English Department Revises Senior Curriculum

The English department has restructured the senior English curriculum for the 2019–20 school year to give students more opportunities for personal reflection. The fall term will serve as the final required sequential course in the English curriculum, while the winter and spring terms will offer various electives on literary genres, authors and topics.

The current curriculum requires students to read Hamlet during their upper spring, take a creative writing elective in their senior fall and write their senior meditation in the winter. The revised curriculum replaces senior fall electives with a standard English class in which students will read Hamlet and write mediations.

According to English Department Head Nathaniel Hawkins, the meditation was moved to the fall primarily to create a clearer arc in the writing program. Hawkins believes that the meditation—a long personal essay and a staple of the Exeter English curriculum—should immediately follow the upper sequence. “The current system has a fall term detour into creative writing within a genre and then students go back in the winter term to meditation,” Hawkins said. “So we moved the meditation to the fall as the capstone project of the writing program.”

English Instructor Matthew Miller added that this change will provide more students with the opportunity to read their meditation in Phillips Church, as both winter and spring term meditation blocks will be reserved for senior writers. “The student meditations are really some of the most profound pieces we all get to hear read,” Miller said. While the schedule currently allows for ten meditations to be featured, this number could double next year to 20.

The English Department has also made Hamlet, a required reading for the senior fall term. Miller drew a comparison between the second line of Hamlet, “Stand and unfold yourself, to the meditation-writing process. ” “That is what the play is about and that is what the Meditation is all about: unfolding oneself in an essay,” he said.

However, a number of rising seniors have expressed upset over the curricular changes, including upper Meredyth Worden, who had been looking forward to taking elective courses in the fall and winter. “If you only can take one English elective, it limits the curriculum,” Worden said. “I planned to take certain classes for English in the fall, so I have to reconsider now.”

Upper Thomas Wang raised concerns about the rescheduled meditation, noting its overlap with college application-writing season. “Fall term and the college admissions process is what many Exonians consider to be the culmination of their lives so far,” Wang said. “I’ve seen people cry while writing their meditations. Combining this intense emotional stress on top of the stress of college admissions would create unnecessary pressure.”

Senior Mark Blekherman commented on the need for more variety than what standardized English courses would allow. “There’s more to literature than Shakespeare plays and Morrison novels,” he said. “The fall writing seminars are engaging and a breath of fresh air during a very stressful time for seniors.”

Senior Josiah Pantsil shared similar sentiments. “Shakespeare can be a difficult read for some people and it would be tough to have that while also trying to write college apps and fill out scholarship essays,” he said. “I think that choosing your English makes it easier to get work done because you choose something that is your strength or forte. If you make people read Shakespeare, then that makes life much more difficult.”

While some believe that the lack of flexibility and stress of college applications will make fall term an inconvenient time for meditation writing, Hawkins pointed out that the meditation is not as burdensome as students may think. “Students already, currently, write several papers in the fall and the meditation is not something that is added on top of the other three or four papers they write during a term,” he said. Hawkins compared it to a 333 history paper where students are given a month to complete a multi-page research project.

Hawkins noted that the new system will cater to students who are less inclined to creative writing and English. “One of the problems we see in the fall currently is that, regardless of whether a student is interested in a creative writing genre, they have to take a creative writing genre course,” Hawkins said. “[The new curriculum] is a more open and honest elective system.”