Poetry at School

Poetry in those school going years. I was never a fan of it, to put it mildly. When most kids struggle with the language (English, or Hindi for non-Hindi speakers), why add a format that is not used in daily life?

 

In India, we make things even worse on this front. Take English where the books will have poems by Keats, Wordsworth, Dickenson, Frost and Blake. They may be great poets, but a lot of their poem involve direct or indirect contextual references to England. Like seasons that don’t exist in India. An example of this is etched in my memory. One of my cousins had this to say on the famous poem, Daffodils - What on earth is a daffodil, he vented? That was the pre-Internet era where one couldn’t whip up a photo or video of the daffodil. If kids didn’t even get what was the object in question was, how could the poem possibly make any sense? 

 

Poetry is often about reflections and life experiences, personification and memories, nostalgia and parallels. All adult topics. Kids have barely any life experience. How could poetry make an iota of sense to them?

 

My (then) 13 yo daughter added to this litany of complaints against poetry recently. How is it fair, she fumed, to be taught a poem which is ½ page long and then be asked to write descriptive answers on it that are spread over 3-4 pages! When even the poet didn’t have the interest to write 3-4 pages on the topic, why should I?

 

We are in one mind on this matter.

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