Thursday, July 9, 2009

I finally understand

Let me take you back to when you were in high school. For me this was over 7 years ago (crisis!). How well do you remember your English lessons? I personally remember spending many an English lesson slumped at my desk waiting for something really exciting to happen (it never did...). Sure we had a great teacher and my mates were very entertaining (...behind her back) but I still recall pondering about the point of it all.

This is my mother-tongue language, I KNOW HOW TO SPEAK IT!!! Why, oh why, do I have to analyse crazy e e e e Cummings poems? What's the point of a book review? How will interpreting the lyrics of an Enya song affect my life for the better?

I picked up and read some of the 'greatest' English literature, (works by Shakespeare, J.D. Salinger, Chinua Achebe, Paul Theroux, J.M. *spit on the floor* Coetzee, John Wyndham... ) or at least that's what they told me. I did feel somewhat dissapointed that this was the best that was on offer. I didn't enjoy many of the set works and found it difficult to stay awake while reading others. Still, I persevered and basically put in just enough effort to get 60% for all submitted work.

This did come back to haunt me when I applied for tertiary education after matric. I was somewhat surprised to see that mathematics (the other subject I thought very little of... just get a calculator man!) and English were awarded more credits (used as entry criteria for various courses).

I only really understood the methods behind the madness after going into third year and postgraduate studies. Communication is EVERYTHING and therefore English is EVERYTHING! The better you are at communicating your point across to others the greater the impact you have on them. Once you have honed this ability, success (in whichever form you percieve it) will undoubtably follow. The best way in which one can hone this skill is by learning how others managed to do the same i.e. reading the works of great writers (however boring or pointless they may seem). These people are geniuses, if you can't appreciate what they do then you cannot begin to understand the delicate art that is communication.

As for the seemingly random poetry analysis, book reviews... these were tools used to open our young minds to something even more important than effective communication. Thinking! Back then we all (and when I say we all, I mean "I"...just in case my generalisation doesn't apply to the masses) took things on face value "it's written down in this text book, therefore it must be right" . We were not, as I once thought, being forcefed boring time-consuming crap to keep us occupied while our parents were at work (although that definition still applied to subjects like Counselling , P.E. and Religion). We were actually being taught how to look for deeper meaning. Theories are just that, they aren't right or wrong, merely some guys opinion. We weren't just being taught to question the theories put forward by others, we were also being motivated to come up with ideas of our own.

I wish someone told me all of this when I was still at school. I would have spent far less time faffing around, doodling in the margins, setting things alight, plotting how next to pick on the red headed kid...

3 comments:

sarah said...

i was an english nerd. how sad of me, i know. but i was good at writing introspective crap for the teachers. i got 98 % in my english matric final. but the secret? i HATED it. I HATE having to unravel literature and film. its dumb

Helen said...

Oh wow Sarah, you're like the English Robot! I loved reading for mysef, no matter what it was, but having to pick apart literature with a bunch of other teenagers who didnt care kind of killed it for me!

EEbEE said...

Sarah! You hated doing that stuff but still managed 98%!?
...and now you teach English...
At least you can teach the way you would have wanted to be taught.

As for picking apart the literature with my friends. I seem to recall "what did you make up for your book review?" and "Lend me one of your book reviews will you" featuring a few times in conversation... cut us some slack okay, we were kids.