The Shared Experience

What makes children want to write? What does the writing of ‘criticism’ mean to sixth formers and students? What is the relation between a writer’s experience and imagination?

First published in 1970, The Shared Experience looks for answers to these questions in the writing of students at colleges of education and in the writing done for them by children in infant and junior schools. The author includes excerpts from the students’ essays and teaching diaries and relates these to the books and paintings the students have studied as part of their course work. She shows how the work the students do at college eventually affects the teaching and the learning that takes place in the classroom. The book has been written in the belief that secondary school teachers and teacher educators may learn that the disciplined freedom in our good primary schools differs fundamentally from ‘free discipline’, and that we must never lose sight of the ultimate goal: children’s enjoyment of writing.

This is not a book of educational theory, but an account of exploration and practice; it is not just about ‘creative’ writing – the author has tried to show the undesirability of drawing a line in teaching between ‘imaginative’ and ‘factual’ writing, when each of these kinds may include elements of the other.