For people who don't see the value in literature appreciation, the writer of this article makes a point which i see as expressing an intrinsic value of the study of literature.
I was unsettled as i read Mr Li Shengwu's reply to Mr Paul Tan's article, "Give local writing its place" (ST, Tan 18). Underlying Mr Li's reply ("Classroom still belongs to Yeats and the Bard"; ST, Jan 21) are assumptions and beliefs about learning literature in Singapore, local writers and the literary canon which i found disturbing.- Stephanie Chu Huiying (Miss)
It is a sad fact that most students in Singapore do not study literature beyond Secondary 2. Many avoid it like the plague at the O levels, few go on to take it in junior college and a small but determined population will swim against the tide and study it at university.
My question, therefore, is what can we possibly impart to students who might not touch literature ever again?
My own answer to that question would be an appreciation of the capacity of humanity to express its experiences and feeling in language and the ability of writers to move their readers.
Mr Li's answer to that question seems to be to allow students with prospects overseas to get a good foundation in literature, cleanly ignoring the students that will drop literature.
Is it possible to impart to all students an appreciation of literature? It is, and local texts introduced at the lower-secondary level could be just the answer.
What i wish to argue has two points. Firstly, local writing makes literature more accessible to our students who will be approaching literature for the first time.
To Mr Li's point about relevance, i think there are no texts closer to our cultural context than local texts.
Secondly, it is possible to learn the rudiments of literary analysis through local texts because they are rich in terms of stories, images and themes. A good example would be Sing to the Dawn.
Students who are more keen can go on to study the classics. What i am advocating is an invigorating mixture of local and classic texts.
In Mr Li's point of view, the best of the literary world should be taught - Shakespeare and Yeats - and he defines good literature by its inclusion in the English canon and the universal nature it these works.
What he fails to consider are the academic institutions that form the canon (usually British or American), and the fact that nothing can ever be truly universal.
To compare Kuo Pao Kun and Catherine Lim with Yeats and Shakespeare is simply not fair because they exist/existed in different contexts and faced vastly different traditions of literary production.
How can these writers be even compared on the same page? I don't deny the brillance of the works he names but to compare them with our local writers is academically unjustified.
On the point of classics being universal, I urge Mr Li to look at the sheer amount of notes that accompany any Shakespeare text, especially the Arden editions.
The number of explanatory notes points to the gap between Shakespeare's language and cultural context and our own day and age.
For students who are more keen, Shakespeare would be good to lay the foundations for what literature has to offer as an academic field. But for the majority of students who will not touch literature at a higher level, there is nothing more accessible and closer to matters at home than our own writers, Scorpion Orchid being a good case in point.
I don't think it is "blind patriotism" to prefer local works; it is more like prefering teh tarik to English breakfast tea. If we know only tea, we will never know the joys of teh tarik, which is uniquely satisfying.
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