One of my favourite philosophers is a French woman by the name of Simone Weil. Born in 1909 to a Jewish family in Paris, Weil became a great thinker and a political activist who influenced many of my favourite writers including Albert Camus, Iris Murdoch, and Flannery O’Connor. She died in 1943 at the age of 34. One powerful statement of Weil’s which is so pertinent to our very distracted world today is: ‘Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.’

Recent educational research, academic scholarship, and media discourses continue to highlight the need for our young people to read more, write more, and simply pay attention to the world around them. Studies are warning us about screen addiction, an inability to concentrate, and a profound loss of language needed to think creatively, critically and imaginatively. The English faculty’s mantra – taken from the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein – supports these concerns with the assertion: ‘The limits of my language are the limits of my world’.

Over the past ten weeks, my Year 9 English class has been reading George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. When I chose this text, I knew it would be a challenging read. The book’s language, the issues explored, and the length of the text are not easily accessible to students whose reading encounters have largely been simple, short, and sparse. A creative and courageous approach to teaching such a text has been needed to sustain the attention of the students and build their capacity to engage with cognitively challenging material. As a result of persistence, encouragement, and a strategic focus – along with a refusal to feed a diet of ‘bread and circuses’ – the students’ reading stamina has grown and their concentration, comprehension, and critical thinking have been enhanced. This is the counter cultural approach needed in our secondary classrooms today.  

Clare Murphy

English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach