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Original poster

Set texts at school

110 replies

MillyR · 08/09/2011 21:31

Sorry that this is a bit of a thread about a thread, but in education there is a thread discussing Of Mice and Men still being a set text at GCSE. Nobody has mentioned in that thread that it is a book about a man killing a woman. As Steinbeck wrote:

She is 'not a person, she's a symbol. She has no function, except to be a foil ? and a danger to Lennie.'

This is in addition to 'Atonement' and "To Kill A Mocking Bird' both being set texts. In both of these a woman makes false accusations about who is the rapist. So in all three books a woman is harmed but we are pushed towards sympathising with a male character.

I am just wondering if this has a bit of an impact. When I was at school we did 'The Color Purple' and it had a major impact on me. I know these books must be looked at critically in schools, but criticising the books doesn't really cancel out the impact of the stories. Of Mice and Men is particularly sentimental and melodramatic so designed to move the reader to care about the killer.

Did anybody study these books at school, or teach them?

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SuchProspects · 12/09/2011 21:14

NT they weren't that fascinating in the 80's either. My school was supposed to be v. progressive and feministy. Most of our English teachers would have called themselves feminists I think, but they were still apparently blindsided that I could think Lenny was better dead if he was unable to stop himself from killing women. We were supposed to take the line that he was some kind of gentle(Hmm) giant who was unfortunate and misunderstood but I just thought he was a scary brute who was unable to tell the difference between a woman and a rabbit.

I also recall someone making the case that Mayella in To Kill a mocking Bird might not have been making it up. An argument along the lines of - just because she came on to him, liked him, etc. doesn't mean she consented to sex (my memory is fuzzy though, it was a long time ago) - hardly revolutionary for feminists you would have thought, but it wasn't even considered a reasonable suggestion, because, well, she came on to him. Angry

Sorry about the rant. Maybe I shouldn't have started this - my English lit O'Level completely put me off studying literature even though I loved reading - really annoys me to think back on it now.

NormanTebbit · 12/09/2011 18:28

Our English dept (run by a man) was very progressive on feminism and on race issues.

But I think the boys were a bit fed up with 'wimmin's issues' and for some of the girls it wasn't cool to be seen disagreeing with the boys.

I'm not sure the feminism talked about in the classroom translated to the playground.

And I would not have identified as a feminist at 15. Or even 20. But I am grateful to my teachers now. Teachers are brilliant sometimes.

Original poster
MillyR · 12/09/2011 17:50

That must have been weird for you, NT, being one of the few people interested in feminism in a room full of people who weren't interested in it.

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NormanTebbit · 12/09/2011 17:27

"has 25 more years of feminism really done absolutely nothing to impact the discussion of rape and domestic violence in the class room?"

I'm sure the discussions are fascinating and very different to the sort of discussion (although there wouldn't be any) of these issues on 1965 when violence against women was a cultural norm.

I think these texts when discussed in context can show children how some attitudes have changed (and how some haven't changed enough)

NormanTebbit · 12/09/2011 17:24

I studied Charlotte Perkins Gillman and Sylvia Plath at school.

In fact there was an audible groan as another 'feminist' text was plonked on the desk - not just from the boys Grin

SuchProspects · 12/09/2011 17:18

One of the things that struck me about the list of books in your OP Milly is that they are exactly the same books that I studied for O'level over a quarter of a century ago. And the issues that you brought up are the same ones I thought about (but only partially raised, and that feebly) when I was a student.

If that's supposed to be post 1914 fiction why on earth is it all from the first quarter of that time period (and two books about early 20th century America Hmm)? Is there nothing newer that might better reflect the lives and relationships we have now? Not to mention - has 25 more years of feminism really done absolutely nothing to impact the discussion of rape and domestic violence in the class room? :(

Original poster
MillyR · 12/09/2011 16:03

Yes, who suggested otherwise? But the number of children who read has declined, as has the frequency of reading.

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IHeartKingThistle · 12/09/2011 15:46

Er, loads of kids read. Loads.

Original poster
MillyR · 12/09/2011 14:42

I don't think it is a fail because many people on here will be parents as well as feminists, and we will want to bring boys and girls up with less gender stereotyping. Getting rid of the gender stereotypes around boys is also important; it can't all be about changing girls. I think the issue around new media applies just as much to girls as to boys. The rise of fanfiction is a female literary response to film (and books as well), and gives girls a way of subverting texts. The feedback to that activity has been swift in the way tv programmes are made, but not in books, perhaps because of the immediacy of tv shows, while books are less temporary.

