Ananthajyothi A few weeks ago a student came up to me and asked: “Do we need to study poetry?” This was no existential question; he just wanted to know if he could skip poetry for the forthcoming exams. While younger students often enjoy rhyme, rhythm and imagery in the poems they memorise in their language classes, as they get older, students begin to think of poetry as a redundant part of the syllabus with little relevance to their lives. So the question keeps coming back: Why do we need to study poetry? Why should one study science? It would seem an absurd question to ask. Many people are readily able to see why it is important to study science. And yet relatively few see the need to study poetry. Given the complexity of poetry encountered in our later school years, a sizeable population would like to vote it out of the educational system. Even as I search for answers to this question posed by many a student, I am convinced of the deep necessity of engaging with poetry. In this article I would like to share my perspective, and an experience, that makes poetry central to my life, and leads me to think that studying poetry is perhaps part of learning to become human. I feel that we need to study poetry because it can freeze a moment in life. It can express the depth of that moment in a few words. In doing so it can kindle deep emotions that you did not even know existed within you. A poem can revolutionise one’s way of thinking and being. When I first read Gillian Clarke’s Lament, the impact of war hit me in the face like never before. It evoked many images and in a flash I could see how the nature of war had changed in some ways and yet had remained unchanged in others. It had changed in that war is no longer about values of ‘heroism’. It had not changed in that animals did not matter in war. I was thinking of disparate poems from across cultures. Perhaps it is not a scholarly thing to compare ancient poems from India to a modern poem from England. But these connections existed in me and it startled me that I had made these connections in a flash. War has long figured as a theme in poetry. In fact, the two great epics of India, The Ramayan and The Mahabharat are based on war. Even

Bubla Basu “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings,” (Act I, Scene ii, Julius Caesar). Even as we make a ritual of blaming the syllabus and the powers that be, every teacher of English who reads this quotation, (even those who take pride in top examination candidates) should ask whether he/she has opened windows to worlds beyond the immediate, for that, in essence is where literature should lead us. There is no question about whether literature should be taught in school. The point is whether we allow ourselves to actually teach it when we subject the works of the world’s greatest writers to a series of questions like “who said what to whom and when?” and “where does this scene take place and who else is in it?” A CBSE examination question on Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind asks, “What colour were the leaves?” This illustrates that the poetry that we teach in school is more a demand for absurd memory testing and mathematical accuracy than any real exploration of the text. Questions, whether asked in class or at the examination level have very little to do with interpretation, and the occasional “give your opinion of…” question is worth hardly two marks while a recall question may be worth even four. Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. (The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint Exupery) At this rate, the world’s greatest works may as well be substituted with popular fiction like JK Rowling’s Harry Potter, where probably the only questions worthy of asking are on the lines of “where does this scene take place and who else is in it?” or “what colour was the potion?” The language of such books is “simple” and (despite the criticism of not being considered “original,”) can still be considered “creative.” This would perhaps satisfy the argument that studying literature in school should be “easy” and “fun” – and ultimately, at the examination level, “scoring.” The truth to be acknowledged here is that literature

Sheel English occupies a special place in India: a language that came to us from a different land, it is one that began to be taught in our country even before it became a subject of study in the country of its origin, one that became a link between different regions of our country, one whose study is deemed so important today that most Indians aspire not only to learn the language but also to use it in their ordinary, everyday lives. If many of us today find ourselves far more at ease with English than with our own languages, and often read and enjoy the literature(s) of our colonising ‘mother’ country and other countries, including our own in English translation with far more enjoyment than we do our own languages, it is because of having had not just competent but adept teachers who took great pains to ensure their wards’ mastery over the language. Unfortunately, with the great demand for English and the proliferation of “English medium” schools, the standards have fallen. Examining the way English (or any other language, for that matter!) is taught in our schools today, one major problem that I see is that literature and language are viewed as two different areas of learning that need separate lessons, and as often as not, different teachers are assigned to teach English literature and the complex structures of the language (which are commonly designated ‘grammar’ or ‘grammar and vocabulary’), particularly in the higher classes. In my opinion, the separation of language lessons from literature is an artificial one that negatively affects children’s understanding of the language, and is responsible for the lack of fluency in many learners of English. To elaborate further, some of the key assumptions that I find involved in the separation of language and literature lessons are: one, that the structure of a language and its literature can be taught/learned independently of one another; two, that language can be better understood and used by learning the rules behind its complex structures; three, that while literature uses words in different ways, it is not necessarily a fit medium to examine and study the structure of language; and four, that therefore the two may with no trouble be assigned to separate instructors with different kinds of competencies. The author is a writer and editor who also conducts workshops for teachers and children. She may be reached at sheel.sheel@gmail.com. This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article

Venkatesh Onkar
Poetry helps a child’s imagination blossom. And the best way to teach young kids poetry is to allow them to intepret a poem and discover its richness for themsleves with the teacher intefering only if necessary.