Keeping Moving

I got 9 laps of the track done today in the late afternoon. My pace is slow, almost to the point of stopping at times, but that's no bad thing. I don't want to injure myself by overdoing it and I sense my back is still vulnerable. Let's face it, back in 1999 or thereabouts I don't think I would have believed you if you told me that one day I'd be running again. I've been listening to my Naxos CDs of King Lear in the car (again). I was very tempted to buy even more spoken word stuff when we were in England in December (especially a set containing excerpts from Spenser's Faerie Queen) but I restrained myself, partly because I was concerned about problems carrying the CDs in my hand luggage, and partly because I wasn't sure I'd find the time to do the stuff justice. I've managed to give Lear a fair amount of air time so perhaps the second concern wasn't really valid. This time round I'm particularly enjoying the performance of Kent, an actor called David Burke, if I'm not mistaken. When in disguise he speaks in a wonderful Geordie accent which seems completely right for this most plain of all characters. Kent is a wonderfully unsophisticatedly noble nobleman. His rant against Oswald at Gloucester's castle is a great set-piece and he can be loved simply for this. I have no idea why I identify with him, but I do - in an aspiring sort of way. Some of my students were airing their uncertainties about why the school had selected the local poetry anthology No Other City as one of their set texts for the IBDP. One or two seemed to think the school had been thinking in terms of delivering National Education in making this choice. For anyone outside Singapore the phrase 'national education' probably doesn't mean a lot, but if you're a student or teacher in Singapore you'll know just how large this looms in schools here. Despite my outsider status I don't have much of a problem with NE, as it is generally, if not affectionately, termed. The policy (if that's what it is) revolves around some six or so key messages which schools seek to either encourage students to explore or simply impress upon them. Since I don't find anything to argue with in the messages, and I'm keen to explore ideas of national significance, I sort of enjoy doing my share of delivering NE. (These days most things in school are delivered rather than taught.) But what was interesting to me today was the sense I had that most of the students in the class seemed either scornful or distrustful of NE, or both. From my perspective No Other City is almost the antithesis of what is commonly taken to be NE. Most of the voices therein seem deeply critical of the way in which Singapore has developed and, if anything, it strikes me as quite a subversive text (if only gently so.) I'm interested to see if the class change their mind(s) about why we are taking the collection on board. There was also a sense in which the students took it that the text had been selected to show that Singapore could produce something in literary terms as good as other nations' work, but that, in reality, the work was second rate. Again, I find my own feelings of what literature (or any art) is for, so radically different in conception that it's hard to quickly and clearly explain why I don't think in this way. The challenge for me is to try and convey how I feel about this without forcing my views on the class.