Poetry—older children seem to doubt their ability—how parents can help     051

Younger children like poetry and nursery rhymes and there are very good reasons for this. They respond to the rhythm and music of the language and they enjoy making the journey into an imaginative world. Parents of young children need to be reading poetry for their children, using well illustrated books. The purpose is clear—to expose children to the magic of literature. During primary school the magic certainly can continue with support and encouragement from both parents and teachers.

However once into high school things begin to change. Suddenly the poems become almost impossible to understand. They are full of strange words and teachers keep talking about themes, metaphors, similes, symbolism, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, metre, rhythm, structure, well it just goes on and on. Some teachers spend what seems an eternity on a poem, pounding children with the most detailed explanations of techniques. It isn’t surprising that high school children say that they are no good at poetry and they don’t like it.

Parents can be encouraging by explaining three very simple facts. First, the children are not bad at poetry. If for example they are performing in the top third of the class in English, that’s where they would also be in poetry. The children themselves can confirm this. So actually nothing has changed. Probably most of the children in the class are struggling with poetry, after all.

Second, high school teachers in the senior years are very concerned about getting through large numbers of poems to meet syllabus requirements, and in so doing they tend to teach to the top of the class. There isn’t sufficient time to make sure that each individual student understands the words of the poem, and of course there is no provision for a careful matching of poems to the needs of the children. Sometimes even when children are beginning to understand they are drowned with too much detail.

Third, high school English necessarily becomes more difficult just as all the other subjects do. So this means that some type of mental effort will be required and this applies to poetry in senior years, especially if Advanced English is being studied. Strangely, children seem to accept the need for work in subjects such as mathematics, but when it comes to poetry they expect to master it with little or no effort. It is quite surprising the large numbers of students who simply accept that there may be five or six words in a poem which they don’t know. They do not get out the dictionary. It seems far easier just to suppose that they are no good at poetry.

All content copyright—Mark Thackray—Australian Educational Services