First, why does this have to occur in English class, and second why does it HAVE to be poetry. You act as if the only want to learn about current or past culture is through poetry.
In Jr High (grade 7-9) we had Social Studies, and Maritime Studies (I grew up on the East Coast) where we had plenty of culture thrown at us. Some of it included poetry. If you want to push your poetry agenda why not do it there?
When has this ever been differnt? You blame MTV, but before that parents complained about something else, as there parents blamed something, and so on. No generation has EVER been aware of previous culture to the extent you claim. Please elaborate on how before MTV there was more poetry, and children were more aware?
I challenge that now, with MTV students are MORE aware of the culture THEY live in, which is far different from the culture you live in. What’s more, TV and internet exposes them even further, all without requiring poetry.
If schools want to incorporate poetry into social studies classes, I have no problem with that. It’s in English because poetry is first and foremost about writing, which falls into the usual remit of English (language, literature, creative writing, etc.).
The MTV reference was merely a cultural temporal reference point, not an attempt to assign a scapegoat for the decline of modern society. And you’re right, of course; general ignorance is not even remotely a new thing.
MTV students are more aware of MTV culture, but MTV culture is not all culture – in fact, it’s not even all modern culture – nor, IMHO, should it be. Television, while containing much that is worthwhile, is a medium which overall targets the lowest common denominator. Why shouldn’t I want people to aim higher than that?
We’ve already told you what we think the benefits of poetry are. You may disagree of course but you can’t say you haven’t been answered. It is a required part of their education because it is part of english literature as a whole.
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Of course they can and they do. Of course exposing them to different ways of doing things might make them a bit more flexible.
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What “better” forms of literature are you talking about and in what way would they benefit students more then poetry?
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Since nobody has made that claim I don’t consider it a failure.
Students will find it difficult to learn the effective use of rhyme and meter without studying poetry. Poetry also generally uses imagery and metaphor far more strikingly than prose, and no other form of written communication teaches the importance of proper word choice as well as poetry does.
“Better literature”? By whose standards? You seem to be operating from the a priori assumption that poetry is inherently inferior to prose. It isn’t. It is merely different (and apparently not to your taste, but that’s neither here nor there - after all, no one form of written expression will be to everyone’s taste).
You have yet to show that the time devoted to teaching poetry in school is excessive, or that teaching it is an ineffective use of English class time. My English classes also required me to read novels, short stories, and essays, and far more time was spent on each of those prose forms than on poetry - perhaps it is the time devoted to one or more of those prose forms that is excessive, and should be shortened? Why (apart from the fact that you apparently don’t like it) do you think poetry time should be cut, as opposed to the time spent analyzing novels? Or short stories?
No one claimed it was - only that it is an important part of English literature, and deserves to be covered in English classes for that reason alone, if for no other.
You have no call to be upset with your high school for teaching high-school level English - your ire should be directed at your elementary school education instead. Grammar, punctuation, spelling are grade-school level subjects, and should be mastered by students before completion of eighth grade (the end of their GRAMMAR school education).
High school English should be concentrating on textual analysis (including, but not limited to, reading poetry), and more complex student writing assignments, such as lengthy critical essays and research papers. Basic literacy is a requirement for high school English, and if students are arriving at high school lacking those skills it’s the grade school education which should be restructured. Dumbing down the high school curriculum is NOT the way to solve the problem.
If the arts degree idiot’s point is expressed clearly, it will be seen to be a bad point. If it isn’t expressed clearly, but is disguised by flowery rhetoric - well, that’s one of the things a good education in English helps you spot.
Only if that engineer’s English education has been inadequate - and that’s more likely to result from too LITTLE study of English than from studying the “wrong” literature. If you wish to improve your reading, then read - a lot. If you wish to improve your writing skills, write - a lot. Most students are NOT reading too much poetry - they aren’t reading at all (poetry or prose), and thay’s why their English skills are so poor.
I want to make a huge post defending poetry. I’ve been reading poetry, writing poetry, and writing about poetry pretty intensely these past few months. But I can’t because I’ve also been exposed to othe rmajor problems. Like one of the English professors commenting “It’s sad when a freshman doesn’ tknow what a sentence is”. Or the number of people in my Honors seminar who don’t know how to research and structure a paper. Or the number of students I tutor who don’t have the first clue of what a thesis statement is, or worse, completely married to the notion of the 5-paragraph essay.
