In praise of ‘trash’ · Mon Sep 11, 22:04 by Eleri Straker
Every year, I have the same conversation with the students – particularly the younger ones. It goes something like this:
“We’re going to start Shakespeare.”
“Shakespeare’s boring.”
“How do you know?”
“It just is.”
“Have you read any?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“It just is.”
Most English teachers will have heard this kind of thing. You expect it from ignorant kids. But not from adults.
I have a pretty wide taste in film and TV, and I particularly like sci-fi, fantasy and teen cult stuff. My slightly ‘weird’ taste in such things means I can communicate not only with my own children, but also with the students I teach, as I can hold conversations about the latest episode of Lost, who’s the best captain in Star Trek, or whether or not the actor playing Angel has put on weight. I accept the fact that my taste in entertainment is not mainstream or what ‘grown-ups’ usually watch.
I have no problem with this. Some of the best conversations, and the most enlightening, I have had in recent months have been with intelligent students about film and TV. This is not as superficial and irrelevant as it may sound. As I have found over many years, if a student finds that a teacher has knowledge of something they themselves find interesting, then that student is more likely to talk to the teacher about other things.
What is curious and rather sad is that some other teachers seem unable to allow themselves this freedom to think outside formal structures and are embarrassed to admit to liking anything that might make them seem anything other than intellectual. In the way of political correctness, there is a school of thought that rejects anything that is not ‘intellectually correct’. Whilst the certainty that this brings makes some feel good, it also removes powerful tools from them that they could use to communicate with today’s children.
The fact that I can quote from Buffy or Pratchett (another of my weaknesses) at will, and have great admiration for the writing skills of Joss Whedon has, at times, been criticised as immature and a sign of eccentricity (or even impending senility!) by other teachers who espouse a more traditional approach. I find this frustrating, not so much at a personal level (and it would be too easy to be insulted by such remarks), but by the blindness to their potential value in teaching English.
Anyone who understands classic storytelling and studies Buffy, Firefly or Angel must know that Whedon is a talented writer with, I feel, a wonderful grasp of language, theme and spectacle. Anyone who has read Pratchett will know that in a Discworld novel there is the kind of wit, intellectual brilliance and understanding of the human condition found in the best of the classic novels.
I’m an English teacher. I know and love my Shakespeare, my Austen, my Dickens and my Chaucer. I have nothing to prove but do find it rather sad to find teachers dismissing anything that is not ‘intellectual’ as rubbish and pointless without ever having watched or read the offending articles. Surely it is the uninformed, image-conscious teenager who dismisses things out of ignorance, not mature, educated adults?
As a teacher, dealing with teenagers every day, I believe that anything that opens doors to the teenage psyche, whether that be the deathless verse of the Bard or the funny, linguistic gymnastics of Terry Pratchett, is a worthwhile addition to my toolbox, and that can surely only help me become a better teacher.
