Gove Strips American Classics from GCSE Syllabus

It is a bother to have only one Canadian book in one's high school English classes.

We ended up reading Harper Lee, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ray Bradbury, e.e. cummings, etc. No Atwood, Robinson, Service, and so on. Junior high was better with half and half.

And the Brits gave us Silas Marner. I will never understand why our educators chose that of all novels available from the UK or the USA for 10th graders. I have posted this rant before and now for those who suffered as I and had not seen it.

donroc said:

And the Brits gave us Silas Marner. I will never understand why our educators chose that of all novels available from the UK or the USA for 10th graders. I have posted this rant before and now for those who suffered as I and had not seen it.

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I remember watching an episode of the TV series "Room 222" when I was a little kid, back in 1971 or 1972. In that episode, the high school students demanded to read Joseph Heller's Catch 22 instead of the required book -- Silas Marner. The students complained that Silas Marner wasn't "relevant", and persuaded the young hip English teacher (portrayed by actress Karen Valentine) to join them in protest.

It's been a long time since I watched the show. But if I remember correctly, the young hip English teacher ended up persuading the old unhip chairman of the school's English Department to let the kids read Catch 22.

Back in school, I remember we would only read books written by Venezuelan authors but our class would seldom finish them, so the professor gave in and found easier books from Colombia and Mexico. And don't make me start we books by Spain. They plain don't exist here, unless is a literary masterwork like Cervantes or Lope de Vega.

I tend to think about this conundrum a lot. On one hand, you want to protect and spread the legacy of your culture, but on the other hand you can't pretend other types of literature exist and not giving it a place in education is, simply, giving an uncomplete education to youth.

Just so long as Flowers for Algernon remains required reading for everyone, we shouldn't have any problems.

Nothing makes teens nostalgic for the "good old days" like being forced to read antediluvian literature in their high school English classes.

I really do love it when the Tories start shooting themselves bang center in the foot.

It's so, so reassuring.

Alessandra Kelley said:

I would like to see a copy of the new syllabus.

I was originally thinking that focusing on British literature was not too awful, especially if modern American authors were to be removed in favor of some of the remarkable British fiction of the last century.

But the only authors whose names I saw mentioned were Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens, who are good authors to be sure, well worth the reading, but who are not even as recent as the Crimean War.

That suggests that this is not so much a focus on British authors as a purge of post-Victorian works.

I wonder why. It's not like the UK produced no great literature after the death of Prince Albert. Off the top of my head I can think of Evelyn Waugh, J.R.R. Tolkien, P.G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and Neil Gaiman.

I think as long as a work is in English it ought to be considered for the syllabus. But if the education secretary wishes to stick to UK authors only, surely some should be more recent than the American Civil War.

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Anglo - Irish.

and TS Eliot? British? hmmmm.....

not to mention Eric and John ronald Reuel weren't born in Britain. - wait, i just did mention it!

don't know Gainman's background....

robeiae said:

Just so long as Flowers for Algernon remains required reading for everyone, we shouldn't have any problems.

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For me, it was in 8th grade English class. The only reason I remember it is because of the movie "Charly", starring Cliff Robertson. And the only reason I remember "Charly" is because I remember watching "PT 109" on TV with my dad.

RichardGarfinkle said:

Pardon my cynicism, but I wonder if this might be related to how well UKIP did in the recent elections. Might the Education Minister be trying out a little xenophobia for a segment of the electorate?

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Now that would be reassuring in a different way.

but the fear mongering from UKIP isn't against Americans, 'specially white Americans....

Yeah, Gove does love a bit of Empire.

Still, bit of a stretch methinks.


wait, is methinks Shakespearean enough for the New Order?

It doesn't ban any authors, books or genres. It does ensure pupils will learn about a wide range of literature, including at least one Shakespeare play, a 19th century novel written anywhere and post-1914 fiction or drama written in the British Isles.

