may be beyond the recognition or experience of the reader, and the reader may use ineffective reading strategies. (Karolides, 1997: 8-9) If a reader needs an adequate ‘maturational-experiential’ range in order to imaginatively engage with a text, how are pupils in British schools to draw upon their differing experiences and knowledge to produce the normative, ‘valid’ readings expected of them? In The Satanic Verses, Rushdie makes visible the implicit assumptions of reading when his character Gibreel arrives in London to find it ‘dressed in white, like a mourner at a funeral’ (Rushdie, 1992: 200). The Indian tradition of funereal mourning in white is out of place in this London, and the symbolic jarring with the customary English white wedding is disturbing. Communicating the displacement Gibreel feels, Rushdie effects that sense of dislocation in his mainstream British readers, giving them, for a moment, the feeling of being out of place he implies is perpetual to a migrant in Britain. Is this kind of jarring what pupils, who have not yet assimilated the ‘correct’ reading strategies, experience every time they read a text?

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

59

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

‘Personal’ and ‘critical’?

Reader-response theory offers a way to imagine texts as actualised through the experience of individual readers. It also posits the idea of interpretive communities with ‘licensed ways of reading’; implying part of learning to read is learning to operate within these acceptable structures. It gives us a way to understand how pupils begin to make meaning when they read, and also how they must begin to encounter the ‘licensed ways of reading’ which will allow their reading to count. It does not tell us how these contradictory skills are to be reconciled. Let us meet individual readers, and see how they began to take on the challenge. Real readers’ responses Melody, Year 71 In my second school placement, I wondered whether giving pupils the opportunity to play author would improve the confidence of their personal responses, and give them insight into how writers attempt to control interpretations. My school had detailed and prescriptive schemes of work, and I noticed Year 7 offered a lot of imaginative, creative work, which tailed off by Year 9, with Year 10 allowing only one piece of creative writing, and scant opportunity for imaginative engagement with texts. This coincided with a greater enthusiasm for the subject in Year 7 pupils, and more prolific writing. Melody, a Nigerian pupil, flagged on the register for those with English as an additional language, and identified by the class teacher as weak in her command of English, showed the ease with which she could engage with certain texts. During a project called ‘Myself’, the class were to re-tell a fairytale with themselves in the main role. Melody gave me three–and-ahalf pages of typewritten story, plotted to perfection, complete with markers like ‘Once upon a time’ and ‘happily ever after’ in their rightful places, and with digitally manipulated illustrations. Although the protagonist in her version of Cinderella was not called Melody, there is no doubt she made the story entirely her own: The prince’s name is Alex he replied ‘I won’t tell if u won’t please stand up a woman with your beauty shouldn’t be kneeling on the ground’ thank you by the way my name is Rosella you’re your highness. Alex said that is a marvelous name and for an amazing looking lady like you and please is Alex not your highness. Rosella heard her name being called by her step mum she said ‘have to go Alex’. Alex said can we meet up some where please and she said ‘ok bye’ So rosella run into the house so happy and excited.

1

All students have been given pseudonyms.

60

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

Fiona Richards-Kamal

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

Melody scripts this first meeting with a fantastic ear for the flattery of confident men. Her heroine is properly deferential and, after Alex sets an informal register by asking her not to call him ‘your highness’, she switches faultlessly to a more familiar tone: ‘have to go Alex’. This mastery of register and dialogue is far in advance of her ability to use speechmarks or punctuation correctly, but is a more sophisticated skill. She is not simply ‘good orally, weak on paper’; her knowledge of the broad structure of fairytale is undeniably sound, as is her ability to structure a long linear narrative. She has an emerging understanding of how to set out speech on a page, and although her punctuation and grammar falter sometimes, she largely avoids tense-slippage. The instance, ‘the prince’s name is Alex he replied’, possibly derives from understandable logical confusion – his name, presumably, is still Alex so she uses the continuous present, but he spoke in the past. The other instance, ‘run’, is a marker of Melody’s incomplete assimilation of Standard English. We have visual evidence of her grammatical progress, though, in her replacement of ‘you’re’ with ‘your’, which proves not only her ability to self-edit, but that she is not, as may appear, thinking in an exclusively oral mode. In other words she has begun to produce written speech, which differs from oral speech not only in form, but the thought processes which enable it. My understanding of this is nascent. I was intrigued by Vygotsky’s assertion that, Written speech is a separate linguistic function, differing from oral speech in both structure and mode of functioning. Even its minimal development requires a high level of abstraction. It is speech in thought and image only. (Vygotsky, 1962: 98 cited in Kerr, 2006: 6) What this might mean for the mental processes Melody is beginning to master, is fascinating. Melody also has a sound understanding of the tidy justice of fairytales, and is able to translate this to a contemporary setting: And rosella’s step mum went to women’s prison for two years and Julie and Sam became servants and Prince Alex and princess Rosella lived happily ever after. She might not yet be Stanley Fish’s fully ‘informed’ reader at the level of language, but her ‘semantic knowledge’ is impressive. She also understands ‘dialects’, and most impressively of all, we can make a case for her ‘literary competence’; she has ‘internalised the properties of literary discourses … from the most local of devices (figures of speech

