Plain Talk
By
Mursi Saad El-Din
Three articles in the British press attracted my attention and I find them closely linked. The Sunday Times culture supplement this week published a review of a new book with the title Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Forget the main title, it's the subtitle that is interesting. According to the reviewer, Lynne Truss, the book is about common errors committed even by leading journalists and writers.
One of these flagrant but very common errors in the use of the apostrophe. According to the Nesfield grammar, which I had to study, it is required before a possessive "s" in the singular ("the water's edge") and after a possessive "s" in the plural ("in four days' time").
The author is quoted in the review as saying, "The confusion of the possessive 'its' (no apostrophe) with the contractive 'it's' is an unequivocal sign of illiteracy." She goes on to say that people who persist in writing "good food at it's best" deserve to be struck by lightning. I must admit I have come across some of the examples she gives, especially in America. A sign indicating a Giant Kid's Playground must have kept all but the bravest away.
The book underscores the importance of punctuation. A comma in the wrong place can change the meaning of a sentence. It is essential to the legibility of a text. This is why English newsreaders can read a script thrust into their hands at the last minute.
Two other articles appeared on the same page of the Observer under a quote from Othello: "I understand a fury in your words, but not the words." The article, by Mark Townsend and Martin Bright, takes up the complex problem of teaching Shakespeare and the English classics in general.
"Literary classics," they suggest, "should be radically represented with a gripping modern twist." They give the example of the BBC's presentation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales which attracted over seven million viewers, many of whom were young. This success demonstrated what could be achieved through a fresh approach to the classics.
Statistics reveal that few British students, particularly among boys, study English. Just over 21,000 boys took the English A-Level this year, compared with over 55,000 girls. "There is a real question of feminisation within the subject," remarked one education expert.
The minister of education in Britain even called for "crisis meetings" with English experts. There is a general feeling that the compulsory element of Shakespeare in the curriculum is turning boys off English. Some teachers criticise the manner in which Shakespeare is taught, with close analysis of texts and no room for the imagination. But does this mean that Shakespeare should be rewritten, as some propose? Bethany Marshall, lecturer in English at King's College, does not agree.
"What is the point of reading Shakespeare if not for the language? The plots of Shakespeare are highly melodramatic. The subtlety of expression is what you want students to grasp."
Now I come to the third article on the same page by David Smith. It is a plea for children to visit the theatre. He cites Philip Pullman, the award-winning children's writer and former teacher, who believes that pupils are being denied educational trips to the theatre because head-teachers fear losing ground in school league tables.
Pullman is having a trilogy performed at the National Theatre, where the director "is doing great things, with a season which is bringing in lots of young people who've never been to the theatre before." Theatre, Pullman says, raises the level of civilisation in a country. "When you're watching real actors in a real space, you're breathing the same air, you're being lit by the same lights. It has a reality and presence nothing else can match."
At a time when English is becoming ever more commonly spoken, such debates over its teaching have a relevance that extends far beyond the shores of the British Isles.
