‘Education,
education, education’
- Notes
on Anthology extracts
Part
One - Poems
(the longer texts in Part Two are on a different page. Go back to the
contents & scroll down to find it)
You
will need to look at several different things when you write about the extracts
from the Anthology
·
Variations in meaning
and form
·
Genre
·
Structure of the text
·
Historic and social
context
·
Language changes
·
Purpose &
audience (and variation of language as a result)
·
Ideas, themes
·
Characters
·
Literary devices
·
Values and attitudes
conveyed within the text
You
will need to use the correct linguistic terminology and also use appropriate
literary terms in your answers
Here
are some starter notes for you on the poems. They are NOT intended to be your
only source of information. You will need to do your own work as well.
Text
1 Noises from the School
Written
by an ex-teacher, so probably informed by “first-hand”
experience of a school. Voice is poet’s own – an interior monologue (no
audience present) and reflective in tone. Poet recounts what she hears outside
her “room” in which she “writes”. Noises she hears are spaced throughout
a school day, from morning till late afternoon.
Regular
form, four-line stanzas, but irregular line lengths. Uses quite a lot of enjambment
(lines that run over the end of one line & continue into the
next with no break at the end of the line). No regular obvious rhyme, but lots
of half rhymes like “ago”/”plough” and “builds”/”fields”.
Register
is quite informal, but some interesting figures of speech. “flickering
voices” , “howl of playtime. Also some skilful use of onomatopoeia
“skitter” of the football, “Clattering yell” Gives impression that
writer/speaker does not like children, or perhaps has none of her own. A veiled
hostility evident in “the children die away”
Author
evidently middle class “child imitating a guinea fowl?”. Possibly some
indication that a town environment is not her usual one. “I think of the
habitat from where my comparisons come”.
Ideas/values
of the speaker are quite firmly of a prior time “God …goes on living in
fields…” Can you determine anything about her age? Background? Education?
Also
possible that writer is wryly amused that schools have not changed much since
she was a teacher. Idea throughout that ‘education’ is rather static at
least in its traditions (playtime/morning assembly/hymns)
Strong
indication also that she is glad not to be a teacher any more – suggests that
it may not have been a happy time for her? Perspective is an adult, probably
middle aged, talking about children and overall the tone is quite detached. This
is not a poem which celebrates education, but which rather observes its
idiosyncrasies.
An
interesting title. Literally it means ‘all-inclusive’, but when applied to a
specific semantic field (education) it has come to mean something quite
different. ‘Comprehensive’ schools have not had a particularly good
reputation since they were formed in the 1970’s. ‘Comprehensive’ education
was intended to give equality to all students – a good education for everyone,
with no selection. The theory was good, but the practice has led to a decline in
educational standards and Comprehensive schools are now often seen as providing
a second rate, ‘dumbed down’ education.
Duffy
produces seven different accounts in apparent ‘spoken’ form, from seven
different types of student, talking about life and about ‘Comprehensive’
school in England, probably an urban environment and almost certainly London
(see student 2).
Attitudes
and values a primary focus of this poem. Each ‘speaker’ gives a potted
personal history and audience can learn about traditions/values etc of each
cultural background
Poem
reflects multi-ethnic society as each speaker is from a different ethnic
background. Each speaker has a different idiolect and discourse structures are
varied to match this.
Student
1 is African . Language is simple, monosyllabic. Syntax mostly simple
sentences with the occasional compound. What’s not said by this student is the
interesting thing. Language use is too simplistic (reflecting EFL) for
sophisticated meanings to audience.
Student
2 Male. Wayne. Simple structures again, but this time because a deliberate
choice is made NOT to communicate. Very terse style. Single word sentences, lots
of elision. Shows prejudice “all them coming over here to work” Colloquial
register. Although accent/dialect not evident, it’s implied.
Student
3 Asian/Muslim talking about “home”. Nostalgic tone, obviously happier
there than “here in London”. Quite a formal register, reflecting the
(stereotypical?) idea of Indian speech patterns. Like the African student, there
is a feeling here that this English is too simplistic for speaker to communicate
what is really meant.
