Teach Secondary 13.5

that students studying literature have to develop emotionally can perhaps deliver an even greater lifelong benefit. Encouraging teenagers to transfer analytical skills they’ve learned in the literacy laboratory to understanding their own actions, or those of people around them, can help support good mental health. Under themicroscope Using fictional characters to examine true life situations can take the emotional heat out of challenging scenarios. Holden Caulfield’s emotional inner life, as he transitions from youth to adulthood in The Catcher in the Rye , makes for both a fantastic read and a penetrating case study in teenaged mental turmoil, but it would be exhausting to actually spend some time with him. It’s far safer for us to meet him in a book. Another benefit of examining literary characters’ motivations is that your opinions will never cause the recipient to bite back or storm off in a huff. Real people are, of course, all too often unpindownable, while even the most well- drawn fictional character will be forever static, unchanging since the day their author finished telling their story. This lets readers revisit them repeatedly over time and really explore their depths – the very opposite of making a snap judgement based on a misheard word or out-of-character action. Of course, putting the actions of characters in a play under the microscope over a block of lessons is far easier than examining your own behaviours, or those of the people around you. When it comes to our own actions, we’ll tend to be either too harsh or too lenient. The emotional connections they’ll have with friends and family will often prevent our young people from coolly analysing the actions of those individuals who are closest to them. Rejecting repression From another perspective, it could be argued ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gordon Cairns is an English and forest school teacher who works in a unit for secondary pupils with ASD; he also writes about education, society, cycling and football for a number of publications OLD STORIES, NEWANGLES For every newlyminted behaviour arrived at via emotional literacy, chances are a playwright, novelist or poet will have portrayed said behaviour at some point over the last millennium. Here are just a few examples from the current GCSE curriculum... Death of a Salesman byArthur Miller Linda Loman is an enabler, facilitating her husband in keeping his destructive fantasies alive over the course of the play, by not letting the cold, hard truth interfere in his daydreams – despite the best attempts of their son, Biff... The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Jay Gatsby gaslights Daisy Buchanan when he compels her to deny she ever had feelings for her husband Tom, while simultaneously trying to keep his impossible dream of the past alive. Lord of the Flies byWilliamGolding Roger becomes increasingly desensitised as the events shown in the novel rapidly escalate – from deliberately throwing stones that miss one of the younger children, to eventually dropping a boulder on Piggy that kills him instantly. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll andMr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Dr Jekyll uses his servant, Poole, to ghost the lawyer Mr Utterson, as he seeks to conceal the true identity of the murderer ‘Mr Hyde’ from his inquisitive friend. TEACH SECONDARY SPECIAL LITERACY that we’ve all become more emotionally literate as a society. Witness how far we’ve moved away from the idea that repressing our emotions is a sign of strength and a desired character trait, and towards a growing awareness of the damage that failing to understand or properly express our behaviour can have on our ownmental health and those close to us. This positive trend is something that we can further build on, with the help of literature. A growing body of evidence shows that the reading of novels, plays and poems supports good mental health, and can help to alleviate anxiety and depression. The ability to recognise, and articulate through widely understood vocabulary the emotions of fictional characters makes it easier to then name and understand our own feelings – long after we’ve forgotten precisely why it was that John Proctor was hung for witchcraft... I N A S S O C I AT I O N W I T H 33 teachwire.net/secondary