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LRDTheFeministDragon · 12/09/2011 14:36

Oh, sure. I don't disagree, I just think this is a massive complex issue and I was picking at one little bit of it.

I would say, though - from my limited perspective of teenage boys, the ones I know seem often to be quite capable of reading and writing plenty if it's in the right context - try getting them to stop chatting online with their mates. But how to translate it into another context?

Anyway, I'll shut up for I have now very thoroughly illustrated !FeminismFail101, turning a thread about girls into an issue about boys. Blush

Original poster
MillyR · 12/09/2011 14:31

The issue still remains though that functional skills in reading and writing, which we all need as adults, are hugely improved through extensive reading. So film is great for stories and for visual skills, but is doesn't have that impact on reading and writing that books have.

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LRDTheFeministDragon · 12/09/2011 14:11

Yes, I think that's a really important point about not reading.

And I don't care for the snobbery about films and so on - yes, a film doesn't have as many words as a book. But it is immensely more visually complex than a book, too. It's just a different medium. We had a really brilliant teacher who was able to translate literature into something that felt very immediate, and she did it not by saying 'reading is good; films etc. are bad', but by showing us how a lot of what we were studying was actually quite similar to the things we enjoyed watching.

Original poster
MillyR · 12/09/2011 14:03

One of the issues is that children don't read, or don't read very much. It probably wouldn't matter as much which 3 books were representing post 1914 literature in a GCSE classroom if children were reading for pleasure. Although there is a gap between boys and girls, most girls don't read every day either, and many children say that they never read for pleasure.

I think it comes back to story telling. Children can now involve themselves with this by watching films of playing computer games, so there isn't as much of a desire to read fiction for pleasure. Books have to compete with other stories.

The way this dealt with in schools seems at odds with what children are doing. One of the solutions has been to give reference books to boys on the basis that they don't like fiction. Well, if that is the case, why do so many of them want to spend hours every day playing Fable or similar on a console, which are entirely fictional worlds and the mode of play is story based, often with quite a bit of text including written dialogue?

Likewise, why are we told boys don't want to involve themselves in collaborative discussion and have to be taught English in another way? Online gaming is largely based on teamwork, collaboration and discussion.

I think that there needs to be better preparation of children before they get to GCSE level, so that they want to read for pleasure. A lot of that is that literature going to have to mirror the way that they interact with new media. But the proposals that are put forward based on some strange stereotype that boys want to read fact books about racing cars and then answer questions on them in a solitary yet competitive manner are obviously flawed.

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LRDTheFeministDragon · 12/09/2011 13:10

Oh - no, your answer was really interesting, thanks Milly. Sorry I didn't acknowledge it! Blush

I do think it is really poor the way that some boys seem to get taught they need 'special' literature - as if they couldn't possibly enjoy or cope anything else. I know that doesn't happen in every school and I do see that I'm making a 'what about the menz' argument, but it is not good for either boys or girls, so I think it stands.

I have two basic issues I want to say on this thread (because I'm probably not making much sense otherwise).

One is: we need to get children reading books that represent a good range of authors and characters and situations.

Second one is: we need to stop whitewashing the existence of women authors and books about women out of the picture. This ties in with what's being said on the WHSmith thread about putting 'women's fiction' in its own (pink) section. A lot of people, I think, don't realize how much writing by and about women there is out there - and how many books women buy. As you say Milly, if we look at post-1914 fiction, there are plenty of women authors. But as UMS says, there are also plenty of women who wrote at a time when that was considered quite a respectable thing for a woman to do if she needed to work. There is a very, very, very long history of women authors and of writing that engages with women's lives and women's stories. An awful lot of children grow up not knowing about this - or thinking, at best, that women writers began to appear with Jane Austen and tailed off thereafter. It's not true and IMO it's a lack of respect to women in general when we whitewash the history of women in literature.

Original poster
MillyR · 12/09/2011 12:56

LRD, I didn't really answer your question about boys in general and just mentioned secondary school boys in particular. I don't know why people think 5 year old boys want a particular kind of book; I've not noticed it to be true with children that young. With primary school boys it seems to be the type of book rather than the gender of the character.

I don't know what has gone wrong with boys (and to some extent girls) and English in primary schools, but it certainly happened to DS and I still don't understand it! It was rectified immediately by his Secondary school, and part of that was the example set by peers.

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UsingMainlySpoons · 12/09/2011 12:52

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UsingMainlySpoons · 12/09/2011 12:52

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UsingMainlySpoons · 12/09/2011 12:50

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LRDTheFeministDragon · 12/09/2011 12:49

I do take your point about it not being good to study the same books over and over - I remember how dull history (WW bloody II, ever time!) was, for that reason.

