Is it because - heaven forbid - that teachers no longer know any poetry?	Why are teachers so terrified of poetry? And I mean real poetry - by Keats, Tennyson, Blake, Browning and the like - not the trite little ditties that worm their way into modern English test books masquerading as poetry. Is it because - heaven forbid - that they no longer know any? Or do they prefer to keep it to themselves rather than sharing it with pupils? Every year a lot of students with good GCSE grades turn up in my A-level English classes having never read or, in many cases, even dimly heard of Wordsworth's Daffodils, Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 or Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, for example. The national curriculum for secondary English (ages 11-16, alias Key Stages 3 and 4) specifies that all pupils should read "poems" by four poets published before 1900. It then provides a worthwhile, if somewhat arbitrary, list of 29 approved poets from Matthew Arnold to Sir Thomas Wyatt. Perhaps it was a worthy attempt to compel teachers to expose children to their literary heritage but the curriculum is horribly silent on quantity, frequency or what pupils should do with them. Even GCSE English Literature, which is not compulsory, pays only lip service to real poetry. All the syllabuses are overcrowded and fussily politically correct. All those fine "dead white poets" are marginalised and teachers can choose to do a very small amount. Generally, the situation is a charter for teachers inclined to opt out. The usual argument is that "old" poetry is too difficult - and I've even heard that point of view voiced in independent schools that expect their students to achieve high grades.
	The usual argument is that "old" poetry is too difficult.	Such teachers are, perhaps, the same ones who recently refused the gift of all those free Everyman classic titles for their school library. But they need not worry. Legally they may read just four pre-1900 poems with pupils over five years - fewer than one a year. Then they can spend the rest of any time they wish to dedicate to "poetry" scuttling back to the trite delights of Roger McGough and Michael Rosen (Down behind the dustbin/ I met a dog called Sid/ He said he didn't know me/ But I rather think he did). The national curriculum is much less prescriptive about precisely which 20th-century poets should feature. "Modern poetry is more accessible for our pupils and more relevant to them," they say smugly. What a lot those weasly words "accessible" and "relevant" have to answer for in education today. They are teacher-speak for "easy" and have long been used in a misleadingly kindly way to justify most of the dumbing down we have seen in recent years. The truth is that it is a nasty form of cultural elitism to deny students - just because they may belong to an ethnic minority, be poor readers or come from deprived homes - the musical magic and romance of, say, On either side the river lie/ Long fields of barley and of rye, or Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore/ So do our minutes hasten to their end. Poetry, like music, is, at some level, universally accessible. In fact, the Ancient Greeks did not distinguish much between the two forms. It was, after all the nine muses who inspired poetry but gave their name to music. As T.S. Eliot famously commented: "Poetry can communicate before it is understood."
	No wonder so many pupils leave school thinking poetry is pointless and boring - they have never really experienced any.	Try telling that to the many teachers who panic if their students do not have every word "translated" into a clumsily banal prose explanation as if the poem were a set of science instructions. Result? Teacher frustration, pupil boredom and a justification for the teacher to say "I told you so. It's too difficult". No wonder so many pupils leave school thinking poetry is pointless and boring - they have never really experienced any. Poetry requires the use of the imagination - an attribute that less able pupils particularly benefit from developing. You read, listen, reflect and respond by allowing the poet to create images for you. Of course, you can learn a lot from discussing poetry, but that is a far cry from painfully explaining every word and every line. Poetry should be felt, not spelt out. One of poetry's great joys is its economy. Try explaining what Shakespeare meant by "pity-wanting pain" or "saucy jacks". It will take you many sentences to get anywhere near what he said in two or three words. Teachers should be meeting the challenge of exploring such marvels with pupils, not taking the soft option. In previous generations, children collected poetry to form their own anthologies. Why aren't we showing today's schoolchildren fine old poems - as well as newer ones - and encouraging collections? And have you noticed that those who were educated in the learning-by-heart era are invariably grateful for the bank of great and comforting words that they carry in their heads? It was not a punishment; it was a privilege. And one that could be beneficially resurrected. If we do not start teaching plenty of proper poetry, knowledge of it will die out. Then the writings of the finest 17th, 18th and 19th-century English poets will become as shrouded in obscurity as, say, Spenser or Bunyan are for people today.