Student
4 A girl (London again) speaking about her prospects and interests. Uses a
very colloquial register, slang and dialectal double negatives “won’t let me
do nothing” Limited vocabulary, moderate ambitions. Life is “boring”? Or
does she mean school? Although Duffy does not specify racial origin of this
girl, it is obvious that the reader is meant to think that she is 'typically' a
white, working class female.
Student
5 Asian/Muslim Recounts a story about eating pork sausage and becoming
“friends” with another boy who is Asian & speaks Urdu. Again English
syntax is quite simple “it’s a pig’s meat” reflecting the simplistic use
of English as a foreign language.
Student
6 Another boy, another example of prejudice or at least some racial
misunderstanding “they’re different from us”. Aspirations here are
slightly more ambitious “Australia sounds all right” but still fairly
stereotypical “When I get married….a girl who can cook”. Some slang
“taking the piss” and a slightly more assured tone than student 2. More
complex syntactical choice, too.
Student
7 Asian, but slightly more sophisticated lexical use and syntactical form.
Better educated, better background – “my family are named after the Moghul
emperors” Significant confidence to use colloquial English forms like
“didn’t” as well as the complexity of “I have hope and am ambitious”
suggest this is a well educated student from an academic background.
On
the whole the poem is an interesting series of portraits of the members of a
multi ethnic society. What comes out strongly are the barriers that exist, not
only because of the different linguistic backgrounds of the students, but also
because of the traditional values and beliefs which inform the cultures of the
students. Duffy gives a disturbing picture of institutionalised racism in
Britain, especially from the white speakers and if you think about the kind of
education these students are getting, then the ‘Comprehensive’ certainly
doesn’t seem to mean all-inclusive – in fact rather the opposite is implied.
Linguistically,
it is worth commenting on the interesting use of pronouns in the poem. For
example the pronoun ‘we’ is used to exclude ‘them’, which emphasises the
cultural differences and divisions Duffy addresses in the poem. Also pronouns
‘they’ and ‘them’ are used here without antecedents, so the reader
doesn’t know for sure exactly who ‘they’ or ‘them’ are and will
therefore interpret the pronoun meanings from their own cultural perspective.
Text
3 The Play Way – Seamus Heaney
The ambiguity of the title is
interesting here. Playing music for the speaker (a teacher) is actually work, so
there is an irony in the interpretation of the word ‘play’ which is more
usually not associated with ‘work’ at all. Music itself is a non-verbal
means of communicating and again, ironically, it is the music that communicates
more effectively in the classroom than the teacher’s words (his
‘stock-in-trade’ proves quite ineffective) When the children don’t speak
at all, they respond fully. ‘The pens are busy’. When they respond verbally,
they are trite and inattentive ‘Can we jive?’ The teacher’s lesson notes
are written in an imperative mood with a didactic tone ‘Teacher will
play…..and class will express themselves freely.’ Again there is irony, in
that the very opposite happens. Without words, the freedom happens quite
naturally.
Heaney creates some very
dramatic contrasts throughout the poem. The sun ‘pillars’ through glass; the
music ‘strides’ to ‘challenge it’. Typically, you find the attention to
natural elements which is so much a part of Heaney’s work foregrounded at the
start. In a way this also leads us into the notion of ‘elemental’ forces –
the most powerful of which here is, of course, music itself.
If we look at themes and issues
with regard to ‘Education’ then we see that there is an idea that the
teacher is quite powerless and the subject (in this case Beethoven’s music) is
powerful. All the teacher can do is let the raw power of something intangible
work its own effect on the listeners. Speech is the ‘normal’ medium of
communication in the classroom, but the teacher’s speech and that of the
children is useless. The pupils cannot (do not?) speak, but their ‘tongues
mime the blundering embrace of the free word’ as they write the exercise..
