Enhancing students’ media resilience through literature education: An educational design based on work and authorship of A.F.Th. van der Heijden

This chapter proposes an educational intervention in the domain of literature education that aims to improve students’ (literary) reading skills and their media resilience. It does so by analyzing the way Dutch literary writer A.F.Th. van der Heijden deals with fiction and reality in his work and public appearances. The chapter stages A.F.Th. van der Heijden as an author trying to come to terms with his personal grief for the death of his son Tonio and the collective trauma for the Dutch society through his literary work: the requiem novel Tonio (2011), the serial President Tsar on Obama Beach (2016), and the novel Lying Dead Beautifully (Mooi doodliggen) (2018). By using fictional constructions about real events, Van der Heijden invites his readers to reflect on fixed ideas about reality and fiction, truth and fake news. The educational intervention challenges students to reason about the literary work and the public authorship of A.F.Th. van der Heijden. In doing so, students will acquire insights not only in the subject matter at stake in the texts but also in their own way of reading these kinds of texts and the way others read these texts.