The class was finishing up, students handing up class copies of The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo. One student, let’s call her Mary, put the verse novel into her bag.
“Ehm, Mary, shouldn’t you hand that up with the other books, they’re school property?”
“Oh, no sir, this is my own copy. I wanted to own the book.”
English teachers crave such a response; a student that loves a book you introduced to them. This seems a heartwarming story, but it made me think; why did she have to buy the book? Wouldn’t it have been better if I could have just let her keep the novel?
RM Block
This is only one of the many unintended consequences of the Book Scheme introduced to all levels of secondary school this year (it was up to Junior Cycle before this, but now extends to Senior Cycle).
The Book Scheme is, on the surface, an excellent idea – every student gets their textbooks, and copies, for free from the Department of Education and Youth.
Except that they don’t get them. They get to use them.
The majority of books (textbooks for every subject, including novels and plays in English) stay in the school for the next cohort to use. It’s more like a book rental scheme rolled out across the country. Important to note here that Deis schools had this system for years.
The repercussions for this in English are significant, if subtle. No longer will novels and plays be brought back to the family home. This might not seem of much importance to some, but there are many family homes without any books whatsoever, except for those heritage novels that each member studied.
My sister and I studied Wuthering Heights, our copy was used by my eldest for her Leaving Cert. To my daughter, it was a physical connection to me, her, much tidier, more precise, notes joining my decades-old scrawls. She was particularly interested in who the various boys my sister was in love with, each name crossed out and replaced with another. An appropriate scribble considering the themes of the novel.
But this will no longer be the case. No longer will each family have time capsules contained in their studied novels. That sense of heritage, of connection, will be broken. There will be no love hearts, no names, no scribbles, no notes in any book. You can’t mark a book if you’re only borrowing it.
Taking notes in a book, doodling, is taking ownership of that book. The tactile experience of writing in a permanent pen, or a tentative pencil, speaks to us all; it tells us that we and the book are talking to each other. We’re having a conversation with the author. A conversation that, if we were to take the book home, could go on for generations.
Some schools are using digital copies of plays, especially Shakespeare. No writing, sharing, passing down, or owning digital copies.
Larger implications are waiting down the line. Already, I hear of teachers having to teach novels chosen by the English department in their school. This has long been the case in some schools, but has become more prevalent with the introduction of the book scheme. This, alongside pressure to procure readily available books, means that books that might not fit the norm – those novels from more diverse voices – will be less likely to be taught in schools.
In education, compromise often means the safety of conforming.
No more teaching texts we are passionate about.
No more tailoring texts to the specific students in the classroom.
I don’t read The Poet X in class, instead I play the audiobook. I’m a middle-aged, middle-class, white man from Cork. The book is a verse novel, each chapter a poem written in the first person from the perspective of Xiomara, a 15-year-old Dominican American living in Harlem. Fortunately, the audiobook is read by its author, spoken word artist Elizabeth Acevedo.
This is one of the reasons why it spoke so powerfully to Mary.
But how much longer will I be able to teach The Poet X, or books like the graphic novel The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui, or Philip McMahon’s hilarious and poignant Once Before I Go?
These are taught alongside classics such as Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Orwell’s 1984, not instead of them. They give students a different perspective, and they speak to students on a more personal level. They inspire students to read more.
To write more. To discuss more.
Unfortunately, teaching these books, books from a variety of worlds, is proving increasingly difficult.
Students come into school, are handed a novel, take notes in their copies, hand the novel back. Novels are becoming associated with school, not as something to be enjoyed outside the confines of its grey walls.
The solution is simple; let the book scheme be what it said it should be, free books. If not in all subjects, then at least in English.
Reading for pleasure among teenagers is in decline, yet here is an opportunity to give every student in the country at least one free novel a year – six or seven over the six years in school, including Deis schools.
Every house will have real books sitting there waiting to be discovered, discussed, shared, and scribbled on.
What a gift to the nation that would be.
- Conor Murphy is a teacher at Skibbereen Community School
