Rant
2002-04-09 || 1:51 p.m.

I've just been upstairs working on my literacy planning and its made me so depressed I've had to come and write some of my thoughts down.

The bit that really got me was one of the government text objectives about (and now we are talking age 8/9 here) how the children should be describing and reviewing their reading habits. Now I'm sorry but how fucking boring. Really. Talk about put you off reading for life. When I was a child I was a total bookworm. I was like Matilda; going to the library from the age of 3. I cannot even remember a time when I could not read. I vividly remember being about 8/9 and going to the library on a Saturday morning and picking my regulation three books. I took them home on the bus and by mid afternoon I had read them all. So I decided to go back down the library and replace them. I got to the library and the librarian had a go at me. Told me off for changing my mind and said I most certainly could not have read all three in a few hours. BUT I HAD! I was really, really pissed at this and I had to take the books home again and so had nothing to read but the newspaper for a week. Yes, I used to read the newspaper as a child. Again from the age of about 3. I probably was a bit of an odd child.

Anyway I digress. If I had been made to describe and review my reading habits at age 8/9 I would most certainly NOT have read three books in one day. Probably not three in one month.

It all makes me think about 'Hard Times' by Charles Dickens, when everything you think, feel and do can be categorised, broken down and labelled. How fucking soul destroying.

As a postscript to the above library horror story - I reckon it explains why I never read a book in one go now. I always have to save some to read another time. Its a ritual a bit like manic hand washing.

Who are my favourite authors? Well, I really, really like Modernist writers. I know I've already said this. Why? Well because of their perception that their writing was a response (in some cases) to the immenseness, profundity and change caused by WW1. Of course this does not apply necessarily to all the writers but culture cannot be taken out of writing. I don't think. It doesn't mean we cannot respond to writing from another time but our response is as governed by our own cultural time and space as the writer's own.

I like the Modernists because they are about internalisation. And I don't mean this in an ego wanking way because it is always placed in the context of reality - small, even grubby details. Oh I don't know; I'm just too inarticulate.

Going back to reviewing and ripping things apart. When I began my degree I was mainly interested in poetry. Its always been my 'best' subject if you like. I've always been good at poetry appreciation but I always had a system. You know, write about this first, then that, then move onto this. Blah blah blah. I used to hate myself for it really but it always got me excellent marks. So when I decided on my thesis I don't know why but I decided to write about propoganda! This is another thing that bothers me - the insiduous nature of propoganda and our ability to only see the propoganda of others - and I'm probably talking nations here now.

Well how great I am at jumping from one topic to another - I bet you cannot believe I can write coherently at all.

Well I'm going to have to go now and continue dissecting literature for the betterment of mankind (yeah right). When I was ten I read 'Jane Eyre' and I really liked it. I liked the love story especially. The fact that Jane was plain and Rochester older and prickly. When I was 16 I started studying it for 'A' level. We had to unravel it and then put it back together again. Well things never go back together again do they, Billy Bragg told me that. It ended up a parody of itself. The funniest bit was the bit when Jane puts the fire out and is standing in a puddle of water and ... well its just comical. Now I'm in two minds about what happened to 'Jane Eyre' when I unpicked it. Firstly I'm glad I did because of the first Mrs Rochester. The gender politics here are powerful. The mad woman - a foreigner too. Poor old Rochester. To redress this you should read 'The Wide Sargasso Sea'.

But then again why slag Charlotte Bronte for something she wrote 200 years ago?

So what's my point? Well I feel a bit like Basil Fawlty: Thank you so much, thank you so bloody much Department of Education for making me compartmentalise every aspect of literature, for making me have to account for why I teach what I teach, for leaving me with no choice, for making me teach grammar which I fucking hate and for forcing my children to do book reviews. Well, Estelle Morris I won't fucking well do them. We'll do oral book reviews, maybe even dramatic reconstructions and plan out different endings and draw our favourite characters but we won't, I repeat WON'T fucking write 'I liked this book because ...'.

No fucking way.