Reading the Word to Reading the World(s): Teaching Literature in GE Curriculum Vicky Lee June 12, 2012 GE and University Curriculum Reform: An International Conference in Hong Kong Literature a subject that stirs fear and anxiety… Ousted…excommunicated from the Hong Kong curriculum. Why? A Discipline for the Elites • An esoteric past times for selected few from Band One school • A class marker, a status symbol • Literature is “the chief weapon against the corruption and vulgarity of mass urban industrial society” (Leavis, Cambridge Don, 1930s)  A myth created by the history of the city and the colonial city Remote cultural contexts • Hong Kong L2 students cannot connect with literary texts which are narrowly Anglo/Eurocentric • No relevance whatsoever for our Hong Kong students If students can connect with science fiction and Japanese anime, they can easily connect with Dickens. Complex language Inaccessible & detrimental for L2 learner • L2 learner is better off with the “functional” “communicative” “practical” approach • functional operationalism: the promotion of language ‘skills’ (Webb 7)  Literacy is not just about mere functional operationalism but helping students “expand in the realm and reach of meaning” in language (Willinsky 15). Teaching Literature in 21st Century • No longer the esoteric specialization is for everyone as it is about fundamental human struggles to live • Embrace the spirit of GE of  breaking boundaries and connecting disciplines…  recognizes that we now live in a time of cultural and disciplinary hybridization of the regional and the global, of high and low, east and west, arts and sciences For “fruitful, democratic living” (Willinsky 123) Towards an Eclectic Approach in teaching literature in GE Curriculum • Language based model • Philosophical model • The Personal Growth Model • The Cultural Model Language based model (Carter and Long 1991) • Students focus on specific linguistic features such as literal and figurative language, symbolism and other grammatical and structure analysis. Philosophical Approach • focus on theories and philosophical inquiry on signification, deconstruction, post- structuralism etc. • Jane Austen is being read side by side with philosophers like Derrida and Althusser. Personal Growth Model (Carter & Long, 991) or the “self-” goals (Willinsky 123) • text as stimulus for self-reflection (Savvidou). • text can as a mirror – we are in fact reading ourselves, reading our own reactions as we read the text. • “Awareness of our own responses can lead to self-understanding, self-criticism, perhaps a clarification or a reinforcement of values” (Rosenblatt,22)