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

61

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

‘Personal’ and ‘critical’?

and so on) to whole genres’ (Fish, 1980: 48). This is certainly true of fairytales, and as we moved on to the next project, her aptitude for gaining broad-scale literary competence became apparent. Pupils were working towards writing their first assessed essay. I asked them to write a concluding verse for Ahlberg’s poem, ‘The Mad Professor’s Daughter’, as a preface to commenting on the effect of devices they had used themselves. We had begun by identifying different ways to make a poem scary by using scary atmosphere words. Melody explained why she had used the word ‘disappear’. I wanted to create an exciting atmosphere by using the word ‘dissapear’ to make my reader imagine a scary picture of someone just dissappearing without anyone knowing why. It is clear Melody understands how words work upon the imagination to create ‘pictures’, and how mystery can be used to create excitement. She knows enough of how readers engage with texts to appreciate the importance of leaving gaps in the story, allowing room for the reader to attempt their own interpretations. She gained this knowledge through personal engagement with reading and writing: had I asked her simply to write about how Ahlberg uses scary techniques in the poem, she would have found it difficult. Critical reading and creative writing ‘I firmly believe there is no distinction between creative and critical writing.’ Paul Muldoon, Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, is quoted by Jenny Lewis to champion her work with undergraduates, where ‘the creative and the critical are encouraged to enhance one another’ (Lewis and Newlyn, 2003: x). If the critical reading skills of Oxford undergraduates benefit from creative writing exercises, it seems odd that opportunities for creative writing reduce as pupils progress through secondary school. I noticed some pupils in Year 10 writing less confidently than those in Year 7 with comparable abilities because, I believe, of the lack of opportunities for creative engagement on the one hand, and the limitation of personal engagement by the need to adopt a ‘validated’ readership role, performed in writing, in relation to marking criteria, on the other. Part of this is no doubt due to problems specific to writing, but as Melody’s writing, and that of other more challenged pupils shows, the mechanics of writing are not necessarily a bar to taking pleasure in writing. My in-school mentor phrased the problem succinctly: ‘you wouldn’t give a kid a car manual and expect them to be able to fix an engine; you’d give

62

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

Fiona Richards-Kamal

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

them an engine to play about with themselves’. By the time pupils reach Year 10, we expect them to work with ‘manual’ terms for literature, mostly getting them to label the bits, and then wonder why they can’t explain how the engine of a text works, or how it feels to drive it. Haroun, Year 10 I decided to give my Year 10 pupils the opportunity to engage creatively with a text without taking on the additional role of ‘informed reader’, that is without thinking in terms of exam criteria. They had to write a paragraph on how Dickens uses surrealism to communicate emotion in Great Expectations (it is beyond the scope of this article to consider whether this proposition is valid), so I set an ‘automatic writing’ task designed to teach some concepts of surrealism. I began by showing some examples of surrealist art. Then, before moving into the task, I explained to the pupils that some surrealists practised automatic writing; that is, to write and keep writing without thinking about it, letting their hand move almost on its own, in order to get in touch with their subconscious mind and emotions. I also told them this is the way some songwriters work. I wanted to see if encountering the text in this extremely raw and direct way would allow pupils to engage with it creatively, and write about it confidently. The responses were astonishingly frank, and I felt enormously humbled by my pupils’ trust. I told them I would read what they had written, but not mark it. I also said they could write whatever came into their heads, even if it was in a language other than English, or involved swearing. (Space does not allow the consideration of a wonderfully entertaining piece of writing by a British-Turkish pupil, which is bilingual, illustrated, and in places profane.) Haroun was a quiet pupil with a poor attendance record. When he showed up, he always had a smile, and seemed pleased to be noticed. He kept his distance from other members of the class, choosing to sit at the far corner of the room nearest the door. I asked pupils to write about the last time they were angry: I was angry because th I was getting bullied I wante tried everything. I fought back I told the teacher but I was outnumber I got chased home not by one not by two but by 3 I s eventually lost all m mu sp f I forgot that I was in reality I eventually f started on all those who opposed me I felt my anger my rage my lust for revenge I wanted to mud murder them I saw the Images of me mude mud murdering them In the most gruesome way I know knew how It was in my old home town Newcastle.

