I will leave it to two voices more eloquent than mine to explore in two very different ways the notion of children “as young as five” (why always that cliche?) learning to recite poems. They express in different voices a counterpoint of the disquiet we have all, I think, felt at pronouncements on the the content of the new National Curriculum, esp in its looking at English in the first years of Primary.
Michael Rosen, whose poems really do inspire young children – and by that I mean everything from getting them to make rhymes themselves (In one nursery I worked in we had “Don’t put Teresa in the freezer/Don’t put Nick in the sick” as a response to Michael’s Mustard in the Custard poem, on Youtube here) to falling about on the floor laughing – is as eloquent and wrathful as ever, an Amos Starkadder kind of rage aimed at the current decisions, when he critiques the new curriculum proposals. Here, in story form, he mocks everything he can lay his hands on about the idea of reciting poetry in the Gove model.
If Michael Rosen is Amos Starkadder, perhaps Mary Beard is Flora Poste: determined to bring a sense of order to the seeming chaos (I note, however, that she and I have different views on Cold Comfort Farm). Mary is, however, no fan of the Gove model either. Here, in her Times Blog (linked in my Blogroll, as you’ll see) she too expresses her doubts.
So why don’t I like what Gove is suggesting? Because it’s bound to be one size fits all kind of learning and so completely uninspiring.
I fear she is right, that this could be the beginning of a canon of a great works way of looking at literature that will be dull and unresponsive to children’s interests and needs. And this will be the challenge: making this work, cutting through the political rhetoric on any side to see that at the heart of it is not the creation of children and schools from Ladybird Reading Scheme books of years gone by, nor yet dismissing this because Michael Gove has come to be disliked and mistrusted, but saying calmly and passionately to parents, trainee teachers, Governors, Inspectors, “This is what we have always done, and done well. The children in this school delight in spoken and written English, from Early Years (where they learn to recite and love and parody and store up for later those rhymes we call, well, nursery rhymes) to the riches of Heaney, Clare, Causley, Marvell – yes, and Rosen too, and, in time, Vergil. This is what we do, this (if you’ll let us explain) is how we do it. We are not disempowered idiots, or people jumping on and off bandwagons when we are urged to do so: we are a profession; we have beliefs we profess.”
And I was going to leave it to Michael and Mary. Maybe I should have.
nicktomjoe 