1. Literature is a body of classic texts with superior qualities, renown and studied at the highest level. You might end up, with the best intentions, selecting texts that are not only difficult linguistically and cognitively, but that have been so much commented upon that it becomes difficult to move away from those commentaries. The status of the text might also lead you to believe it has a specific meaning, instead of encouraging you to move within it with freedom. Further, ‘superior qualities’ like style are extremely difficult to explain, judge, evaluate or simply relate to when you’re not a very experienced reader. Finally, any aesthetic considerations are problematic (see style…), and are, in any case, difficult to relate to interpretation for those who don’t quite see the wood for the tree.
2. I believe that learning technical terminology is important because it enables the reader to analyse a text; that is probably true, since the very idea behind terminology is to enable analysis and communication between specialists. However, analysing is a problem in itself: analysis is not interpretation, and the step(s) between those two terms means hard work for you and your readers. Similarly, terminology helps to label, organise and create an overview, but that is only a starting point (to observe): it will never replace discussing the text, exchanging ideas about it, confronting points of view and perspectives. Giving names to things ('metaphor', 'alliteration' etc.) is only helpful is you link it to concrete examples, and to interpretation - finding metaphors in a text says, in itself, nothing about the possible meaning of the metaphors, why they are used an not non-metaphorical language, or which target domain they link to. Teaching terminology is not working with literature: terminology is a tool - in fact, a specialist's tool, so the question is: why do it, how much of it, and how to embed it in meaning.
3. Young Adult literature is not really literature - it's more entertainment and escapism, like Detectives, Thrillers, Romance of Science-Fiction. A fallacy is to think that texts outside the canon (or texts not studies in academia) are not worth anything except the amusement they provide: you read it to escape, you read it to be entertained, but there’s nothing to think about. But the social nature of a text is nothing to do with the thinking material it affords you: a beautiful, canonical love sonnet may be nothing more than a few lines about love, whereas an entertaining spy novel may contain plenty of moral issues, social nuances and human characteristics to explore. What matters most is what you want to achieve with the text, not which text you’re handling – the text serves your purposes, not the other way around. Consider also the readability of texts for inexperienced readers: a short story with a mystery at its heart, or an unexpected twist at the end, will probably be more motivating to read than a stylistically perfect, linguistically advanced text about the psychological state of an middle-aged man.
4. Literature gives answers to profound questions, so it's important to read it. Literature hardly gives anything for free: the reader has to do the work. The text offers a springboard, a starting point, which readers will use to think further, to reflect on – texts usually do not give straight answers, they’d rather ask questions. Thinking that the answer to a profound question is hidden somewhere in the text turns that text into a problem to solve, whereas it should be seen as an instrument to think for oneself. Some texts might indeed be written to give answers, but you should then ask yourself whether having one answer, given by one person, is what you want in your class?
5. Literature has a special place in our cultures, so it's important to expose learners to it - through whole texts, fragments, or even films. One problem with literature at school is to do with its social status: its place in our cultural capital, as Bourdieu would have it. Yes, literature is indeed a social practice carrying an immense historical and cultural prestige. But letting someone know that – through examples, names, important texts for example – is not the same as engaging with those texts from a thinking point-of-view. So it is probably a good idea to separate things: giving an overview of literature as a social, historical practice is in fact doing Literary history – valuable, perhaps even important, but not the same as what we propose on this site. Intellectually engaging with texts is something else than introducing them as chronological landmarks in a socio-cultural history.
6. I believe that a text is a reflection of its author, and so we should make sure to give biographical information about that author (where were they born and when, what was their life like etc.). Many decades after Roland Barthes and his ‘Death of the author’, it turns out that most people still believe their role as readers is to ‘find what the author meant with their text’. Yet Jorge Luis Borges’ injunction that ‘the text belongs to the reader’ is what we need here: the author presents a text, but we are free (we have to duty to be free) to receive it, use it, ingest and digest it, the way we want. The moment we open a book, we are effectively the owner of that book. Giving extensive information about an author only reinforces the belief that ‘the author knows best’ and that a reader’s task is just to reconstruct that author’s mind and objective. This is not liberating nor motivating for inexperienced readers, and it undermines the reader’s role. A text without a reader is nothing, means nothing, does nothing – do not replace the reader by the author.
7. I believe Literature is important, and I want my students to read some of it so that at least they know what it looks like. And why not? The problem is of course two-fold: Literature has an infinity of faces, expressions, narrative modes, styles, approaches, themes and ideas – can that diversity be shown in its entirety? If it can’t, how do you make choices? Would you rather handle a text by John Banville or James Kelman? T.S. Eliot's poetry is hardly comparable with Philip Larkin's after all.