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

63

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

‘Personal’ and ‘critical’?

From the first scoring out, where Haroun decides to replace a possible ‘there’, ‘they’ or ‘the’ with the far more vulnerable and direct ‘I’, he has taken on the challenge of the task – opening his emotions and memories into his writing. This is something he was not able to do in his mock exam paper, where he assumed the safe, ‘validated’ role of making points dictated by the class teacher, and consequently scored poorly on personal response. He edits his thoughts in order to communicate them more clearly, showing he, too, is operating with written, not oral, speech. Consequently, there is a clear sense of an implied reader, whom Haroun wishes to influence. He replaces ‘wanted’ with ‘tried’, perhaps to set the psychological scene before addressing his desire. Indeed, what he ‘wants’ turns out to be quite shocking, and his choice shows a sophisticated attempt to provoke empathy before ‘confessing’. He manages to achieve this stage-setting without stepping back from the immediacy and honesty of his recollection, as we see in the next line: crossings-out proliferate as emotion gets the better of him, and he finally explains ‘I forgot that I was in reality’. The build up of ‘not one not two but 3’, with the final digit in number form, as the speed of the chase overtakes him, is another masterly device, increasing the tension as the reader takes the position of the chased boy, anxiously hurtling forward through the text to discover just how many assailants are after him. Like Melody, Haroun clearly knows how a reader experiences a text, and is able to manipulate this. Falling out of reality for a moment, he gives us some idea of time passing while he pulls himself together (‘eventually’), then proclaims his authority with formal and grand language, ‘started on all those who opposed me’. He has redrawn the relationship, and is now the one in control. Haroun underscores this new sense of control, by choosing rhetorical language to control his reader. He uses a ‘list of three’; something he almost certainly could not identify in a studied text, but here deploys with aplomb to add emphasis and heighten emotion: ‘my anger, my rage, my lust for revenge’. The rhythm mimics a fistfight, with a precision worthy of Ali. He repeats ‘my’, to emphasise his centrality, gaining momentum as he follows it first with the quick one-two of a trochee, then a monosyllabic uppercut before linking the final monosyllable ‘lust’ with the bacchius ‘for revenge’, where the initial unstressed beat ‘for’ is like a pause for breath before the final knock-out double whammy of ‘revenge’. He slows the pace for the shocking, but prosaically stated, ‘I wanted to murder them,’ but needs two attempts to write the appalling word. Rallying, he distances and makes safe the emotion by clearly designating it imaginary, and placing himself both within the imagined scene and

