Scottish writing in Scottish schools
I thought I'd follow up on something Anna Nicholson talked about in her post last month, on choosing Scottish literature for High School reading. I'm afraid that I didn't study any Scottish books or poetry at High School, except Macbeth, and that doesn't really count. Instead, I read Thomas Hardy and Shakespeare, Seamus Heaney and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Philip Larkin and Rona Munro. English and Irish writers all. And before you ask, yes, I did go to school in Scotland - Douglas Ewart High School, in Newton Stewart.
Now at the time, I didn't think very much of it, and I admit that my perception of Scottish writing was that it was all written in impenetrable Scots, which I didn't speak or read. I know now that's not true, but there was nobody at my school to make that argument. So for me there was no Burns, no Scott, no Jenkins, no Grassic Gibbon, no Hogg.
No I don't want pity, but it would have been nice to have been shown that my country of birth had literature worthy of study. I'd like to hear what your thoughts are. What were your experiences of Scottish literature at school? Which authors did you study - and which do you wish you had studied?
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Two weeks ago I attended the CILIPS annual conference - CILIPS is the professional body for librarians and information workers in Scotland. We showed off the BooksfromScotland.com website, demonstrating how it can be used for researching Scottish books and authors. One thing that came up again and again was the lack of Scottish history books for the primary school market. Teachers and librarians are crying out for fun but informative books on Mary, Queen of Scots, William Wallace, Queen Margaret, Bonnie Prince Charlie. Likewise, there's a great need for local history books about Fife or Galloway or Orkney suitable for primary school children.
So here's a call for more Scottish books in Scottish schools - and that's not a nationalist rant, it's a recognition that Scotland's history and literature is worthy of study at all ages. I think that fits neatly alongside the study of Shakespeare and Heaney, not instead of it.