Every single day I deal with people, ranging in ages from 18 to 50 who don’t have a single clue on how to write. These are all college students working towards a degree. I know the schools are teaching it, because I had to learn somewhere…I guess they aren’t teaching it enough. I’d love for students to be more well rounded and comfortable with reading and even writing poetry, but I’d be willing to sacrifice poetry if it meant they learned how to write a constructed, well developed essay or research paper.
I know many people who cannot write a decent essay. Not a one of them can quote Frost, point out the symbolism in Tennyson, or accurately define a caesura.
The problem there isn’t too much poetry; the problem is that nothing was taught (or nothing was learned)
Who are you having this debate with? Nobody has said anything even resembling this.
I know plenty of people with arts degrees who make good points–some of them in this very thread, no doubt. Don’t you think any of your opponents here had any good points?
I also know many engineers and other techy types who are quite articulate–even ones who dislike poetry.
Left Hand of Dorkness - Aw, snappity. (Is he here?) I knew it was (something) of Dorkness. Looks like I should have spent more time in reading comprehension.
emacknight - You asked why poetry is the only means of understanding culture. Simple answer is - it’s not. On the other hand, there are certain periods in history where poetry was your basic literary form, and most of the surviving manuscripts are poetry. So if you’re trying to teach about the Anglo-Saxons, you’re going to have to read Beowulf, because there’s not much else left from that time period. If you’re teaching your class about ancient Greece, you’re going to read The Iliad and The Odyssey. Getting medieval? You’ll probably wind up reading Milton and Chaucer, because that’s about all there is to read. There are other elements of those cultures surviving - art and jewelry, maybe some music, a little surviving architecture. But the literature of those cultures is mostly poetry.
Now, I don’t know how it was in your school, but in my English classes, we went through things in more or less chronological order. Start with the Anglo-Saxons, by the end you’re reading Steinbeck, more or less. Had we eliminated all poetry from our curriculum, we would have had to start after the Renaissance. That seems to me quite a bit to skip over.
It’s very difficult to say what the practical utility of poetry is, as it’s difficult to say what the practical utility of sculpture is, or painting, or even music. It won’t help you get a job. You can’t eat it or drive it. But it can help you feel an emotion or understand another point of view, and for that reason, it’s a valuable tool in teaching history. You can read a history book and learn facts about WWI, but if you read Wilfred Owen, you get a better sense of what the war was like for a soldier. You can read a chapter in class about medieval conceptions of Hell, or you can read The Inferno** and go there. So as an educational tool, I think poetry is very important.
Just SAYING that it teaches this or that doesn’t make it so. Teaching poetry teaches poetry. Unless you have a cite, saying that it teaches writing is just conjecture. Sure, it taught me how to ryhme or do 5, 7, 5 sylables, but my ability to write came from reading books. And my ability to write in a contemporary way came from reading contemporary books.
There was a period that I was reading H.P. Lovecraft like a mad man. During that time, I reached a point that I could write like him. And those people that liked that style understood me well. But a vast majority of people didn’t like it, because his writing is out of date. It was an ineffective means of communications, aside from writing a story to the minority that like/understand that style.
Same for poetry. Being ale to write in those various ways has little to no effect on my existance, unless I decide to write a poem. So, for the average person, this doesn’t help them. So why force it on them?
Part of the point of the OP is that it seems that kids graduating don’t have the basics down, so why waste their finite school time teaching them extras if they don’t have the basics?
You can blame the school system or teaching or parents all you want. The point still stands. If they aren’t getting basics, you don’t move on to the advanced. But as it stands, they are required to do poetry at least some years in school, even if ther are in basic learning tracks. We don’t force them to take higher math, science, history, languages, etc until they have mastered the basics and even then, only if they opt to. Yet, people here feel that Poetry is somehow special enough that it doesn’t have to follow the same rules as other subjects. So, you end up with kids who can’t write a complete paragraph, but they have read a bunch of poetry (and lets face it, many probably forget much of it the second they leave school).
So, the world you are advocating is one where people can’t communicate coherantly, but in the off chance their boss asks them to write up a proposal as a sonnet, they might be able to do it.
Just SAYING that "teaching poetry teaches poetry” and nothing else doesn’t make it so.
Okay. This survey of recent papers on the teaching of poetry warns against the inefficient forcefeeding of meanings and techniques to students, instead championing a more student-centered approach and “The usefulness of poetry in teaching elementary and secondary school children to deal with propaganda…the study of poetry [is seen] as one stage of the process of sharpening thinking skills that are important in responding to various types of advertising. Poetry, …helps students recognize the function of connotation, denotation, symbolism, and imagery. Knowledge of these techniques…is integrally related to critical thinking,.” It also recommends poetry as a great way to teach one segment of post-secondary students in particular: law students.