Heaney sees ‘new looks’ on ‘lost faces’. Does he mean that the children
are ‘lost’ to culture, or are they ‘lost’ in the music? The word he
chooses here is deliberately ambiguous.
Text
4 A Snowy Day in
Communication
or the lack of it is central to this poem by Lawrence. A teacher contemplates a
class of boys packed into an urban classroom late on a snowy afternoon and
reflects on the ‘bitter rood’ (see below) of his work. Written as an interior monologue,
in a reflective tone, the teacher/poet conveys a sense of despair and
inadequacy. ‘How can I answer the challenge of so many eyes?’ The snow which
blankets the playground and has fallen all day is used both as a literal
‘blanket’ which muffles all outside sound and as a metaphor for the silence
and lack of communication between the class and the teacher. The silence created
by the effect of the snow is not benevolent, but a ‘dim and hoarse’ silence
inside the room and a ‘shadowed’ one outside. There is little joy in the
interaction of teacher and class and an obvious sense of oppression and misery.
‘We have pattered the lessons ceaselessly’. Note the alliteration used
throughout in conjunction with the assonance, creating a tension, which matches
the narrative thread.
The
poet describes the boys using a series of natural and elemental images (flowers,
foam, froth, stars) but twists the metaphoric imagery from things of beauty to
things of menace ‘dark beams’; ‘brooding yellow light’; half-blown
flowers. This teacher seems bitter and disillusioned – the snow outside is
like a threat – the class is quiescent, but there is the suggestion of an
underlying fear, or mistrust. The classroom here is not a vibrant place where
learning is a joy, but a prison for both teacher and pupil.
Not a poem that celebrates the joy of teaching or the challenge of learning, but one which seems to offer the opposite idea, that both processes are 'a bitter rood' ('rood' means 'cross' in a Christian context - so there is the underlying allusion to the torment and suffering of Christ). Lawrence is an 'uneasy' writer. His work challenges the reader and often focuses on grim and unpleasant aspects of life. We know that his own teaching career was very short (two years) and that he had to struggle to achieve his own academic success, so perhaps it is not surprising to find a bitterness in this poem, obviously reflecting his own internal dissatisfaction.
Text 5 Schoolroom on a Wet Afternoon - Vernon Scannell
Like Lawrence's poem, here we have another reflective piece from the point of view of the teacher contemplating a class, this time on a 'wet afternoon'. Scannell uses figurative language to examine the lack of communication between teacher and pupil and how 'real life' is divorced from the artificially constructed world of 'learning'.
The poem begins on a quietly reflective note, with the 'unrelated passages of learning' which are 'forgotten' from the morning session. It is 'afternoon' and 'English Grammar' has 'come'. Note the references to History and geography - main constituents of the Junior curriculum in the middle years of the last century and also how mathematics was confined to 'complexities of simple interest'. Also note the politically incorrect use of terms like 'negroes', which indicate linguistic change. When Scannell wrote this poem, the term was acceptable - now it is taboo.
The middle verse is philosophical, posing a rhetorical question 'Is it their doomed innocence noon weeps for?' The teacher's inner 'voice' is rather condescending here, but the sentiment is probably sincerely meant, although we have no way of knowing whether Scannell is being deliberately satirical or not. (Contextually it is likely he is being sincere - have a look at poems by him like 'Timothy Winters' and you will find that he does take rather a moralistic view of the injustices of society)
Use of words like 'disciplined', 'absorbed' and 'still' in the last verse, suggest a regimented classroom, where the teacher is didactic and authoritarian. Also the obvious rigidity of the curricular subjects put this poem very firmly in a previous age, when education was much less child-centred and very firmly teacher-controlled. However, the final three lines introduce a very different tone, when the reader is invited to 'lift the lid' of the desk (note the gender specific idea with the personal pronoun 'his' - does Scannell imply that it is only boys who are violent?) to discover the 'vicious rope, glaring blade, the gun cocked to kill'. These deliberately shocking images give a very disquieting end to the poem and leave the reader aware of the violence within the child. The whole poem may in fact be read as a metaphor for civilisation - the idea that despite the best attempts of educators, the 'lessons' of history are not heeded. The 'child' (a metaphor for society, perhaps?) is much more attracted by the weapons hidden inside the desk than the 'unrelated paragraphs of morning'.
