Good Reads

The New York Times Book Review has released its 100 Notable Books of the Year list, which I've printed out and stuck to my noticeboard. I'm not sure how many I'll be able to cross off, but it's nice to know several books I picked out are on my have-already-read or will-read shelf.

A new title that got my attention was Elizabeth D. Samet's Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point. More to the point, I'm surprised to learn that first-year students at West Point study literature. I thought on it a little more and realized that it made sense - some of the finest literature deal with great themes and dramas found only in wars and among soldiers. Almost every college or short story anthology features Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried." If civilian freshmen are reading it, young soldiers who can more readily identify with the characters should be too.

This also reminds me of how all first-year medical students in the US are given a copy of On Doctoring, which is a practice I couldn't agree with more. Doctoring, soldiering: these are professions that save, defend, protect, or fail to protect or take lives away intentionally or unintentionally. If stories are built on conflict, these are two vocations made for story-telling. It works both ways - people who have to deal with human conflict on a daily basis can find much to learn in literature.

I wonder if NS men, or at least the officers in OCS, and doctors in Singapore would be any different or better if literature were part of their syllabus. No matter what skeptics - or principals in secondary schools who've dropped literature because it doesn't pull in as many A's as the other subjects - no matter what anyone says, literature has its place in any curriculum. Not all of classroom lessons have to be geared towards examinations. Education should encompass as much as possible and open up a pupil's world, pushing him beyond what's expected of him. Hector, the English teacher from Alan Bennett's "The History Boys," got it right when he filled his lessons with poetry and cultural knowledge. These weren't for the exams but for life - "Learn it now, know it now and you'll understand it whenever."