Critical or Creative? The Creature Writes to Victor Frankenstein

ABSTRACT

This essay considers the relative merits of critical writing and writing in role as a means of enabling and assessing students’ responses to literary texts. Drawing largely on the author’s experience of teaching Frankenstein, it argues that the distinction between critical and creative writing is not as absolute as is sometimes supposed, and that so-called ‘creative’ tasks can be a very effective way of generating critical insight. It explores the significant limitations and limiting potential of the critical essay as a form, and argues that creative tasks such as writing in role afford far greater opportunities for school students to write fully and successfully as themselves. It links the longevity and pervasiveness of the critical essay as a mode of assessment within the English school system to its ‘exam-friendliness’, and makes the case for an alternative and more equitable approach that would allow for young people to be judged on their true potential as thinkers and writers.

KEYWORDS:

• Criticism
• creativity
• writing in role; pedagogy
• assessment

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the members of the English Education Research Group at the UCL Institute of Education for their invaluable feedback on an earlier version of this essay; to Gill Anderson, Fiona Stockdale and John Yandell for reading and commenting on my final draft; and to Neville Gomes for the walking and talking that helped shape much of my thinking. My greatest debt of thanks, though, is to Rochelle and Naima for allowing me to quote from and make use of their wonderful work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Advanced, or ‘A’ Levels, are the academic qualifications undertaken by 16- to 18-year-olds in England.

2. AQA, Edexcel, Eduqas, OCR.

3. All students’ names have been replaced by culturally appropriate pseudonyms.

4. General Certificate of Secondary Education, that is, the qualification undertaken by 14- to 16-year-olds in England.

5. ‘A Point of View’, BBC Radio 4, 9 September 2020.

6. The two years of secondary schooling that lead up to GCSE and the two that succeed them.

7. The first three years of secondary schooling in England.

8. Gavin Williamson, former Secretary of State for Education, declared in the summer of 2021 that: ‘We very much hope and intend exams will go ahead in 2022’. BBC News, 23^rd June. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57579211.

9. According to Simon Lebus, interim head of the UK government’s qualification regulator, Ofqual, teacher assessment of pupils is a better and more ‘accurate’ way of awarding grades than formal exams, while having teachers grade their pupils on work throughout the year would give a more ‘holistic judgment’ than the ‘snapshot’ provided by an exam. Independent, 9 August 2021. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ofqual-teacher-assessed-grades-exams-b1899662.html.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate Bomford

Kate Bomford taught English in London for 15 years. She now works at the UCL Institute of Education.