Nurturing Inane Linguistic Usage?

"The principal goal of Education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers." 

                                     -  Jean Piaget

A few years ago, a particular writer  became extremely popular in Kerala, whose parodied versions of popular songs  was a great hit  in  the audio entertainment  industry.  But within years his popularity waned and now he is unheard of !... How many of us have asked ourselves, why this happened. Well, it is simply because…’parody’  is an inferior art form and it in no way generates sublime feelings which good songs are capable of .

But, it is a fact, that  writers like James Joyce have through their ingenuity produced some grand literary pieces which are basically, a parody of other great works. J. A. Cuddon rightly points out in A Dictionary of Literary Terms,  “…Parody is difficult to accomplish well. There has to be a subtle balance between close resemblance to the ‘original’ and a deliberate distortion of its principal characteristics. It is, therefore, a minor form of literary art which is likely to be successful only in the hands of writers who are original and creative themselves. In fact, the majority of the best parodies are the work of gifted  writers.”

Students of Literature, know that,  a parodist normally  zeroes down on a writer’s propensity  for archaic or long words, double-banked adjectives, long-convoluted sentences and paragraphs, strange names, quaint mannerisms of expression, sentimental, bombastic, arch or pompous  style and then  parodies them. It is a technique similar to that of the cartoon caricaturist who exaggerates certain traits.

By now, you would have realized that  a through command of the language is essential for those engaging themselves  in  writing parody. So when  I found the inclusion of ‘Parody’ as a writing task for the newly introduced Course Book in English in God’s Own Country, Kerala, I was amazed!

Explaining the function of Education, Grayson Kirk states : “The most important function of Education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of  life…. the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure."  Can parody writing which is an inferior art form, by pupils aged fourteen, of Standard Eight  aid in “the ornamentation and decoration of the structure” referred to by Grayson Kirk? Don’t you think dear readers that such writing tasks aid only in the nurturing of inane linguistic usage in secondary level learners?