Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Literature, life and education: some problems about how they relate to one another
- 1 Literature and truth
- 2 Literary criticism and literary education
- 3 Objectivity and subjectivity in literary education
- 4 The subordination of criticism to theory: structuralism and deconstructionism
- 5 Literature and the education of the emotions
- 6 Empathy and literary education
- 7 Literary intention and literary education
- 8 Literature, morality and censorship
- Notes
- Index
5 - Literature and the education of the emotions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Literature, life and education: some problems about how they relate to one another
- 1 Literature and truth
- 2 Literary criticism and literary education
- 3 Objectivity and subjectivity in literary education
- 4 The subordination of criticism to theory: structuralism and deconstructionism
- 5 Literature and the education of the emotions
- 6 Empathy and literary education
- 7 Literary intention and literary education
- 8 Literature, morality and censorship
- Notes
- Index
Summary
‘Cognitive’ and ‘affective’ objectives in literary education: a false dichotomy
It is commonly claimed by literary theorists, and sometimes by teachers, that reading works of literature educates the emotions. In fact literary education is often held to be concerned with emotional development, while science, mathematics and so on are held to be concerned with the development of understanding.
I pointed out earlier that there is widespread dissatisfaction among English teachers with the teaching of literary criticism. This dissatisfaction with what W. A. Murray calls the ‘sterile cant’ that many English students become practised in for examination purposes often leads to a thorough-going rejection of a literary critical approach to literature in education as being merely ‘cognitive’. This is accompanied by an insistence that it is the ‘experience’ of literature which is important in order to promote ‘the education of the emotions’. The following extract from a recent essay on the teaching of literature is representative of the views of many English teachers.
It is a fact that cognitive discourses occupy almost the entire secondary school curriculum. Affective discourses (the arts) get scant recognition on the timetable. The imbalance is both huge and frightening. It is, therefore, a tragic irony that literature, which has as its object the education of the emotions, should be perverted by examinations into a predominantly cognitive mode. To stop examining literature would be to remove from large numbers of pupils the only affective discourse they are exposed to at school. […]
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- Literary EducationA Revaluation, pp. 95 - 113Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1983
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