The other problem is to do with interpretation: showing someone an extract, a bit of, a selection from, is hardly doing much with that tex. It’s like going to a museum and walking very quickly from one room to the next: ‘Look, here’s some pre-Raphaelites, and now here’s some Impressionists, and oh, look! some abstract expressionists there too!’, all the while holding your phone to take pictures but not actually looking at those paintings. Giving information is not the same as doing something with that information. Both might be important, but it is necessary to consider what each of them gives you (as a teacher, and as a reader). There is an important difference between introducing someone to a text, and working with it.
8. I love reading, and I want my learners to read too, especially outside of the class. A great sentiment, but the reality is that very few people read, and that whatever you consider important might be seen as secondary by someone else. Some people strongly love running, or swimming, or collecting stamps: they will sincerely believe it’s good to do those things, and that everyone should as well. Yet plenty of other people will disagree, and oppose their own love for something else (watching TV, eating cheese, playing chess). So ‘loving reading’ is either a personal preference which can hardly be imposed on everyone, or it is a moral argument (‘reading is good’).
But is that enough for a lesson? Is that enough to get learners somewhere else? Moral arguments in class hardly ever work ('learn this, it's good for you'), and it's difficult to make someone love something out of nothing. Make your learners see the potential in texts, make them see their own potential when it comes to thinking - in short, make them see the potential of reading for themselves, and they might end up falling in love with it too...
9. I believe I should make my literature classes fun, as that's the only way to make my learners read a bit. Perhaps, but ‘doing some reading’ may have nothing to do with doing something with that reading. It might be good for linguistic skills, or reading skills in general,or for keeping people quiet, or for exposing them to a text or two. Making something ‘fun’ is not a bad idea of course, but one should not confuse that with engaging with the text on different levels, and thinking with and from it. One can learn while being amused, but you must make clear choices: do you want learners to learn, or just be entertained? If the latter, why not show them an internet meme, or a comedian’s sketch?
10. I think Literature is beauty, and I want to show that beauty (style, words, rhythms, narration) to my learners and make them understand it. Style is a famously hazy notion, and beauty is even worse. Inexperienced readers will not be able to compare texts at the level of style, and will hardly find beauty in texts they do not understand or can read easily. And what is beauty anyway? Some people find Martin Amis’ style the absolute best, while others cannot stand it; James Kelman won the Book Prize with a novel which offended half its readers – and such examples could be multiplied ad infinitum. Finally: there is no more truth, or thinking material, in beauty than in ugliness – it’s what you do with a text that matters.
11. I believe that the author knows best what their message was, and so I believe we must always ask ourselves: 'What did the author mean? What did they want to say?' see above and also here: this is a problem for many teachers. It is indeed much simpler to say the author knows best, and our job is to find what the author meant – much simpler because it reduces the text to one idea, one meaning, and the teacher’s job is not so much to elicit ideas but to bring the learners to that one meaning. Typically of course, learners will then routinely hear ‘No, that’s not it’ to their ideas about the text if those ideas do not correspond with what the teacher expects. And the teacher will expect that one meaning (the author’s) and nothing else. That the teacher found that meaning on their own, or read it somewhere, or heard it during their own studies, matters much less than the fact that the text is reduced to one thing only, and the reader’s role downgraded from intelligent individual to tracker of someone’s thoughts. The author may have had a message but not been good enough to make it clear: is that then the reader’s fault, or the author’s? Authors do not know best: they give us something and then it’s up to us to do something with it.
12. I believe texts have a particular meaning, and our job is to analyse the text to find that meaning: this is another fallacy often heard in class and elsewhere. Many teachers cannot help but ask their readers: ‘What does this text mean?’. But a text is an opportunity to think for yourself, about yourself and about others – a text is not like a pastry recipe which can only lead to one dessert. An Ikea explanatory leaflet to put together a book-case has one particular meaning, and does not need to be interpreted: it needs to be followed from beginning to end, there’s not much sense thinking it over too much, and it has one meaning and one meaning only (it cannot be used for an aquarium, a lamp or a desk). Fiction is not like that, and learners are not paid professionals whose job it is to enshrine texts’ meaning for university classes or learned manuals. Our readers must understand the freedom they must take, and must be helped to use it – asking them what ‘the meaning of this text is’ is the best way to prevent thinking for oneself.
13. I believe texts are there as a means to an end: the end is not to analyse the text for itself, but to use it to elicit ideas, perspectives, differences. Here, a text is considered as material for the brain, the heart and the guts – as a starting point, a springboard, oil in the machine, food for thoughts, whichever cliché you feel like using. The text is not a sacred scroll no-one’s allowed to discuss, dispute, disagree with or interpret differently: the text is material to think with and from. Its (lack of) canonical status, its lack of prestige, its unknown author, its run-of-the-mill style are no impediments to using it because the only thing you care about are the ideas you can generate with it, the discussions you can enter on its basis, the intellectual, social, societal, emotional responses you can get.
