With ‘key skills’ topping the higher education agenda, English is having to work increasingly hard to sell itself. The apparently more abstract aspects of contemporary literary studies – particularly ‘theory’ – might seem to be especially at odds with the drive towards transferable skills and vocationality. ‘How,’ the prospective undergraduate might ask, ‘will theory help me to get a job and pay off my student debts?’
The dichotomy between theory and skills is a false one. The English benchmarking document provides a useful checklist of some of the subject’s fundamental transferable skills, and theory involves perhaps the most concentrated practice of such skills as critical thinking, close reading, social/cultural/political analysis, argumentation, and the ability to comprehend and develop intricate concepts.
Whilst it is with good reason that most English departments now include theory at an overt level in their core programmes at level 1, it is also the case that there is often a need to communicate these good reasons more clearly to students. We need, in short, to teach theory better, to link it more closely to students’ lives.
So, running for a moment with the assumption that theory can be ‘taught’, how should we teach theory better? Should we begin ‘theory’ at Level 1? Which theorists? Primary theory, or secondary introductions? (How) is theory best linked to the practice of analysing literary texts? Moreover, what learning and teaching strategies can be employed to overcome the undoubted difficulties which theory presents?
The Subject Centre’s event in April 2001 offered a forum to exchange ideas on questions such as these. Siobhán Holland organised the event and chaired two lively and informative roundtable discussions involving representatives from institutions nation-wide (Bath Spa, Hertfordshire, London Guildhall, Portsmouth, Queens Belfast, and Sunderland).
With a variety of different experiences being brought to the table, the morning session offered a space to air a large range of issues: from the problems associated with ‘team taught’ theory modules to the pros and cons of deconstruction. The sheer difficulty which students (and tutors) find in reading theory was predictably high on the agenda. As several delegates were keen to point out, however, it is easy to forget the comparable difficulties which students encounter with such canonical writers as Shakespeare or Joyce. Too often, perhaps, anxiety about teaching theory drives a defensiveness and negativity about so doing.
This anxiety can also generate some valuable reflection on our teaching practice. The group was agreed about the importance of the seminar as a space in which students might ‘practise’ theory and gain confidence in their use of that specific vocabulary. In the well-structured and well-chaired seminar, students can actually begin to develop their own critical voice. And the afternoon discussions threw up a variety of useful strategies towards that well-structured and well-chaired seminar – from suggestions about how best to go about dealing with the difficulty of the material, to ideas about designing assessments, using groupwork and I.T.
One of the key distinctions which emerged from this event centred around the difference between a ‘Black & Decker’ approach, in which theory is used simply as a tool to read literary texts; and a ‘Cultural Theory’ approach, in which theory becomes a way of reading the world and the texts which are part of that world. My own preference for the latter approach is cemented as I recall those various students whose lives have literally been changed through their engagement with, and practice of, theory – whether it be Frantz Fanon seeming to articulate the precise difficulties of living as a Kenyan-Sikh-Yorkshireman in Leeds, or Louis Althusser casting some light on a working class woman’s experience of working in Stoke-on-Trent. This event has reinforced my belief that theory not only encourages a variety of key transferable skills, but can equip us to read the world, its cultures and our own lives in truly enabling ways.
