English is an art.
There is no doubt about that.
Many of the most influential poets and writers such as Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck and Orwell often use the abstract language of words to influence the beauty of our surrounding but also the pain of our unequal society and the use to spit out….
A revolution.
A purpose.
An influence.
Meanwhile, STEM subjects such as Maths, ICT, Engineering and Science take over the job charts whilst all the creative subjects such as Art, Creative Writing, Journalism, Graphics and Performing Arts are swept away into the corridors of the school halls and are faded into the public eyes obscurity.
Despite the necessity to use the English language within our day to day lives, millions of children and adolescents are still finding it to be a rather uninspiring and irrelevant subject in the current time period that we are in.
So why is English considered boring?
According to a source by a site called Antimoon, it’s considered that too many English Teachers are completely relying on textbooks for their students to use and Antimoon bluntly said, “It’s because it makes their work easier” which already explains some reasons as to why English can be considered well, rather boring simply because not every student is able to learn from a textbook including myself.
Some students learn it by doing exam papers, some students learn it by reading the actual books, some students learn by the way their teachers communicate and some learn it by actual doing English exercises (which can include creative writing and writing essays using correct grammar and punctuation.) In other countries such as Japan, over 58% of high school students have an overall dislike to the subject.
With many students constantly complaining about the books choices that GCSE’s forced them to read such as Macbeth, Of Mice and Men, Blood Brothers and other books, it makes it overall a rather bland environment and with such emphasis on pass exam papers rather than excel in it as a passion, it doesn’t clearly help for the future generations to take on such an underrated subject and the careers prospects, which could have little to no impact within our world if English is continued to be taught the way it current is.
What needs to be done is that there should be major reforms within the exam since the current reforms are making English more stressful (which it shouldn’t) with less coursework and more for getting the exam structure right. Within these reforms, there should be more emphasis on creative writing but not just long short stories that take 45 minutes to finish, its more like having more emphasis on other forms of writing of the English language such as poetry, sonnets and even haiku’s (which is something that is very rarely if never, taught at schools.)
Another way in what they could change is to instead of looking back to the past, where the intentions and history is rather irrelevant, they could be also more emphasising with studying books and poetry that relate to the recent past events but also the current problems and issues that society is currently facing such as the NHS, Poverty, world hunger and even topics such as Brexit and Trump.
Within our society becoming more stressful, it can be beneficial for younger people to let out their angst in a realistic but rather creative way at the same time as English can help us to connect with our feelings as its one of our only reliable ways of communication but to also help us connect in abstractly within our own realities.
By having a realistic but rather simplest way of encouraging a creative output that is filled with emphasis and the political dedication within our own world, it would hopefully help younger people to be less desensitised to the topic and maybe, even finally view it as an art.
