Comparative Selections

Mairead Egan and Ro Aitken in St. Paul's Secondary School in Dublin 12, (01-4505682) studied Wheels within Wheels, Cinema Paradiso and King Lear for their first new course. In the next year they said the girls loved their new choices of Pride and Prejudice, Dancing at Lughnasa and My Left Foot. Ro says that she could not overlook Pride and Prejudice on any list.

They were initially drawn to the latter texts because of the connections they could see between the mother figures in the film and novel. Now they think they will broaden their theme to women in society in order to give the girls a lot of scope both in the classroom discussion and study and in written assignments.

Margaret Kennedy and Pauline Higgins in Scoil Mhuire in Cork city, (021-4501844) both wanted to include Dancing at Lughnasa in their Comparative Study. The girls in each of their classes requested Strictly Ballroom. They were then looking for a third text to link with these two. They decided at that point to go with their personal preferences.

Pauline took Wuthering Heights which she always enjoys teaching, while Margaret chose Pride and Prejudice. Each said that these texts presented some initial language difficulties, but once these were overcome students very much enjoyed the combination of classic and contemporary texts. Both teachers say they have been delighted with selections that allowed them to discuss the clash between individual liberty and the pressures of conforming to social expectations. Pat Smith has a strong higher level class who responded very well to Cat's Eye and loved seeing connections between this novel and Cinema Paradiso. They especially liked the handling of time, memory and childhood in these texts. Pat has a particular interest in drama, so he wanted a play in his selection. He is opting for Dancing at Lughnasa.

Martin Wallace in Clongowes Wood (045-868202) began last year with Macbeth and On the Waterfront - "but the well-read members of my class are pleading with me to opt for something other than Death and Nightingales as the third text. I am thinking about Remains of the Day, a novel about a man who fails to make a crucial decision until it is too late, (in comparison with two men who make decisions for good and evil) set in a background of political intrigue. The only other alternative that I have considered is The Playboy of the Western World, but I would prefer to use a play, novel and film".

Martin's class liked the dramatic placing of characters against a background of political intrigue and enjoyed exploring the theme of a central character making moral choices.

Hilda Quinn in St. Andrew's College in Booterstown, Dublin says, "We have already studied Pride and Prejudice and Cinema Paradiso. Our third text is Death of a Salesman. Why did I choose those texts? Well, for a start I couldn't see Jane Austen's name on any book-list and pass her by. Cinema Paradiso was such a great success with the 6th year group that the 5th years couldn't wait to study it. Finally I decided the third text should be Death of a Salesman partly because it represents another culture and another genre but mainly because it introduces yet another variety of parents with problems and follows the hero on the path towards self-discovery".

Maria Carney in Athlone Community College (0902-72640) has chosen Wild Swans, Empire of the Sun and My Left Foot. She was attracted to these texts because each tells an extraordinary story and highlights the universal, natural resilience of the human spirit in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Christy battles with cerebral palsy, Jim battles for survival in a war torn society and the heroine of Wild Swans struggles against the horrors of revolution.

Culturally, the texts offer contrasting worlds and times from the streets of Dublin and Shanghai to many regions in China. They present some bizarre and terrifying social customs such as the foot-binding of little girls, and some momentous historical events such as the light of the atom bomb.

Maria's students enjoyed the combination of film, novel, autobiography, personal, political and social history and family saga offered in these texts. She advises that Wild Swans was a lengthy text, best suited to avid, independent readers. Her combination of texts involved considerable work but she has no doubt that the benefits of this study far outlived the duration of Paper 2.

Mary Norris in Portmarnock Community School (01- 8038056) Mary's class enjoyed Dances with Wolves and How Many Miles to Babylon because the American Prairies and the Irish Big House offered such striking contrasts in cultural contexts. Each text also explored a military hierarchy and showed the desire to move beyond one's own cultural milieu, be it Anglo Irish gentry or White American.

The protagonists differ greatly, from Dunbar, the Christ-figure, a truly heroic man of action to Alec, so much more shadowy. Yet both exemplify individuals in isolation who make personal journeys of discovery and come to understand loneliness, friendship and the tragic consequences of bonding outside of one's own kind. Both texts end with the hero facing death.

Both texts offered the opportunity to explore imagery; subtle symbols like the swans or the galloping horses that almost break through the screen at the end of Dances with Wolves. Mary would love to see the return of this film for her students

Maureen Leavy in St. MacDara's Community College (01-4566216) was looking for texts that would appeal to her class of girls and boys. She always enjoyed teaching Wuthering Heights, But found that while girls loved it, boys did not find it an appealing text. The boys' favourite was On the Waterfront. After some initial difficulties with following the plot, this film was well received by all students. Maureen was surprised to find that The Plough and the Stars was less accessible than in previous years but her class came to love it eventually.

She was initially attracted to the role of the outsider in these three texts but found that students were more responsive to the theme of love and wrote more easily on it. She concludes that her class love the comparative approach and that she loves teaching it.

Many teachers have not yet finalised their selections from the 2004 list. Mary Milne from High School, Dublin 6 (01-4922611) says that there are many texts on that list that she enjoys and would love to teach. She is considering On the Waterfront, A Doll's House and I know why the caged bird sings. She is attracted to the strong central characters and their journey through each of these very powerful narratives. She has decided on Macbeth as her single text so that selection would give her students a Shakespearean tragedy, a classic twentieth century film, a classic nineteenth century drama and a contemporary novel.

Brendan O'Regan from St. Kevins CBS Arklow (0402-32564) writes that he found The Third Man very good for relationships (as a theme at higher level), cultural context and genre, especially the quirky story-telling of the film noir. The moral complexities it investigates make it an interesting companion text to David Malouf's Fly Away Peter in terms of their general vision and viewpoint. Brendan's experience of teaching How Many Miles to Babylon was not entirely a positive one among other things due to lack of chapter structure, and over similarity to Malouf's book.