Text 6 Reports - U.A. Fanthorpe
Both this poem and text 7 are by the same author, a 'middle-aged drop out' (see introductory biographical notes in the Anthology) who taught in a prestigious private school in Cheltenham. 'Reports' is a beautifully crafted poem on the ambiguities of language when use for a specific purpose, in this case writing school reposts. What is being examined here is the business of pragmatics - what is said underneath what is said, so to speak. The actual report comments are written in italics, so the graphology is quite interesting and they are in field specific lexis - immediately understandable to teachers, to pupils and to parents, although the irony of the poem, of course, is that each audience/reader will understand each comment in a completely different way. The decoding process depends entirely on the point of view of the reader. 'Has made a sound beginning' for example, is 'teacher-speak' for 'hasn't done anything very significant yet', but to pupil and parent it has quite a different meaning. ( A good exercise on this poem is to 'translate' each comment into its pupil and parental interpretation.) Fanthorpe lets the reader into the secret with the ambiguous pronoun 'them' in line 4. Note also how she uses an inclusive pronoun 'you' to communicate the 'secret' language of reports to fellow professionals - 'be on your guard' (line 15). See also how she suggests a sense of secrecy and the mystery of teaching with allusions to 'scripture' and note the satirical reference to the 'unholy trinity' of 'parent, child, head'. The intended audience here is almost certainly fellow professionals - people 'in the know', who will pick up the allusions and share the frustrations of being unable to use language 'freely' for fear of censure. Philosophically, the poem raises a number of interesting questions about the nature of honesty, especially in the educational world. If teachers are entrusted with the education of children and if education is concerned with the pursuit of integrity and truth, then why do reports have to be untruthful? The question is not asked openly in the poem, but the reader is challenged by the very ambiguity of the comments the teacher is obliged to write. Fanthorpe addresses teachers on line 26 with a chilling imperative - 'Remember your high calling: school is the world.' then finishes the poem with a concise listing, in report language, of a teacher's 'life', from 'Sound beginning' to the ironically subjunctive mood of 'Rest in Peace' - an unfulfillable and unfulfilled wish, in a world of imposed linguistic subterfuge.
Text 7 Seminar: Felicity and Mr Frost - U.A. Fanthorpe
The text of the Frost poem which forms the basis of the seminar in the title and much of the substance of the poem, is appended below:
Mending Wall by Robert
Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me-
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
The teacher, this time, is
centre stage in class - teaching a seminar on the poetry of the American writer,
Robert Frost. The two 'truth-tellers' are the poet (Frost - not Fanthorpe) and
the three year old child of one of the students, Felicity Clark. Her mother,
Helen, is the mature student in the seminar, who has brought the child along
because of work being done at home. This, then, is not a conventional school
setting, but perhaps takes place in a college or University. Fanthorpe alludes
to the images in the Frost poem with implicit references to walls, boundaries
and fences. We have here many different 'worlds', all of which have their own
'truths'; the world of the child - the world of the lecturer - the world of the
mother and the world of the students. Metaphor is extensively used throughout
the poem and the simplistic language of the child 'Mr Frost has brought a wall
with holes in it' is juxtaposed with more adult imagery - 'the holes grow larger
and darker as the sun walks around the room.' It is possible to see the whole of
Fanthorpe's poem as an extended metaphor about the process of learning and
understanding. Felicity speaks with the direct simplicity of childhood. 'I
didn't understand the story the man was telling' and we are shown, in her
italicised asides and the mother's explanations and comments, the elliptical
nature of communication between children and adults. Fanthorpe's 'teacher'
narrates the incident and also, with repetitive use of co-ordinating
conjunctions to begin a number of minor sentences ('And felicity has found.....'