Can’t link you to full text on these next few articles, as they come from EBSCO, a subscription database, but:
Now how about some cites that indicate that poetry does nothing for cognitive development?
Do we concentrate on teaching them the basics, a method of which I approve? Or, as you pointed out in a previous post, do we concentrate on teaching them how to microwave casseroles and change tires?
Poetry certainly does follow the same rules as the other subjects. In most systems, kids are tracked into their English classes according to ability. In the higher level classes, more emphasis is put on literature and analysis, including writing different kinds of papers. In the lower level classes, more emphasis is put on remedial work, but literature is kept in the curriculum. Why shouldn’t it be? Just because these kids aren’t up to par, they should be punished by tedious worksheet after tedious worksheet? And these tedious worksheets will not help them in the long run, because writing is more than simply applying the rules of grammar.
If we go to a system of primarily grammar and spelling, the upper level kids will be bored to the point of fleeing to a remote cabin in the wilds of Montana and writing long, rambling manifestos. The lower level kids will never make that mental bridge between the rule of grammar and how to use them to express one’s own thoughts. I’ve seen that many times in adults—due to a lack of exposure to written material, they don’t understand the process of writing. They look upon it as some mysterious ritual, as if it has nothing to do with the thoughts in their head; it just depends on rearranging the words until a teacher says it’s acceptable.
The bright kids who never applied themselves, for whatever reason, will never be exposed to that poem or short story or op-ed piece that could set their imagination on fire and open a mental door. Reading comprehension will suffer all around.
If we keep the curriculum as is and simply drop poetry, well, it makes about as much sense as simply dropping essays or simply dropping novels, which is to say that it makes no sense.
emacknight, I’ve answered your basic question more than once. The last time I answered it, I pointed out that I was repeating myself. You’re ignoring the many specific answers you’ve gotten to your question and instead just repeating the untrue assertion that no one has answered your question. Please respond to the specific points we’ve made – about rhetoric, about culture, about history, and so forth – using quotes from our posts, and then we can continue the discussion.
I will look for cites, but I find it unlikely that I will find any. Just like I am unlikely to find any cites that most subjects in school aren’t as nessessary as school makes them out to be.
As for your cites, ther all seem to me to simply be people saying what you are saying with no backup. They cites no actual proof. I took poetry, and understand law no better than before.
They say things like how it relates to life. Most poems studied relate to a life that no longer exists, or in many cases glorify things beyond actual realistic boundries.
As for basic level tracks not teaching it, that is not true. As I have said many times on these boards, I have 3 teachers in my family (at different schools in different states). Even in basic level classes poetry is part of curriculum. I know of students who take 5 classes of PE and 1 of English…these guys can barely read or write, but they have to read poetry.
But that also doesn’t address why poetry is somehow more important than other subjects. Why only one year of typing? It’s not long down the road where most jobs will require it. Why no Autoshop? Almost everyone has a car, and most people depend heavily on them for transportation. Why only one year of health? In a society where health and health care are such huge concerns, maybe it should get a bit more focus. How about more than a year of economics? Our society is practically based on it now. Or Home Ec? With gender roles near abolished, it might be nice to make sure both sexes know how to feed themselves, keep a home, and sew a button back on their shirt.
Even if poetry does somehow magically do all of the things poetry proponents claim, how is it more important than so many other things? And don’t tell me the other thing should/could be taught at home, because so could poetry. Heck, if poetry is so powerful and wonderful, you’d think more parents would be spouting it to their children. But as it stands, I am willing to bet that for most parents it hasn’t really served them, so they don’t pass it on.
Don’t teach me what I will not learn
for I choose not to know.
And poetry, from stem to stern,
has simply got to go.
Don’t force me into structured schemes
where minds can freely paint
a thought out loud, on any theme.
Real poetry just ain’t
my cuppa-joe. It hurts my brain
and causes me to think.
‘Don’t teach me’ is my new refrain,
because poetry stinks!
– C.G. 2003
I’ll admit, I haven’t read every post here thoroughly, but from what I’ve gleaned so far - no one has mentioned that poetry can be equated to ‘the art of communication’. Seems to me that every culture/generation/person - no matter the time-frame - could benefit from the ability to communicate.
Well, gimme a week and a chance to get to my library and I’ll try to dig up some controlled studies. It would be a fabulous idea for a study, wouldn’t it? Control group gets a utilitarian English ed; other group gets some grounding in poetry- see which group does better in problem-solving situations. Or, say, analysis of a political speech.
Well, of course you don’t. You never were a law student.
