The Conveyor Belt Curriculum? Poetry teaching in the secondary school II

Abstract

In a previous article (Benton, 1999) which focused on the teaching of poetry in secondary schools, teachers' responses to a survey undertaken in 1998 were compared with those of a similar survey in 1982. It was suggested that a major change was that where the teachers registered concern it was a concern for poetry itself rather than a concern about poetry teaching. By and large they were much more confident in handling the reading and writing of poetry in class than formerly: what appears to exercise them most now are the effects of the National Curriculum and of SATs on their teaching and of changes in the way poetry is examined. These, taken together, are seen by some as having a detrimental effect on the students' experience of poetry. Others, however, see positive advantage in some of the changes. It is these concerns which are the focus of the present paper.