De kunst van het onderwijzen

The art of teaching. About the promising future of literature education Literature as a serious art form is losing ground. Also in secondary education, literature has lost its sacrosanct position. Young people are reading fewer and fewer books. This also means that the functional illiteracy of socially vulnerable groups increases and the writing and reading skills of students is often below par. To reverse the tide, it is important to re-legitimize literature education. An overview of the functions of literature education shows that teaching of literature is of essential importance for language development, cultural socialization and personal education of students, and fits very well with the general aims of (secondary) education. Teachers see the decline in reading habits and motivation of many students as one of the greatest didactic problems. To turn the tide, it is therefore also important that the teaching of literature is at its best: that it motivates students to read books, that it enables them to develop their literary competence, and that it contributes to their cultural socialization. To this end, a didactic theory is set out in seven axioms that enables literature and reading of books to be firmly anchored in the curriculum. The article concludes with the axiom that for good (literature) education a strong professional community of teachers, teacher trainers and university specialists is necessary.