- 'And miles to go.' - 'And snowing' - conveys her frustrations with the
disruption to the class and perhaps also the lack of understanding of Frost's
poem being shown by her students. There is a deliberately enigmatic tone
throughout this poem. We are not sure exactly who has 'miles to go' (an allusion
to another Frost poem - 'Walking by Woods on a Snowy Evening'). It could be the
students dealing with an obscure text - the child growing up or the teacher in
terms of explaining the inexplicable to an unreceptive class.
The syntax is very childish, matching the central 'truth teller', Felicity, but
it also helps to reinforce the idea of restricted communication or
understanding. Mr Frost 'tries hard' to 'tell us' something, as does Felicity.
One cannot communicate clearly because of her age and development - the other
('Mr Frost, who is dead') fails to communicate for quite a different
reason.
Text 8 Them & [uz] - Tony Harrison
Harrison challenges the traditional assumption that RP is culturally and socially superior to regional dialect in this powerful and ironic poem about class issues. The 'them' of the title refers to members of the 'Establishment', while the [uz] are the 'lower classes'. (Note: this is very simplistic - you'll have to do your own social research on this one!) The poem is dedicated to two professors, presumably representing, for Harrison, the 'elitist' attitude of higher education and public schools. Harrison's tone is obviously angry and he feels that he and others like him have been treated unfairly by those he refers to as [AZ] but it is soon apparent that his own Classical education and linguistic expertise (note how he uses Classical Greek quotations and IPA notation throughout the poem) quickly identifies him as being equally well educated (but not necessarily superior). He seems to feel, that despite his erudition he is still somehow inferior, or 'outclassed'. The ironic mockery of the tone makes it apparent also that he has little sympathy for the idea that RP automatically signifies cultural and social superiority.
The poem uses a combination of direct speech and narrative. In Part 1 the direct speech is obviously meant to be 'heard' by the reader as RP. Harrison's is the narrative 'voice, which recounts, in the first person, a series of demeaning experiences where his accent proves to be unacceptable to some un-named character who responds to Harrison's attempts to speak Shakespearian prose (the language of peasants in his plays) or the poetry of Keats, with a scornful mixture of insult and heavy handed jokes. All the Harrison contributions here are either transliterated form heavy Yorkshire dialect 'mi 'art aches.....' (from 'Cockney' Keats Ode to a Nightingale) or they describe humiliation, like 'I doffed my flat a's (as in flat cap)' or 'I played the drunken porter in Macbeth'. The choice of heavy Anglo Saxon lexis emphasises the 'Northern' pronunciation an dis a representation of non-standard speech in traditional orthography. In contrast, there is the transliteration of Demosthenes' Greek shout of 'Oi' which shows that Harrison is Classically educated and cleverly able to pun on the idea of a Northern shout of 'Oi!' to attract attention. The 'other' voice, though, uses Standard English with the insulting 'barbarian' and the stereotypical use of initials to refer to Harrison ('TW'). Note the interesting metaphor 'your speech (Harrison's) is in the hands of the receivers' implying that the elite control language and that regional dialect is bankrupt, or worthless.
In part 2, Harrison's voice emerges in dominant and defiant rebellion - 'so right, yer buggers' - using not only dialect, but demotic and taboo lexis to 'occupy your lousy leasehold, Poetry'. In an extended metaphor, the poet, (speaking presumably for all 'regionally challenged' social outcasts) proceeds to reclaim his name (graphologically italicised in the text) and his identity, speaking 'the language that I spoke at home'. He deliberately breaks the rules of grammar, claiming to end sentences with prepositions and using dialectic rhymes for his own line endings ('loving and funny) and quoting Wordsworth's matter/watter rhyme scheme. His defiant 'I'm Tony Harrison no longer you!' is an ambiguous line which can be interpreted as 'I am no longer 'you' (meaning an RP speaker) or as a use of 'you' in the vocative (Hey, you!) case.