Studing poetry from the past not only gives a history lesson, but it also points out the universal nature of emotion. However, most of the poetry read during my stay in junior high, 9th grade, and 10th grade was contemporary. Gwendolyn Brooks and Shel Silberstein come to mind.
What a great way to teach a lesson in identifying propaganda.
Of course it’s not true. That’s why I never said it.
That doesn’t sound legal. I believe all states require 4 years of English.
Nobody in this thread is making those claims, so I am unsure why you keep bringing it up.
What kind of bizarro world is this where microwaving food and changing tires are taught at school and poetry is taught at home? What role do you see the schools as having? I see them as being there to teach academic skills and job skills (and there is a greater overlap there than some believe). Life skills should be learned, well, through life. Amazingly, most of America manages to feed themselves each day without having taken years of cooking classes. I took one semester of typing and type 45 words a minute. I don’t even drive, and I can change a tire.
How many parents do you think lecture on plate tectonics to their kids at dinner, or economic theory? Probably fewer than spout poetry, but I still think plate tectonics and economics are subjects worth teaching.
If I had posted the question, “what if we removed prose from high school,” I’m convindent that at least as many people (maybe even the same people) would post a variety of exerts from prose, a few articles about how important it is, and how much they gained from it. They would tell me all the wonderful stories they read, how much they loved it, and how incompetent they’d be today without having high school prose.
When I asked, “what do students gain from poetry,” chances are your list included things that students can gain from something OTHER than poetry. Such that poetry is not the ONLY way to give students the skills you atribute to it.
Something else I found funny here, was that all the pro-poetry statements made, and articles presented said the EXACT same thing I was told about music education. From the age of 4 when I started piano lessons, I was constantly reminded how important music education was. And how surveys of professionals found that they ALL played an instrument.
And honestly, do you really need to post a poem that tries to promote poetry? How many have we seen in this debate now? If I had written a poem that criticized poetry, would I be hypocritical? Or is that what I need to do to win?
I’ll try to reply to other points if the board is still working.
If poetry is not MORE important, than its either equal to, or less than, the other aspects taught within the Enlish program. My argument again, is that poetry should not be REQUIRED to the extent that it is.
Also consider this very common problem: Pick 5 songs that you like. What are chances that a group of 15 year olds are going to like/appreciate those 5 songs? But those are the most important songs to YOU, and as a teacher you feel those students NEED those 5 songs to be functional in this world. But the poor students couldn’t care less, and every day they drag themselves to class and sit through your 60min lecture about each aspect of those songs. And because you have some power, you insist on having those 5 songs as part of the state/provicial corriculum.
Poetry is the same way, a poem YOU find important is meaningless to nearly everyone else out there.
Something that already seemed to have been proven here is that students do have choice is other aspects of high school, why is poetry not optional? A student that enjoys poetry will gain from it, not question. But a student that hates poetry will not.
Pick 5 novels that you like. What are the odds that a group of 15 year olds are going to like/appreciate those novels? Pick 5 essays you like. What are the odds that a group of 15 year olds are going to like/appreciate those essays?
By your logic, we should eliminate all novels and essays from the English curriculum, because some kids don’t enjoy Huckleberry Finn and A Modest Proposal.
Any curriculum is going to include some works that an individual child may not enjoy. That doesn’t mean those works aren’t worth studying, or that the genre those works belong to is unworthy of being included in the curriculum.
I didn’t enjoy reading The Sound and the Fury. Should I be angry with my English teacher for ‘wasting my time’ with this ‘meaningless’ novel? Or should I recognize that some novels will not appeal to me as much as others do, even though the novels I don’t enjoy may be widely regarded as excellent examples of literature?
Poetry isn’t optional because English isn’t optional. I’ve never seen a high school English class that teaches nothing but poetry; if such a class existed, it should indeed be offered as an elective, just as a class that teaches nothing but Shakespeare or nothing but 20th-century British novels should be elective. But high school English survey classes (which teach some poetry as well as novels, short stories, and essays) are required to graduate - and students shouldn’t be able to opt out of ANY of the material taught in that class, whether poetry, novels, or non-fiction, merely because they don’t care much for that particular writing form.
Originally posted by emacknight
And honestly, do you really need to post a poem that tries to promote poetry? How many have we seen in this debate now? If I had written a poem that criticized poetry, would I be hypocritical? Or is that what I need to do to win?
…
The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
-Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
and in fair form:
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It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. -William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
I started a thread where the sidebars on the role of education in general can be safely contained, like smallpox or ebola–Design the ideal secondary ed curriculum.