64

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

Fiona Richards-Kamal

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

safely outside it as an onlooker: ‘I saw images of me.’ He still has to have three attempts before he can write himself a murderer, even in this most ring-fenced of depictions. Finally, he inserts another distancing mechanism, changing the immediacy of ‘know’ for ‘knew’, and adding the matter of fact ending ‘it was in my old home town Newcastle’, as if reminding himself of his temporal and spatial distance from this memory. Had I asked Haroun to write about techniques an author might use to communicate a frightening memory and arouse strong empathy and complex emotions in a reader, he would have protested he didn’t understand. However, his work shows a remarkable understanding of how to communicate emotion, motive, and suspense; and an instinctive knowledge of how to manipulate reading pace, and different psychological distances. None of these are things he could identify in a text, if given a list of terms and definitions. When he is the author communicating something he can picture vividly, and his reader has explicitly taken away the hurdles of validation (‘I won’t be marking this’), he is able to utilise them powerfully. How useful was this exercise in giving him the confidence to enter someone else’s text as an equal, and critical, maker of meaning? I continued by asking pupils to write about the last time they were happy, and Haroun wrote about his mother, and his extended family, who ‘used to teach me how to become strong’. I then asked them to imagine they were entering Miss Havisham’s room, and write about what they saw and felt: I hear nothing but my own foot-steps and my heard the candle light crackeling I all I smell is decay & a rotting coarpse. All I see in the conne corner is an a woman who appears to be in her 50 years. Ther as I go to check I Miss havisham I notice that she is crying and I go to touch her face I feel more her smooth complection and a Deep wrinkles wrinkly face And her dark brown eyes I saw her It made me feel sorry because she was preparing for death. Has Haroun imaginatively engaged with the text? Emphatically so. Is he, though, able to offer a ‘valid’ interpretation of it? If we return to the GCSE marking criteria (AQA, 2007) for how successful is he? We can certainly note that he has ‘made a personal response’. He also understands ‘the way meaning is conveyed’. His interpretation is original and compelling. Has he responded critically? I would argue he has begun to. ‘It made me feel sorry because she was preparing for death’; a clear

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

65

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

‘Personal’ and ‘critical’?

explanation of the text’s effect on the reader – himself. Does he begin to understand how Dickens set up this effect? He has absorbed much detail from the original text – not only the candlelight, which he both sees and hears, but the tomb-like emptiness of Miss Havisham’s room, in which his own footsteps are the only other noise. This emptiness is accentuated by his choice of language, which continually reduces; ‘nothing but’, ‘all I smell’, ‘all I see’. He has also absorbed Dickens’ extended metaphor of Miss Havisham as an alreadydead body, but Haroun focuses on the process of death, which he finds ongoing in the room: ‘decay’, ‘rotting’. He switches paragraphs and perspectives, surprising us, after his funereal preamble, with a living, breathing Miss Havisham, who still feels enough to cry. He touches her face (is there a more powerful instance of a reader engaging with a text?), looks into her eyes, and sees with precision what the previous description has led up to: ‘she was preparing for death’. This astutely anticipates three chapters ahead, when Pip visits Miss Havisham on her birthday: ‘When the ruin is complete,’ said she, with a ghastly look, ‘and when they lay me dead, in my bride’s dress on the bride’s table – which shall be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him – so much the better if it is done on this day!’ (Dickens, 1861: 84) Bridal dress, arrested decay, seclusion: all are part of the ‘curse’ Miss Havisham is preparing for her faithless fiance´, which will be completed with her death. Haroun detected this momentum. But is he able to write critically, take on the role of ‘informed reader’, offer a ‘valid reading? He has used and responded sensitively to writing techniques, but has not explicitly identified any of them. Let us examine his beginning response for his formal article: ‘She seemed to be everywhere.’ He sees this because he becomes intimidated and falls in love, but these emotions are to [sic] powerful for him because he is only a ten year old boy. It is brief, because Haroun still finds this kind of writing difficult. He called me over several times while writing it, to check if his idea was correct, and rehearse orally what he was going to write. The intimidating presence of those exam board ‘licensed ways of reading’ was palpable to us both. But he has identified a passable example of surrealism (a difficult achievement), and written an ‘original’ account of what it tells us about

