The Isis Lecture is very interesting.
He points out that teaching in English schools is now very mechanical and he is correct; there is very little room for creativity on the part of the teacher and is one of the reasons I'd never ever go back to that job. I hate the way kids only read extracts of books, and do meaningless analysis. Vile. But I used to show kids how to structure a story, and there is nothing wrong in teaching how to do this - it not only can have benefits in structuring creative work but helps in essay writing for other subjects; discipline of thought is not always bad. However, there is indeed a time and a place for this, and I used to show that structures don't always work, and I certainly wouldn't allocate time slots for that kind of work - that's madness, or else the spectre of HM Inspectors breathing down the neck of the teacher. I once had a run in with one of the early inspectors who challenged me for writing in capitals on a blackboard (yes, we
did call them blackboards). I pointed out that in a freezing, tumble down old shed in the wilds of Barnsley some of the kids were a very long way from the blackboard and couldn't see otherwise.
It's all the result though of utilitarianism. Nowadays, education is there not to turn us into fey little poets or freely expressive dancers but into insurance brokers and hairdressers and IT support officers. I know this because I'm right at the middle of it all. Some kids actually do want that though; I've a friend who hated anything remotely artistic at school, she just wanted to learn to type and do office work. The problem is that any child who is not bright, not a swot, is poor, black or male will be steered into the path of usefulness.
What's this got to do with Pullman Vs Tolkien anyway? What amuses me is that Tolkien clearly did not 'plan' his writing, he just sat down and let rip (so to speak
) and he's even said things about him 'finding out' what really happened, which suggests the kind of joyful free for all authorial chaos that Pullman advocates. Yet Pullman
does plan his writing! What he says in the article posted by Tevildo demonstrates this.
The other amusing point is that Pullman in the Isis lecture calls for more story telling in the classroom, for more narrative. He also calls for more narrative in Tevildo's article, and bemoans modern literary experimentation. Yet this is what he does not like about Tolkien.
I find it frustrating really. From what he says, he ought to
love Tolkien, but he does not. Is this just another case of someone intellectualising simple dislike?