ALAN YOUNG 67

Creative writing and the sense of form Dare any call Permissiveness An educational success? Saner those class-rooms which I sat in, Compelled to study Greek and Latin. Though I suspect the term is crap, If there is a Generation Gap, Who is to blame? Those old or young, Who will not learn their mother tongue. (W. H. Auden)

In these stanzas from ‘Doggerel by a senior citizen’ - written in 1969 - Auden summed up his often stated position on the importance of the culture of the past and the English Language for the successful transmission of civilised human values. Some years earlier he had proposed that literature be taught entirely through a simplified but substantial educational diet of parody-writing and learning by heart. In all such Utopia-planning’ Auden consistently assumed the rightness and possibility of what during recent years an increasing number of teachers have come to recognise as a necessary goal and urgent priority in curriculum design - the production of an Engllsh studies structure which has continuity of function.

Even the most die-hard advocate for the classroom styles of Auden’s boyhood would have to agree that the English syllabus which was followed in most secondary schools during that period - and until well after the end of the Second World War - left much to be desired. English grammatical analysis was founded upon a false Latinate model which modem linguistic philosophers and, to a lesser extent, modem linguisticians have shown to be quite inadequate for analysis of actual English usage. Writing in the classroom was limited to a dull routine of arbitrarily thought-up ‘compositions’ where the highest marks could often be achieved for mere conformity to rules of correctness and standards of neatness. Precis-writing and comprehension exercises were the ‘saner’ part of this kind of Engllsh syllabus, but only some of the passages chosen for comprehension had intrinsic merit; a flip through a typical book of comprehension exercises wiU reveal its compiler’s penchant for belle-letttist pieces of no literary merit whatsoever. Except in the few lucky schools where Greek (or Latin) translation was taught by classicists who also had regard for the mother tongue and its modem colloquial and literary usage, poetry-writing

68 Critical Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 4

was left to pupil initiative, sometimes gingered along by the editor of the annual

Until the 1950s writt n English in the primary school was in much the same school magazine.

moribund condition. o handwriting practice, patsing, spellins and word- substitution exercises, and the same unimaginative composition-writing an additional ingredient of stultefying fear was often added.

There are complex reasons for the many radical changes in English teaching during the past t h i i y years or so. More intelligent approaches to literature began to percolate to the schools from English departments in universities and teacher training colleges when the attitudes and practices of such modem critics as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, I. A. Richards, William Empson and F. R. Leavis finally infiltrated our institutions of higher education. More discriminating critical approaches did not result in a narrowing of the respectable literary tradition. On the contrary, writers who were rediscovered during the period of revaluation enriched our generally consirvative English literature syllabuses in the universities, from where the new enthusiasm and rigour were quick to spread. The increased political stimulus of the 1930s and 1940s expanded the English syllabus even further, particularly through the efforts of those, like A. L. Lloyd, who rescued much English ballad and folk-song from long neglect.

But there is no doubt that more influential changes were spreading from the university Education departments and the teacher training colleges into the primary schools and back again. New theories of the psychology of child development and related views about the special identity of children were producing radical new directions in the infant and junior schools. In this process ‘creative writing’ had a central place almost from the beginning, though, as Sybil Marshall points out, it was in children’s art that the ‘breakthrough ’ started :

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When the ‘new art’ movement began to sweep through the primary classrooms, the stilted, boring, unwural compositions in English where shown up for what they truly were by comparison with the achievements of the children with paint. Freed from the restrictions of teacher-choice and teacher-direction of the old ‘drawing lesson’, the children’s art work was providing indisputable evidence of imagination and executive ability far beyond what had previously been expected, or even considered possible. What the children were producing was in fact first-class childlike work instead of diluted fifth-rate adult art. It showed what could happen when each individual was allowed to put his own stamp on his own work (even though the work of a whole class arose from the same stimulus), and above all it demonstrated the motivating power of personal involvement in the subject and pleasure in the execution. The analogy with English was too obvious to be missed, and controls began to be e d . *

In her Creative Writing (1974) - from which the above passage is taken - Sybil Marshall shows clearly and sensibly how the concept of ‘creativity’ grew,

Creative writing and the sense of form 69

and then got absurdly out of hand in some primary schools where the teachers failed to remgnise the need for children to acquire basic skills in order to write well. But though she asserts ‘there has, quite definitely, been a tendency towards overdoing “freedom” in the context of writing creatively” her own obsessive belief in and quest for the unique nature of individual creativity is symptomatic of the romantic view which sees every child as possessing naturally the same creative and imaginative capacities as Shakespeare, Mozart or Picasso.