His 'first mention' in the
Times (presumably as a successful 'Northern' poet) 'automatically made Tony
Anthony' - an ironic twist at the end of the
poem which perhaps illustrates that despite the poet's passionate rejection of stereotypical
attitudes, it takes more than a poet to make any real change in the way the
Establishment perceives regionalism.
Harrison's poetry is often tense and angry and this one is no exception. You
will see from the introductory notes in the Anthology that he felt that he
'suffered' for his class and accent. It is possible to see this poem as a
celebration of gritty, Northern courage - the central voice remains defiant in
the face of class prejudice and perhaps it could be said that a regional
audience would respond with admiration to the sentiments of the poet. On the
other hand it is interesting to speculate as to how the poem would affect a
different type of audience - one made up of the 'professorial' types Harrison
obviously despises. In addition, there is a subtle collaboration going on in
which Harrison apparently rejects the idea of becoming one of 'them' but in the
way he displays his own academic expertise, he shows that he is just as much one
of the 'them' he seems to attack. Maybe he claims the best of both worlds in the
poem - retaining his regional identity while maintaining the academic tradition
of Shakespeare and 'Cockney' Keats (both of whom, of course, were originally
non-Establishment figures)
Text 9 The Lesson - Roger McGough
I bet you read this when you
were in the third form and thought it was silly, didn't you? Roger McGough was a
'Liverpool Poet' in the 60's (Beatle time) and is probably one of the best known
children's poets, with all sorts of stuff in anthologies. The Lesson is from an
anthology called 'In the Glassroom'. This is a nonsensical poem about chaos in
the classroom but despite the simplistic rhythm and rhyme it does make some
similar points to the Scannell poem on page 13. When you get to the texts in the
second part and study the Beano extract (Bash Street Kids) then you will no
doubt discuss the idea of the anarchic world of childhood. This poem looks at
the idea of the anarchic world of teachers (without the pictures) and we will
discuss it now. Or I'll throttle the lot of you!
The central idea of the teacher beset by hooligans is not new, nor is the fact
that many teachers have thought longingly of doing exactly what this poor soul
does and bringing a gun or a sword or a couple of hand grenades in to quell the
chaos and restore order. Unfortunately real life does not permit us to indulge
our blood lust and McGough does it for us proxy. His teacher decides to 'teach
you (the pupils) a lesson you'll never forget' and proceeds to slaughter the
'grotty' class using an arsenal of weapons. The Head 'pops a head round the
doorway' while the carnage is going on - 'nods understandingly' and tosses
in a grenade. Finally, as 'silence shuffles forward' order is restored and the
'lesson' is ended.
The poem is deceptively simple, using a simplistic rhyme scheme and a rhythmical
ballad style which fits the 'comic-book' idea of the ludicrous subject matter
and replicates a playground chant. Note the dated slang ('grotty', 'skive',
'ammo') and the alliteration and consonance which give a staccato, brittle
effect to the verse.
McGough uses figurative language and very bad puns (what exactly IS a bad pun -
they're ALL bad - that's why they're puns, for goodness sake) like 'First come,
first severed' as well as simple similes and metaphors ('they collapsed like
rubber dinghies' or 'silence shuffled forward with its hands up in the air') but
this does not really detract from the poem's appeal. In fact we could say that a
children's poem (which this obviously is) only works for its audience if the
figures of speech are predictable and easy to understand. These ones are
certainly easy to understand.
So - the attitudes and values. Obviously the teacher is fed up with the chaos in
the classroom. Contextually, the poem was probably written for the first time
round about the time of 'Comprehensivisation' (now there's a field
specific piece of 70's jargon!) which happened at the end of the 60's/early part
of the 70's. Chaos was most definitely the norm in many schools, especially when
Grammar schools amalgamated with Secondary Modern schools (do some
investigating). The philosophy was that everyone would get the same level of
education - equality of opportunity and equality of experience. The reality was
very different. Scenes like the one described in the poem were common -
discipline was very difficult to maintain, especially when corporal punishment
was abolished. Corporal punishment was a disciplinary sanction allowing teachers
to hit pupils with a cane or a strap (from the Latin corpus, meaning body
- hence 'punishment of the body'.) This was abolished, being deemed a violation
of human rights and it was felt by many teachers that discipline in the
classroom suffered as a result. The poem probably dates from the time when this
happened and the 'teacher' has had enough of the 'new' ways.
