Teaching literature

OUT of Pakistan’s 300,000 public and private schools, only a handful offer literature as a compulsory subject. Most schools follow the Pakistan National Curriculum requirement of integrating literature in English-language studies. Schools that follow the UK national curriculum teach literature to the advantage of their students.

At its core, literature introduces children to complex ideas and thinking processes, laying the foundation for critical thinking across subjects. It helps develop reading and comprehension skills and vocabulary and nurtures imagination and creativity. Above all, it helps prepare students for the real world, where they are grounded in skills that are needed for social uplift, reform and transformation.

Arundhati Roy confronts caste oppression, militarisation and state violence in The God of Small Things. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace woke up his society to the impact of peaceful resistance. Later, his works influenced Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. The ripple effects of social thought percolate down many generations.

For centuries, literature has helped children feel the experience of other people, other cultures. Isabel Allende’s magical realism in The House of Spirits highlights political repression, rights abuses and the fight for democracy in Latin America. Her narratives bring global attention to the lived experiences of marginalised communities. Victor Hugo advocated for social justice, poverty reform and human rights through epic storytelling.

Literature can help the transition to a culture of inquiry.

Through literature children learn — very early on — to become aware of action and consequence, social injustice, gender inequity and all those issues that have dominated the human condition. This awareness precipitated by literary works, has nurtured millions of minds who have used it for thinking critically about society. For example, long before slavery was banned in the US, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped humanise enslaved people. Literature changes perceptions and processes that can lead to paradigm shifts in society.

From early childhood through adulthood, exposure to diverse texts nurtures essential social competencies — empathy, communication, cultural awareness, ethical reasoning and civic understanding. Because stories simulate real-life social experiences in a safe, reflective space, literature becomes a powerful tool for social learning and indeed social and political action.

Another powerful aspect of literary texts — fiction and non-fiction — is their unifying effect. It is through literature that diverse communities belonging to vastly different cultures, religions and ideologies come to a realisation that they share the same patterns in human condition, human nature, suffering and struggles. So literature binds communities, countries and cultures. It enables students to learn from those across the globe, to support those who have different values, thought processes and lifestyles, and to understand experiences we may never have had.

In Pakistan, thousands of schools either do not teach literature as part of the curriculum or teach it only at the secondary level. However, literature is absolutely critical in the formative years when students are just beginning to develop essential life skills such as problem-solving and analysis, empathy and exploration.

Literature has the potential to groom generations of Pakistani students, if embedded in their daily learning processes. Literature strengthens problem-solving skills by presenting complex human situations that rarely have simple solutions.

Characters in literary texts often face moral dilemmas, so­­cial conflicts or psychological struggl­­es. Students are en­­­-couraged to explore these problems by considering motivations, consequences and alternative cou­rses of action. They begin to question, analyse and express ideas based on their imaginative perception of what they read. This analytical process mirrors real-life problem-solving, which begins with questioning, initiating inquiry into the ‘why’ of situations presented in texts. It can support our students in transitioning to a culture of inquiry, one that will help them tackle systemic degeneration in various aspects of our society.

Questions promote intellectual curiosity and teach students that exploring is central to learning. Instead of accepting ideas at face value, students learn to probe deeper. This habit of questioning extends beyond the classroom, helping learners become more thoughtful, expressive and reflective individuals.

When students learn to read stories deeply, they learn to navigate the world wisely and live their own life story with greater resilience.

The writer is a teacher educator, author and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK. The views expressed are her own and do not reflect the views of her employer.

neda.mulji@gmail.com

X: @nedamulji

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2026

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