Developments in English teaching in secondary schools over the past twenty years make a complex story, and the bewildering variety of claims made for the essential role (and, therefore, the appropriate methodologies) for ‘creative writing’ in the syllabus is only one indicator of the lack of generally agreed directions and purposes in contemporary educational thinking. It is in this context of confused and fragmented aims and methods that the argument of continuity has been more strongly pressed. In h$ Towards a New English Curriculum (1972) L. E. W. Smith argued cogently for a more modest role for creative writing within a structured English Studies programme :

. . . the technique of using ‘creative writing’ has been a mixed blessing, for several reasons. The h s t is that, while initially ‘free writing’ can have a releasing effect, it then becomes limiting if it remains child-centred too long. h t e a d of extending the pupil’s language ability, it imprisons him within the cage of his own limited experience and language. Secondly, the ‘fret expression’ of much creative writing has resulted in sloppiness and, in the end, dissatisfaction: writing also needs discipline, and this word has been most unpopular in the era of easy returns. Thirdly, too much creative writing has been unsatisfactory because the teachers have forgotten that this is only a technique for extendmg their pupils’ language ability, and has concentrated instead on trying to produce ‘publishable’ poems and stories. The value of creative writing is in the experience for the child, as a language exe&e, and not what comes out of it. There is very little children’s writing which can be called literature (even taking the b rdes t possible meaning), just as there is very little children’s painting which is art. NO child has the depth of experience which is distilled into even the most ‘simple’ adult poem. This is why there is very little in the anthoIogies of children’s writing which has any intrinsic value: no matter how interesting we find it as parents or teachers, we know, inevitably, that we are in touch with an immature mind; and this is not the experience that art gives us . . . But perhaps the main reason why creative writing has not been as successful a teaching technique as it might have been is that we, as teachers, have not been aware of what we are attempting to accomplish by using this method. ‘Let the children write’ by all means; but why? It isn’t just an end in itself, but only one small part of the technique of teachrng English, the central aim being the extension, development and refining of the pupils’ use of language in all its many aspeas.’

The admirable secondary school English language syllabus which has been developed as a result of giving priority to this ‘central aim’ has the double merit of achieving a continuity of language study and of achieving it within a real

70 Critical Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 4

school (Millfield). Having found a rationale for general language development, L. E. W. Smith believes that a further rationale can be produced for creative writing. In his use in developmental terms of what to me is an unconvincing distinction between ‘expressive’ and ‘poetic’ writing, where ‘most of the writing in the middle (and I should add junior) school years is in the expressive category’ ,I Mr Smith tends to under-rate the formalising capabilites of younger children and, therefore, to limit the scope for disciplined creative work in primary schools. Most schoolchildren are capable of responding to a sense of form in words, to a feeling for craftsmanship. If we accept too readily the negative assumptions which underlie the following passage from Towards a New English Cuwiculum :

. . . given the demands to construct something (and not just all that formless ‘free verse’ and ‘poetic prase’, but something taut and fine), the urge to muke something in language, then the intricacies of doing so will, if taken far enough, change the expressive into the poetic I(

then we also accept unnecessarily inhibiting limitations in the teaching of creative writing to most primary, middle-school, and less able secondary- school children. It is crucial, I believe, to distinguish between the later developing capacity for abstract thought as expressed through language and an instinct for form. This instinct is present at a much earlier stage of children’s language development than is generally assumed, and it is something upon which teachers of all age-ranges should capitalise.

Mr Smith’s target, rightly, is the school where ‘sloppy, unformed “personal” writing’ is encouraged, either under the banner of ‘self-expression’ or because the teacher is unable to guide and develop the children’s natural instinct for form. It has always been a mystery of teacher education - indeed, of education in general - why when students of music, dance, drama and the visual and other arts are invariably required to perform, interpret and create, students of English can complete a degree-level course or quayl to become teachers without having had very much or even any experience of writing poems and stories or play-, film- and television-scripts.