A 'baby-boomer' audience would relate quite easily to the implicit ideas in the
poem about corporal and capital punishment (capital punishment is another
ancient long-gone law where criminals who committed serious offences were
hanged.) A more contemporary late twentieth century audience would perhaps find
it a little more difficult to understand where McGough was 'coming from' (hippy
jargon, there, but it's in context with McGough's origins) and see the poem
merely as silly and nonsensical.
Incidentally, have you noticed how few of the poems in this selection are told
from the pupil's point of view? Read on for the only one apart from the Duffy
(text 2) I can find.
Text 10 In which the Ancient History.... - Eavan Boland
Not, strictly speaking a
child's 'voice' as the poem is retrospective (an adult recalling a childhood
experience of school) but the content is certainly from a child's perspective.
Education here is a tool of subjugation and to understand this poem you will
need to do some intensive research on the Anglo-Irish divide. The speaker ( we
assume her to be the poet, so the poem is probably autobiographical) recalls the
frustration of living away from her native land (the Irish Republic) and being
educated in London. Set in the 50's (1952) she is taught 'Ancient History'
by a teacher with a 'London accent'.
There is a strong sense of displacement throughout the poem, as the pupil
describes herself as 'nearly an English child' who is 'learning to recognize
God's grace in history'. A sense, then, that she is becoming Anglicised, like
the subjects of the English Empire, whose 'stain of absolute possession' is
visible on the faded map hanging on the classroom wall. When the teacher
describes the Delphic Oracle as 'the exact centre of the earth', the child longs
to stand in front of the map and 'trace over and over the weave of my own
country'. There are, though, no 'absolute' answers, only 'ambiguous' ones, for
those who visit the oracle and the poem metaphorically suggests the child's own
sense of frustration about the fundamental nature of her origins and her roots.
The ideas and lessons which are taught are Anglo centric (English-centred) and
there are some interesting ideas here about the education process when it is
applied rigorously to non-English pupils. The child is in danger of losing her
cultural roots - they are slowly being eroded by constant repetition of
'foreign' or 'ancient' (irrelevant) history. Note the arrogance and patronising
tone of the teacher's assertion that 'The Roman Empire was the
greatest.....until our time of course' and the powerful reaction which follows
in the intimate personalised recollection of the child's personal history - her
house and the lilac tree 'whose scent stayed under your fingernails for days'.
The teacher's use of pronouns like 'we' and 'our' excludes non-English cultures.
Contrast this with the pupil's constant use of her own personal pronouns 'I' and
'my', as an antidote to this.
The Duffy poem, 'Comprehensive' is a good text to use alongside this poem, for
looking at the way in which British education singularly fails to accommodate
the needs of cultural 'outsiders' or ethnic minorities.
Text 11 Head of English - Carol Ann Duffy
Note that this text and text 12
need to be read as a 'pair', although the authors are different. This is the
second of the Duffy poems in the anthology and appeared in the same major work
'Standing Female Nude' in 1985.
As is often the case in Duffy's work, the poet assumes a different role and here
Duffy writes as a teacher. The 'twist', of course, is that she can write as a
teacher while maintaining a different perspective - in this case one which she
knows well - the 'visiting expert'. So the poet's real experience of being a
visiting writer obviously informs the characterisation of the Head of English.
It's tempting to think that this person is real - did Duffy come across someone
like this when she was running poetry workshops in London schools?
