Literature schoolbooks

Page 6 of 6

Exercises

Although exercises are a more recent addition to literature schoolbooks, they are a valuable resource for our research wherever available.

Similarly to the introductions to texts, exercises, by drawing students’ attention to particular aspects of the texts, help understand the pedagogical and ideological uses of the text.

They may ask students to discuss particular aspects of the literary work in a certain way, and they may or may not foster their critical understanding of it.

Questions that may help us realize how exercises shape the understanding of the text could include the following:

- Where do the exercises focus? Do they cover the most prominent aspects of the text or divert attention from them to secondary issues?
- Do they draw attention to form and, if yes, how do they treat it? As a possible insight to the text’s meanings or as a set of stylistic devices?
- Are the questions ‘open’, i.e. phrased in a way that permits many different answers or do they direct the student to just one possible answer? And, to put it slightly differently, how do they treat conclusions about a text’s meanings?
- Do the exercises require lengthy or brief answers? Do they encourage students to develop their arguments?

 
Pictures

Pictures, wherever available, provide yet another commentary of the texts, highlighting some of their aspects.

The depiction of a text’s characters, landscapes, and scenes of action may help the student engage with the text but it also concretizes their characteristics for him/her and may tend to dispose of unsolicited nuances.

For a case in point, you can see the discussion of images in Greek literature schoolbooks in L. Varelas’ paper on “Dictatorship and Literature teaching in Greece (1936-1940)” .
 

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