Many serving teachers have come to rmgnise the need to remedy the limitations of their own basic training and, in recent years, provision of in-service and Teacher Centre courses in creative writing has increased. There has also been some increase of such courses at initial training level, and a few enlightened institutions of higher education - often encouraged and assisted initially by the Arts Council - have set up permanent creative writing fellowships. But there is still no general recognition of the essential need to develop creative writing programmes in academic courses from school- to degree-level, and even less recognition that such programmes must be fully

Creative writing and the sense of form 71

assimilated into an English syllabus in which both skills in language develop- ment and literary appreciation have total continuity.

Any writing programme developed independently of worthwhile literature would be inadequate in at least two important ways. First, it would fail to feed generally upon the stimulation of past literature, from the respect for the values and achievements of art which encourages some individuals to become artists. In a recent interview with John Burney at the Arvon Centre, C. H. Sisson warned of the inadequacies of would-be literary self-sufficiency :

C.S.. It is a fact . . . that the great writers of the past, as well as of the present century, have trained themselves by finding out how their predecessors have said things. One thing I do notice here at Arvon is that the students - who include some very gifted people - are keen enough to make themselves better Miters, but that some of you pay far too little attention to the business of becoming better readers, and know nothing - absolutely nothing, about the great masters of the past.

J.B.. Why do you attach such importance to them? C.S.. Because, if the great poets of the past give no pleasure, why all this fuss about

being a minimd versifier now? Why not do something useful instead? ‘ Second, it would fail to draw from particular stylistic and formal stimuli

which could encourage young writers to develop new appropriate forms for themselves. With adolescents, close analysis of the opening pages of D. H. Lawrence’s ‘Odour of chrysanthemums’ or of Hemingway’s ‘The end of something’ - both of which are printed in David Holbrook’s excellently chosen anthology of stories People and Diamonds - may lead to discussions about exact and economical choice of words in many kinds of forms, ranging from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century epitaphs and epigrams to Imagist paems and the concrete poems of Ian Hamilton Finlay. The two stories may also be used to discuss effective use of well-observed and natural-sounding dialogue, something which may be easily related to the children’s own experiences and talk. The opening pages of several of Hardy’s novels show how long and short sentences may be used to change focus, to quicken action or to slow it down, to bring characters gradually into a scene or take the reader’s eye and mind into the distance from the here and now. From this stage it is not difficult for children to make up short-stories based on incidents in their own lives which provide settings, bring in two or more characters, and use dialogue alone to complete the structure. Such a short-story form (and there are many similar open ‘forms’ to be discovered and explored) is well within the capacities of most primary school children too, though the writers used to stimulate them formally would come, of course, from appropriate works in the tremendously rich field of contemporary children’s literature. The point here is that formalism

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in writing does not mean only the writing of ballads, sonnets, and villanelles - though these are all ‘language games’ well within the creative and analytic capacities of secondary children. It does mean, however, that all young people should have been educated long before they reach university, polytechnic, or college of higher education to begin to respond creatively to the possibilities of literary form. This entails a radical new creative and formalist approach to the teaching of language and literature at all levels of our education system.

Notes 1 See W. H. Auden, ‘Squares and oblongs’ in Poets at Work (New York, Harcourt,

Brace and Co., 1948), pp. 163-81 ; W. H. Auden, ‘Reading’ and ‘Writing’ in Selected &says (London: Faber, 1964). pp. 9-38. Sybil Marshall, Creutive Writing (London: Maanillan, 1974)’ p. 6. Sybil Marshall, ibid., p. 7. L. E. W. Smith, Towardsa NewEnglish Curriculum (London, Dent, 1972)’ pp. 10-11. The distinction between ‘expressive’ and ‘poetic’ categories WBS made by the members of the University of London Institute of Education Writing Research Unit under the Chairmanship of Prof. J. Britton. See L. E. W. Smith, of. cit., pp. 36-41. L. E. W. Smith, ibid, p. 40. ‘John Burney interviews C. H. Sisson’, New Yorkshire Writing, No. 2 (autumn 1977), p. 1.

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