66

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

Fiona Richards-Kamal

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

Pip’s complex emotions. His account is psychologically sensitive – Pip’s age makes him unequal to this emotional complexity and so his experience of reality is distorted and becomes ‘surreal’. What is missing is an account of Dickens choosing this phrase in order to affect his reader. Having engaged intimately with the text, Haroun is not yet able to step back to a position of critical detachment, which would allow him to construct such an account. I now see how I could begin to help him reach this position, by looking at his own work, making explicit his knowledge of how a text works on a reader, and then working with him to transfer this to another writer’s words. Seeing how he has done this himself would do more than show him techniques and effects in language he can understand; it would give him power over the text, and go a little way to help him vanquish the bogey of those ‘licensed ways of reading’. He has already made the language, the semantic nexus, and the experiences of Great Expectations his own, by drawing upon his own struggles, his own floundering beneath the weight of a complex of emotions so powerful they made him, for a moment, ‘forget he was in reality’. Without prompting, he selected this most appropriate memory as a means to responding, first to the humiliated and vengeful Miss Havisham, then to the emotionally overwhelmed Pip. To return to Rushdie, writing about Indian writers writing in English: Those of us who do use English do so in spite of our ambiguity towards it, or perhaps because of that, perhaps because we can find in that linguistic struggle a reflection of other struggles taking place in the real world, struggles between the cultures within ourselves and the influences at work upon our societies. To conquer English may be to complete the process of making ourselves free. (Rushdie, 1991: 17) Conclusion This article has explored how exam criteria require pupils to engage with texts in a split, and often-contradictory way, using propositions from reader-response critics to theorise the dichotomy, and suggests some problems it presents in a multicultural classroom. On the way, it has touched upon assumptions and power relations implicit in the idea of ‘licensed’ or ‘informed’ readings. Practical considerations arising include how opportunities for creative writing are minimised as pupils move though secondary school, and the negative effects of this upon their motivation and ability to engage personally with texts. This drain on creativity has implications beyond the classroom. In September 2002, announcing a £40 million investment by

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

67

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

‘Personal’ and ‘critical’?

the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in programmes to link creative activity to the curricula in schools, Peter Jenkinson asserted ‘Reconnecting with the innate skills of creativity … will lead to… a workforce more attuned to the requirements of 21st century society’ (Lewis and Newlyn, 2003: x). In stark opposition to this, my experience of teaching in London suggests a culture of reading and writing to fulfil exam criteria has all but destroyed opportunities for creative engagement with texts. This, if Mr Jenkinson is correct, can only be a bad thing for 21st century society. However, as my reading of individual pupils’ work attests, creativity is alive and well, despite the gravest machinations of exam boards. Not so well is the ‘informed’, or critically distanced reader, but working with Melody and Haroun suggests s/he might yet be saved like Tinkerbell, if we clap our hands loudly and say we believe in creative writing. Then, we need space for pupils to stand back from their own writing and think explicitly, with teacher support, about what they were doing. This, I believe, is the next step towards being able to comment critically upon what other writers are doing, and why. I now plan opportunities for this kind of reflection in my teaching. Given the unsavoury assumptions about power and cultural dominance implicit in the idea of ‘licensed’ readings, I wondered whether it was necessary for Haroun and Melody to take the final step to becoming ‘informed’ readers. Isn’t such a transformation tantamount to assimilation; brainwashing? My conclusion is that without good GCSEs, the implicit power relations of British culture will impact upon them in terms of employment prospects; and more insidiously. In the course of this article, I have evaluated their writing using a host of critical terms to make claims for their abilities, and make these count in the terms of powerful institutions like exam boards. It may not be fair that claims have to be staked in these terms to be valuable, but given that they do, Haroun and Melody deserve the critical tools to stake them for themselves. References AQA (2007) GCSE English Specification A, http://www.aqa.org.uk/qual/ pdf/AQA-3702-W-SP-07.PDF (accessed 21.11.07). Barthes, R. (1967, repr.1988) ‘The death of the author’, in D. Lodge (ed.) Modern criticism and theory: A reader. London: Longman. Dickens, C. (1861, repr. 1994) Great expectations. London: Penguin. Eagleton, T. (1983) Literary theory: An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Fish, S. (1980) Is there a text in this class? The authority of interpretive communities. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Karolides, N. J. (1997) Reader response in elementary classrooms. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

68

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

Fiona Richards-Kamal

English in Education Vol.42 No.1 2008

Kerr, P. (2006) ‘Finding a voice – exploring the relationship between speaking and writing with a Year 7 class’, Changing English, 13(1), pp. 3–16. Lewis, J. and Newlyn, L. (2003) Synergies: Creative writing in academic practice. Oxford: Chough Publications. Naidoo, B. (1992) Through whose eyes? Exploring racism: Reader, text and context. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books. Rushdie, S. (1991) Imaginary homelands: Articles and criticism 19811991. London: Granta. Rushdie, S. (1992) The satanic verses. Delaware: The Consortium Inc. Vygotsky, L. (1962) cited in P. Kerr (2006) ‘Finding a voice: Exploring the relationship between speaking and writing with a Year 7 class’, Changing English, 13(1), pp. 3–16.

ª 2008 The Author. Journal compilation ª 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English.

69