The Value of Literature

The Value of Literature

Professor Cherian George recently spoke at the National Schools Literature Festival 2009 about the value of Literature, and what he said really struck a chord with me.

He spoke of a conversation he had once, with a former student of a school in another country, which was later found to be grooming terrorists. One of the subjects not taught was Literature. When asked why not, the student asked, why would the school want to teach Literature? This is a subject that teaches you to think, to question, to not accept things at face value, to analyze the motivations of characters and make up one's own mind about things - this is not a good subject when you want to brainwash people into accepting only one way of doing things!

WOW. How true. Literature equips one with questioning skills - it is THE subject for rebels, for those who do not wish to merely accept things but for those who wish to question and understand things before embarking upon anything - it's a subject for the bold, the ones who can handle the fact that there are no right answers in life sometimes.

Prof George also spoke of how one could have child prodigies for other subjects, but not for Literature. One never hears of a five year old Literature Whizz, a 10 year Harvard graduate of Literature, or a 15 year old with a doctrate in Literature. The reason? Literature is one subject where experience is critical to its appreciation. One needs to live life and have a myriad of experiences both with texts and outside of texts, before one can be any kind of 'expert' in Literature.

Finally, he talked of how Literature texts are the one set of texts that are complete in themselves, and never become outdated. I couldn't agree more. In fact, it is the one subject where the text you read at age 14 comes to mean something different when you come back to it at age 25 and then something else again when you return to read it at age 40 and beyond. Literature texts grow with us, we never outgrow them.

I was really inspired by Prof George at the National Schools Literature Festival and I'm sure many other teachers and students were too. Kudos to the team for having invited him!