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Don't worry. They'll get the chance to read at least one novel written by anyone anywhere in the world as long as it was written during the height of British empire and global influence.

Alessandra Kelley said:

Eliot was a naturalized British citizen.

Tolkien was born an English citizen to English parents in South Africa and later moved to England.

I count Shaw and Wilde as British but that might be a bit of a stretch.

Gaiman was born in England to English parents.

If none of these are "pure" British enough to suit, there are still many fine and important twentieth and early twenty-first century British writers who were born and have remained in Britain their whole lives.

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Orwell too was born and raised overseas, having born in India and serving as a colonial officer in Burma.

kuwisdelu said:

Don't worry. They'll get the chance to read at least one novel written by anyone anywhere in the world as long as it was written during the height of British empire and global influence.

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This. This is the root of the problem. I remember that none of my classmates in high school could name five authors of our very own language.

People tend to forget the the "classics" tend to be a very limited label in its sociocultural scope.

Then there's Kipling...


But honestly, I find the whole thing an exercise in runaway silliness. mostly a product of a "mandating" mindset, which is hardly limited to one particular ideology or political party, in England or anywhere else. I don't know how these particular exams are structured, but it seems to me that general knowledge of important English-language writers would be tested, along with some specific thematic stuff.

Much of the latter should be taught--imo--through the use of writings teachers find to be effective and are comfortable using. There's a lot of room here (just as there is--or should be--in the U.S. and elsewhere).

robeiae said:

Then there's Kipling...


But honestly, I find the whole thing an exercise in runaway silliness. mostly a product of a "mandating" mindset, which is hardly limited to one particular ideology or political party, in England or anywhere else. I don't know how these particular exams are structured, but it seems to me that general knowledge of important English-language writers would be tested, along with some specific thematic stuff.

Much of the latter should be taught--imo--through the use of writings teachers find to be effective and are comfortable using. There's a lot of room here (just as there is--or should be--in the U.S. and elsewhere).

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But what exactly constitutes an "important" writer? Who decides? That's been a matter of contention for quite some time.

There is a "canon" of writers who have been designated as important in literature. Everyone who studies English literature is required to read them because of their influence as well as their intrinsic merit.

But of course, a great deal of their importance comes from the fact that they have been designated as important by academia. It's a self reinforcing loop -- they are officially designated as important, and then are studied for their influence -- influence that exists in large part because they have been anointed as "important."

Chicken and egg.

And of course, the great majority of "important" writers have traditionally been white and male. Women, and writers of color, have not only been considered mostly unimportant, but until recently, literally unknown to many students.

And don't get me started on "genre."

Hemingway is part of the canon. When I was in school he was considered one of the great modern masters. Actually, I like him quite a lot – I think he is a great writer, though I know many who would disagree. His influence certainly looms large in much of modern fiction.

But was he a better writer than Raymond Chandler? Is Chandler's influence any less important and pervasive?

I'm not so sure of that, but I do know that when I was an English major Raymond Chandler's books were never even considered as worthy of study.

Gove is an idiot.

Sorry for being so diplomatically diffuse. It's the best I can do.

caw

rugcat said:

But what exactly constitutes an "important" writer? Who decides? That's been a matter of contention for quite some time.

There is a "canon" of writers who have been designated as important in literature. Everyone who studies English literature is required to read them because of their influence as well as their intrinsic merit.

But of course, a great deal of their importance comes from the fact that they have been designated as important by academia. It's a self reinforcing loop -- they are officially designated as important, and then are studied for their influence -- influence that exists in large part because they have been anointed as "important."

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Certainly true, to some extent. And there are other subjects that can be similarly afflicted. But at the same time, this GCSE is more or less a test for getting into academia. So...

But again, apart from what amounts to historical surveys, I think teachers should be free to use books they are comfortable using when teaching literature, so I'm not sure you really followed what I was saying., or else I wasn't being clear.