8th March 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
As an English student myself, I understand that knowing the difference between Tennyson and T.S. Eliot or Wycherley and Waugh can be somewhat overwhelming and occasionally confusing. However, at the Westminster Education Forum, comments were made suggesting that English A-level students were getting confused between Dickens and Shakespeare.
Even straight-A students are starting university believing that Dickens and Shakespeare were writing during the same period in history. This sort of confusion is completely unacceptable – have they not noticed the difference in the language? It’s like saying that Chaucer was writing at the same time as Christopher Marlow! Such mistakes are heinous and ought to be rectified immediately (along with correct spellings of ‘there’ and ‘they’re’).
This inability to place some of the most prolific English writers in the history of English literature is most disconcerting and comes from an apparent lack of exposure to a more extensive chronology of Britain’s literary heritage. This could be put down to a certain ‘dumbing down’ of A levels so that pupils write what they have been spoon-fed on one text, not even considering how the texts all fit together in the whole configuration of England’s literary heritage.
While skills are emphasised over knowledge for English school pupils, university students beginning English degrees are reluctant to write about something they are unfamiliar with. Although I can sympathise with this for maybe the first essay, English students must quickly bridge the gap between degree and A level and learn that independent study and study of unfamiliar areas is what makes English such an interesting degree.