14. I believe each text has - potentially - a large number of meanings: a text can be interpreted in a myriad ways: see above: as long as you keep an open mind about this, texts will be like onions where each layer you peel off reveals other layers, in an almost infinitely creative way. A reader puts ideas in a text – a reader is pro-active, thinks for themselves, a reader is not just an empty, passive receptacle for an oracle-like artist who’s always right. Interpretations, not meaning, is the way to go.
15. I believe that the more texts learners can choose from, the better: it's freedom to read that matters, even if I, as a teacher, cannot discuss all those texts nor help learners make sense of them. This is an old debate: give 5 options to your learners to choose from, or 50? Prizing freedom of choice, or the work you can do with texts? This is also related to other ideas you may have (and to be found in this list), for example that 'Reading is good in itself', or 'Reading should be fun' so let them choose, or 'Freedom to choose is motivating'. It might all be true, but the consequences of that should be equally clear to you. The longer the list, and the more open, the less you will have read all the titles on it, and the less you will be able to discuss those texts. Equally, the more options for learners, the fewer discussion about those texts you can have, and so the less help you can give to those struggling to make anything of their text. Consider also that inexperienced readers (who may not feel much like reading at the best of times) will tend to then choose books on the basis of how thin they are, or whether they've already read them, or after looking them up on a website. You must balance freedom of choice with your aims, and you must remember that as a teacher, you have a central role to play in the process.
If that freedom is still important to you, why not then consider handling shorter texts in class to exemplify what learners can do with their novel of choice? Make sure you do not leave learners on their own: show thm how to do it.
16. I believe that learners, even if they don't usually read, can make some sense of a text through talking it over with other learners who do not usually read. Are you sure this is how it works? If I give a high-level mathematics problem to a group of fifteen years old whose school subjects only include low-level, basic maths, and ask them to ‘talk it over’: what will I get? More to the point: what will they get? Consider your role in this, and how much you can help out by leading the debates – not by giving answers, or solving some hypothetical mystery, but by asking good questions, and better follow-up questions, by helping learners notice details, explore nuances, think about their own interpretations, reactions and evaluations. You the teacher are central to this: not as an oracle, but as a mid-wife.
17. I believe Literature is great to teach pronunciation, English skills, grammar and vocabulary, so I use those texts to highlight those areas. That’s completely fine, but of course that is not ‘doing literature’: there is no reason to use a particular literary text, any non-fiction text would do just as well. It’s important not to confuse the two of course: using a text to think and explore, or using a text as template for language skills. By doing the latter, learners will know nothing more of literature, of how to read, how to interpret, than they did before the lesson. Neither will learners have explored ideas or considered real-world questions. This is not about claiming the supremacy of one approach above another, it is about making distinctions and understanding their consequences.
18. I believe Reader's Response is what matters: how does a learner feel about a text? That's the only thing that really matters. Reader’s response came in reaction to the historical emphasis on the writer (the writer-as-god syndrome), which was positive, yet in many cases, the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Fiction is great at opening doors and windows; it should not been confined to the role of being a mirror, reflecting only the reader and comforting them in their ideas, prejudices, ways of thinking and seeing. Reader’s response limits the reader to themselves and does not encourage the asking of critical questions. It is perhaps a good way to start off a discussion, but be aware that you want your readers to delay their judgement and hold off their evaluation until they’ve considered alternatives. By starting with a Reader’s response approach, you run the risk of solidifying that response to the detriment of anything else, which then makes it very difficult to keep one’s eyes and mind open. In any case, reader’s response should always be linked to the text, and substantiated by the text.
19. I believe the only way to get my learners to read is to provide them with a text they will like because they can identify with the characters. This is related both to the freedom of choice problem discussed elsewhere in this list, and the problem of reader’s response. Can you justifiably expect to find one text that will appeal to (and please) everyone? More importantly perhaps: what does ‘identifying with a character’ actually mean? Remember: fiction is good at differences, nuances, subtleties – fiction is good at showing you other ways to live. Identification with a character will quickly lead to assent and the lack of a critical attitude: after all, if the male character is like me, and I feel I’m like him, I’m very unlikely to critically assess his choices, thoughts and ideas. Indeed, I will embrace them. Yet fiction allows us to be confronted with differences, with antipathies, with dislikes, and we have a duty to understand what it is that we don’t like, why, and where that dislike leads. Not everyone is like us, nor are we like everyone: awareness of that difference, and acceptation of that fact and its consequences, is a primary concern in literature and should not be forgotten as teacher.