But there are loads of women authors, and plenty of books that could appeal to boys and girls. It's the combination of the three mentioned in the OP that really looks awful, isn't it?

LRDTheFeministDragon · 12/09/2011 12:43

'The problem is: very few women got published before the 20th century.'

This is a widely-believed factoid, but I don't think it is true. In fact, I know it's not.

Original poster
MillyR · 12/09/2011 12:31

Mummytime, I was more thinking in terms of the Post 1914 section of the English literature specification, which the three books I mentioned fall under. There are a lot of books written by women or about women in this time period, including novellas.

Harper Lee was of course a woman and Scout is a girl, but I think the issues over TKAMB are more of an issue to me because of the other books studied alongside it.

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Original poster
MillyR · 12/09/2011 12:26

As for what appeals to boys. I would say that what appeals to DS (who reads very stereotypical boy books - Cherub spy series, Percy Jackson series) is:

  1. A hero
  2. A sense of justice - of clear issues of right and wrong. People doing the right thing even if it goes against orders from an authority figure.
  3. Action and physical danger.
  4. The creation of a very detailed world system- ancient myth, spy organisation etc in the same way that computer games create a detailed world system.

From this perspective I think if we are going to appeal boys in the GCSE curriculum then Animal Farm, Brave New World and 1984 would be more obvious choices than those frequently selected by schools. Animal Farm also has the advantage, like Of Mice and Men, of being short.

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mummytime · 12/09/2011 12:25

The problem is: very few women got published before the 20th century. Also I can think of very few women authors who have written literary and short books. "Roll of Thunder Hear my cry" is actually often studied before GCSE, so might meet the same comment my son made on MacBeth, which was to complain as he has studied it for 6 out of the last 7 years (yes including primary school).
I am not saying boys will only read boy books. I am saying that at least half of the boys in bottom sets will be extremely reluctant to read anything but boy books.
However the reason that books like "Mice and Men" or "To Kill a Mocking Bird" are on syllabuses is because they can be read in a variety of ways, and a variety of issues can be brought out of them.
But I do agree there should be more female authors on the syllabuses, even if only higher sets are likely to study them. Why can't we have Sylvia Plath instead of Dylan Thomas (or is he there because he's Welsh)?

Original poster
MillyR · 12/09/2011 12:16

I think that getting boys to read books that very much reflect their interests are a good way of getting boys back to reading for pleasure, but this should be done by the schools in KS3.

I have been thinking about the point you raised about girls having to work harder because they are not in the books/are symbols in the books/are mis-represented in the books, and I kind of think it is an Uncle Tom's Cabin effect.

If girls experience this misrepresentation or absence, many of them are going to wonder why the author has done that, or why they are so misrepresented, because they have the immediate reference point of themselves to see that the author has created this effect that is different from their reality. That creates an analysis of the text that involves higher less skills. So perhaps it isn't girls working harder but that the othering of female characters makes it easier for girls to critique the text. Boys actually have to work harder to achieve that analysis, because they are increasingly being given books that match their inner world.

So I wonder if putting books like 'Touching the Void' on the set text on the grounds that it appeals to boys actually leads to a decline in their results, because the less academic boys will have to work that much harder to critique the text because it so closely matches their expectations of how life should be represented.

Sorry to waffle; I am not clear enough in my own mind about this to be succinct.

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LRDTheFeministDragon · 12/09/2011 11:49

Milly, I'm going to save this thread so I can look back at it when I'm trying to argue for teaching more writing by and about women. Especially this: 'People seem entirely unable to see that discussing feminism in schools is not the same thing as women being represented in the curriculum.'

It's so true.

Btw, I am confused as to why a short novel set in a foreign country, in another time, and featuring two adults as main characters, would be especially boy-friendly? Do we actually have quite odd ideas about what appeals to boys? I noticed that Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is on the GCSE syllabus (correct me if I'm wrong), which is a similar length, with more even distribution of male/female characters and with a main character who's at least roughly GCSE-age ... but I assume we're meant to conclude boys wouldn't want to read it as the main character is a girl?

Where does this set in, this idea that girls will read anything but boys will only read 'boys' books'? I've heard people say it about 5 year olds, which seems absurd! Is it possible that, if we didn't keep wrapping boys in cotton wool, they wouldn't be failing at English? Academic skills are like muscles - exercise them, and they grow. I would think that constantly reading stories where the main character is a boy, or where women are presented as 'other', is going to force girls to make a bigger imaginative effort to see themselves in the story. Maybe that is why they are better than boys at English Lit.