The obvious conflict addressed through the poem is that of creative artist
versus critic. The 'poet in the class' is obviously an unwelcome intrusion and
is seen as a threat to the teacher's own expertise and status. From the start,
the tone of the speaker is patronising and dismissive - 'a real live
poet', 'notice the ink stained fingers' - but it becomes apparent that the
teacher is perhaps not as secure in her command either of the situation or the
subject as she wishes to be. Her personal attitudes and views are interpolated -
'not all poems, sadly, rhyme these days' and she has a very outdated view of
'suitable' poetry - ''doing Kipling with the lower fourth'. Her linguistic
expertise, too, is uncertain and she mixes metaphors 'On with the Muse' and uses
clichés 'we don't want winds of change about the place'. The process of
teaching here is ossified - this teacher does not want to open any new doors or
have her authority (which is uncertain anyway) undermined by the outsider.
Ironically, the teacher thinks she is a better poet than the visitor, who has a
'published book' and she is also determined to exert complete control over her
pupils. Note the didactic tone she uses to the class, with imperatives like 'Sit
up straight and listen' - 'Take notes but don't write reams'.
In educational terms, this teacher represents a very rigid, old fashioned and
fixed attitude to the Literary canon. Her classroom is not a place where modern
ideas are encouraged or tolerated. The pupils are part of a system which is
governed by examinations and 'essays on the poet's themes'. Sadly, this is an
accurate portrait of 'traditional' teaching methods. Duffy creates a character
who embodies many traits of 'mainstream' academic education - poetry is 'done'
for exams. The teacher's shocked response at the end of the workshop ( Well.
Really.) an her quick escape 'I have to dash' show how resistant she is to
change of any kind.
This is not a kind poem and it certainly presents a discouraging 'outside' view
of teaching methods and ideas. You might, though, consider how an audience of
teachers would react to the central character, compared to an audience of
creative writers, or pupils.
Text 12 Re your poem and recent visit - Andrew Mayne
The 'reply' to the poem read by
the poet on the visit, written by the Head of English. (It's a confusing idea,
but imagine that Duffy had gone into the school and read the poem 'Head of
English' as a performance workshop. The Head of English was sitting listening to
a poem that she assumed was written 'about' her and replies to Duffy after the
event)
Remember that the author of this poem is NOT Duffy - and also he's a man,
although I think he captures the female 'voice' quite accurately.
Note the teacher's deliberate use of academic Latinate lexis like 'antediluvian'
and 'anachronistic' to emphasis her expertise and validate her educational
credentials. She seems to suggest that she would like her pupils to have the
same sort of linguistic and literary enrichment, but the world has changed
- 'so many girls....have hopes for AS Literature' but have only read 'half
of the Color Purple' ( a fashionable 'modern' American set book for some exam
syllabuses). That reference is a subtle suggestion, too that American literature
is 'popular' and therefore inferior, compared to the implication that English
Literature is 'high' and therefore in some way superior.
The teacher here seems to want to teach 'good' Literature, but finds the
circumstances rather difficult, possibly because of cultural changes and the
influence of mass media. Her pupils have 'written on a lot of soaps'. There is
rather a despairing note when she speaks about 'their poems' as 'screeds of
deep-gushing, ecstatic free verse' and her attitude to the visitor is not
dismissive at all. In fact she 'was hoping that your "outside view"
(note the quote from Duffy's own poem) would.......open a few windows'. Mayne
cleverly picks up on Duffy's imagery and turns the interpretation round. The
last verse is intensely personal, with repetitive first person pronouns and
references to administrative issues (note the use of field specific lexis as
well - lots of references to departmental Budgets/AS Literature/ Year 8 cover).
Written by a teacher, this poem implies that Carol Ann Duffy's view of teachers
is inaccurate and stereotypical. As a teacher, I can understand the stereotype
in Duffy's poem, but also see the accurate characterisation of Mayne's Head of
English. Perhaps, then, we can conclude that the practitioners, not the visiting
'experts' have the most accurate understanding of the nature of the job?
© V Pope 2003