Inspiring the next generation of writers | Write Anything

20 Nov 2012 by Paul Anderson in Paul Anderson | 0 comments

Did you know you can study creative writing at university? Probably you already did. American colleges have allowed you to major in creative writing for years, and now in the UK you can study creative writing.

And before university? Well, if you?re lucky you might wind up with an English teacher who is themselves a writer and who feels that no English course is complete without some fiction writing component. I teach the GCSE English Language course to students in further education. There is very little in the way of literature involved in it, as the focus is on how and why we use language; we are more interested in non-fiction writing, speaking and listening skills and the interpretation of non-fiction texts.

However this year the exam board have set a question in the bank that allows for fiction writing, and I am champing at the bit to begin teaching that. Already I?ve been setting homework assignments for my students using prompts in a way very similar to how we ran [Fiction] Friday here.

Just this week I have found out that our exam board is to begin offering an A Level in Creative Writing from 2013. Putting creative writing at the heart of the premier qualifications in English secondary is quite brave, at a time when the Department for Education seems to view anything outside the ?core? subjects as a waste of time.

We?re not likely to offer this A Level, but the idea of spending an entire year helping young minds to discover their writing voice excites me greatly. Helping others to find their voice, guiding emerging writers, these are the things Write Anything was founded for. To do that in a school setting, to offer support and nurturing would be incredible.

In the current climate of derision towards the arts, towards those subjects which create a rounded individual rather than those which have an obvious benefit to commerce and industry, such needless exploration of the human condition is not well-received. But being the subversive type, I try my best anyway.

My next aim in class is to give my students access to authors. Read a story, then speculate on the meaning. Wouldn?t it be nice if we could then ask the author what they meant, rather than try to figure out what the critics want us to think the author meant? Boom, one Skype call later and the students are interviewing the author of the story they?ve just read.

That?s inspiration right there. And while it can?t be easily measured on a scale of A to F, there is value to questioning, to reading, to writing, to seeking to capture emotion and to communicate what we feel as much as what we mean.

And unless we inspire a new generation of writers, 30 years down the line who are students going to be studying? Who will they turn to when the latest trendy apparatchik at the Department for Mis-Education decides that we don?t engage with youth because we don?t study modern authors?

I don?t know if I?ve inspired any would-be writers yet. But I?m content to inspire them to realise that there is more to life than simply passing an exam in the core subjects, and that the ephemeral, the beautiful and the ?worthless? have a place in education too.

Paul Anderson

Paul writes down the strange thoughts that populate his mind. Which means a lot of what he writes is strange, disturbing, violent, or all three at once. He considers a story a success if it scares both his wife and his mum. Paul lives in west London with his wife, his dodgy typewriter, and a chubby little leopard gecko called Jabba. His online home is Once Upon a Time in the West of London, or for something a little more frequently updated find him on Twitter @panderson1979.

Source: http://wa.emergent-publishing.com/2012/11/inspiring-the-next-generation-of-writers/

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