I’m delighted to hear that the English school curriculum is about to be shaken up by the arrival of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden into classrooms. This is part of wider plans to turn pupils into “educated citizens in modern society” by including contemporary material alongside the more established canon, and it’s led by Oak National Academy, the government-backed creator of curriculum resources. A spoonful of grunge helps the western classical tradition go down, as Mary Poppins almost said.
Hello, hello, how low, some might argue. No doubt the critics will see this as “dumbing down”, a defeatist attempt to pander to today’s teen spirit. Oh well, whatever, never mind. I’ve seen first-hand the beneficial effects of creating an invisible string between historical works and modern popular culture in my new course at Ghent University in Belgium. Titled English literature (Taylor’s version), it offers in-depth perspectives on the works you might expect on an English literature syllabus – from anonymous Old English poets to Geoffrey Chaucer, Charlotte Brontë and Sylvia Plath – with a special guest appearance from the 21st century’s new literary superstar, Taylor Swift.
Since the 2020 release of her albums Folklore and Evermore, increasing interest has been paid to Swift as a literary artist, whose works brim with references to everything from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to The Great Gatsby. The esteemed Shakespeare professor Jonathan Bate recently argued that Swift was a “literary giant”, declaring that he would “compare her (favourably) to the greats of poetry and prose”. Her songwriting blends genres, subverts traditions and reflects playfully on its own production and reception in ways that are comparable to centuries-old literary texts. Placing Swift in dialogue with such authors can only broaden our understanding of both.
Who is William Shakespeare anyway? In an age that seems increasingly distant from the days of the Bard, it is vital that we keep relevance at the front of our minds when it comes to education. Students might be unlikely to pick up a copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – an anonymous 14th-century poem that begins in King Arthur’s court in Camelot and is written in Middle English – for fun. Frame such a poem as offering a “hot take” on the concept of chivalry, and raising the same kinds of questions that Swift does in her breakup ballad White Horse, and it hits different. You not only pique students’ interest but also make a strong case for the continuing applicability and the vibrant afterlives of historical literary texts. In my classroom, we made fascinating connections between feminism, medievalism, ethics and even modern “incel” culture, and I watched a centuries-old text come to life again before my eyes.
Classic literature should not be enshrined as a “monument”, left to stagnate by our misguided notions of sanctity and untouchability, but should be treated as a living thing: like any real love, it is ever changing. I imagine that this mentality underpinned the decision to award Bob Dylan the Nobel prize in literature in 2016. What better way to emphasise this than through connection with Swift herself, who has reinvented herself countless times and always comes back stronger?
I’ve faced a fair amount of snobbery and backlash. I’ve heard that historical literature should “remain strange” and not be sullied through comparison with something as frivolous as pop music. Swift only writes about “boys and breakups”, so how can she possibly be considered literary? (I hate to break it to you, dear reader, but most of the literary canon is about boys and breakups.) One Flemish journalist wrote scathingly: “It’s an auditorium, not a kindergarten.”
Amid all this critique, something that has been conspicuously absent is the question of what the students themselves might actually want. I’ve received emails from students and teachers worldwide, whose interest in literature has been rekindled by its connections with Swift. My course has more than twice as many participants as I would usually expect, from diverse backgrounds. There are students who graduated decades ago, but have returned to the classroom for fun; students taking degrees in biophysics, veterinary sciences or archaeology who see the humanities as an important complement to their vocations; and students training to be teachers, hoping one day to make their own curriculums more relevant and accessible.
When I ran an anonymous poll in the first class, asking students why they signed up, there were recurring themes: “innovative, out-of-the-box approach”; “to see how classic literature is interacted with today”; and, my favourite, “to get lit with English lit”. If bringing a little more kindergarten to the classroom means creating a space where students can be playful, experiment and ask questions, then perhaps we should all be doing so.
We surely learn best when the topic has some personal or contemporary relevance. For too long, our curriculum has been shaped by elitist notions of quality, timelessness and value – overlooking the fact that all of these designations are highly subjective. If bringing Cobain into the classroom gets us reflecting on what material is deemed fit for education and what isn’t, it will spark important conversations about gatekeeping: which cultural outputs come to be recognised as highbrow or “classic”, who decides, and how those decisions expose deep-rooted sociopolitical and institutional hierarchies. Critical thinking is a vital skill in our age of fake news, political unrest and 24/7 media. Placing popular culture in dialogue with the historical encourages us to reflect on what we study and why, which can only prompt wider, very necessary conversations about culture, value and ideology.
Let’s not allow our cultural heritage to ossify into static monuments, but keep it fresh and vibrant by bringing more modern, disruptive and – heaven forbid – fun voices into the classroom. Let’s listen to our students. Here we are now, they are saying – entertain us.
Elly McCausland is a writer and academic based in Ghent, Belgium, where she works as assistant professor of English literature at Ghent University
