Critical reading and Creative Writing

We selected an extract from one of the letter Charles wrote to Robyn in Nice Work (pg. 310), in which he explains his decision to change career. We thought the letter was an important medium to give straightforward information about some of the socio-economic problems England faced during Margaret Thatcher's government in the 80s' and which deeply affected Higher Education. In this novel, Charles represents one of the many professionals who were demoralized and depressed by such a crisis and who had to make an important job decision in their lives to support themselves -even if it was at the cost of their academic careers. Being Robyn Penrose an extremely devoted teacher deeply stuck to her principles, we know that she would never think or even consider the possibility of abandoning her career for economic reasons. As she completely disapproves of Charles’ decision and regards him with a bit of contempt for that, we thought it fair to give him a voice and support him. His decision is simply based on real life grounds, he as any other worker at the time needed to earn a living to pay the rent, taxes, gas, bills, food, and many other daily expenses. As Vic says "there is nothing like a free lunch". Hypertextopia is an efficient tool to show some of the many mental images that came to our minds while reading the extract chosen. This website proves particularly advantageous because we as readers can interact with the text by not only adding background information, but also giving a personal touch to it. Being such an amazing tool available for free, we as teachers-to-be should bear it in mind, and offer our students the possibility of experiencing the satisfaction of creating an interecting with texts. http://hypertextopia.com/library/read/2198