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Recently, Masinde Muliro University of Technology Deputy Vice Chancellor Prof Egara Kabaji defended the separation of English and Literature under the Competency Based Education (CBE) system.
He argued that this was not the first time the Education ministry has made them distinct subjects.
Indeed, English and Literature were distinct subjects under the 7-4-2-3 system of education. While English was compulsory, Literature was optional. The two were merged under the 8-4-4 system of education.
My thinking about the separation of the two is what partly stimulated Kabaji to explain the basis of the separation.
The rebuttal to my assumption has caused me to think very hard.
In responding to Kabaji’s viewpoint, Literature and Stylistics, Prof Henry Indangasi noted in a social media post: “In the 8-4-2-3 system, language and literature were compulsory. Literary works were regarded as models of good writing.”
Here are two diametrically opposing views on whether to separate or integrate English and Literature.
Ordinarily, the study of English teaches four basic skills: Reading, writing, listening and speaking. The four skills complement each other. We read to know new things, and from an educational perspective, we read to acquaint ourselves with the accumulated or recorded wisdom of the ages—ancient and contemporary—about issues that concern mankind. We write while in school and long after about our concerns, stretching the conversation that began in the books we read or continue reading.
The substance of the listening we give attention to is a continuation in speech form of the recorded thoughts about what makes us be or become. Our own speaking takes off from those who we were listening to before we assumed the arena.
A portion of the English curriculum we study focuses on correct grammar, appropriate vocabulary, syntax, sentence structure, and other micro-aspects of English that make its use appropriate. It is also about learning comprehension skills, how we can understand a text and make inferences about issues the author has written about. It is also about modes of writing that help us put our thoughts on paper.
It is about mastering English or the language of instruction so well that we are able to manipulate it to transmute ideas and thoughts into words with a view to sharing or communicating them to people, in speech and in writing.
The ability to encode and decode ideas depends on years of reading texts of increasing complexity in the light of grade, age and the salience of the issues.
The ability to encode and decode comes from reading proficiency. The proficiency in question is best harnessed through extensive reading of books of high value—fictional and nonfiction works.
It is in this context that an American researcher and professor of Education at New York University, Dianne Ravitch noted in her book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, thus: “An English language curriculum without literature—real, named books of lasting importance—is no English curriculum at all.”
Why ‘real, named books of lasting importance’? The English curriculum is, strictly speaking, not textbooks on English; however good they might be. A textbook on any other subject—History, Religious Education, Economics, Biology, etc.—is not written with the purpose to communicate content with the simplicity, clarity and perspicuity that captures ambiguities and ambivalence of reality.
“Most textbooks present to students with a highly simplified view of reality and practically no insight into the methods by which the information was gathered and facts distilled. Moreover, textbooks seldom communicate to students the richness and excitement of original works. When students are privileged to read the primary sources, they meet the authors personally and discover events first hand. We recommend therefore the use of original sources be expanded,” Ernest Boyer observed in a book, High School. A Report on Secondary Education in America.
Ultimately, the separation or integration of English and Literature may amount to nothing if teachers restrict learners to coursebooks or textbooks.
Sadly, the majority of schools, including elite schools, have organised school programmes in ways that have pushed ‘real, named books of lasting importance’ to the periphery of the educational experience students go through.
Section 84 of the Basic Education Regulations 2015 stipulates that class hours—part of the school hours when the teacher directs learning—are a maximum of six hours each weekday. However, many schools engage students in class for more than six hours from Monday to Saturday. It leaves little room for students to have their own free time to read coursebooks, complete assignments and read ‘real, named books of lasting importance’ as they ought to do when left to take charge of their own education.
What Indangasi calls models of good writing and Kabaji’s extensive reading is nothing but the assiduous reading of excellent fiction and nonfiction works by accomplished writers outside the prescribed curriculum.
Some of the finest schools in this country abandoned wholesome teaching for teaching to the test. The madness of syllabus coverage has gripped nearly all secondary schools.
Nearly a decade now, extensive reading, exposure to models of good writing, to ‘real, named books of lasting importance’ are a luxury in many secondary schools. Schools focus on finishing the syllabus in three and a half years—a four-year curriculum—and embark on an exercise of doubtful educational and pedagogical value called revision. The revision is nothing but browsing past examinations for clues to questions and concepts that students have a hazy understanding of.
The students cannot fully master the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes the prescribed curriculum embodies if its coverage is incoherent.
The students miss two things. They miss the strong communication skills they would have acquired from leisurely reading of excellent books. They also miss the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that they would have acquired had the schools paced the coverage of the syllabus as stipulated by the curriculum maker—Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development.
The aim of the English curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping learners with a strong command of the spoken and written language, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment, observes Andy Tharby, research lead and English teacher at Durrington High School in England, in an article entitled Designing curriculum in secondary English.
She says the aim of English in the national curriculum of England is to, among others, read easily, fluently and with good understanding; develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information; acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language; appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage; write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences use discussion in order to learn and be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas, competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate
All these aims depend on mastery of English. Which English, Kabaji oracularly noted, cannot be mastered from coursebooks. Nor can students master it without exposure to what Indangasi termed models of good writing.
Extensive reading was the DNA of the school system when English and Literature were distinct under the 7-4-2-3 system of education. Extensive reading lingered on in the first years of 8-4-4 largely because the teachers, mainly the headmasters and headmistresses of the time, steered its adoption.
The coverage of the syllabus wasn’t as hasty as it is today. There was a library lesson which students attended. The library was full of books, not textbooks as we have today.
Extensive reading cannot survive in such a fast-paced school environment where syllabus coverage, and not the student’s understanding, is the goal of schooling.
Perhaps what policymakers should address is restoring sanity and common sense in the implementation of the curriculum. Then, students will start reading. Reading ‘real named books of lasting value’—as they study.
Communication specialist. [email protected]
