LondonNet News Headlines
| 15/05/03 |
| Poetry in Motion v. Educational 'Rat Wheel'
- Laureate plans schools' tour to enthuse kids SCHOOL children all over the country could be fed live verse by Poet Laureate Andrew Motion if a new educational proposal gets the go-ahead. Motion is concerned at what he sees as the "rat wheel" of English education which, in recent years, has come to be dominated by national tests for kids, some as young as six. The increasing importance of test results on judging teacher performance encourages schools to concentrate on a narrow range of easily learned texts, a move which Motion believes is to the detriment of a broad education. Motion hopes that the plan for himself and many other authors and poets regularly to visit schools will help spark children's enthusiasm for the written word. Motion's status as the Poet Laureate appears to have swung things at the Department for Education, whose spokesperson said: "The idea is that it would be really fantastic for children to be able to hear poets read their own poems". |
