of mice and men, do you agree with taking it off the gcse course in Wales

[WillowTit]

Of Mice and Men: Classic US novel taken off GCSE course in Wales - BBC News

although i am not in Wales my dc all studied this book in gcse

The problem with that is that kids will think American politics applies to Britain, it just doesn't. We get enough of American politics coming over as it is.

That's hilarious! Refusing to read a book about racism because of the racist language.

Agree with this. It means more work for parents on safeguarding their children. and more work for teachers also?

@user18368 well yes she's autistic, and didn't want to read it as the language made her feel uncomfortable. There are plenty of other brilliant books out there it's hardly a big deal.

Same but in 2000!!!

And as an author, there's not always a good reason why I'd use one phrasing over a different one.

But "because it sounded better to me" doesn't really cut it in English Lit! Sometimes the curtains are just blue! 🤣

Of mice and men has been done to death at GCSE. I did it and I am in my 30s. My brother who is younger by a good few years also did it for GCSE. While it's a good book there are plenty of other brilliant books for GCSE.

When my brother first got given the book in the first lesson, he opened the first page which a student had written on the year before "George kills Lennie". He then proceeded to ask his teacher in front of the entire class if that was the case 😁 got to hand it to that teacher for then teaching a book to students who knew the ending the first day.

I think it should be dropped purely for the sake of English teachers. Those who have been in the job for a while will have had to teach it every year of their career. Other books are available.

i did that book back at school and I was a seventies teen.
I remember enjoying it back then. but when ds had it , the teacher lent me a copy. I couldn't read it again because of the way someone with what we now call a learning disability was treated.

Maybe a more controversial point of view but why do we have to structure education in the country around everyone reading the same books? Why not just let the English departments collate their own lists?

The specification doesn't just list one book in each category. There's a choice about what individual schools (and sometimes different groups) will select to study, as long as one from each section is assessed.

Saying you did it in the early 2000s doesn't really mean anything. It was written in 1937.

All GCSE pupils still have to study Shakespeare too.

What like Blood Brothers or Romeo and Juliet where the ending is in the prologue? So challenging.

Because of exams.

The problem with taking Of Mice and Men off is that it is very short and is engaged with by a certain proportion of boys who are turned off by other books. Steinbeck also writes with very simple language - even something like Brighton Rock is a harder read.
I can't think of another book as simple to read but with such depth of themes: racism, classism, disability, misogyny and sex work.

I was studying OM&M (in England) in the early 70s.

Yes, it's time for a change.

Same goes for "An Inspector Calls" if that's still on the syllabus.

The main issue with To Kill a Mockingbird and the reason it is being removed is its white saviour narrative. A book about racism, written by a white woman, and the hero and moral centre of the novel is? A white man.

Black people in it are firmly in the background. Front and centre are white folks. Blacks are helpless and dependent. It's up to whitey to save them.

This toxic, narcissistic trash should not be polluting the minds of any child.

A major problem is america has never owned its racist foundation. It makes excuses galore about the 'founders' (the elite planter class who dehumanized the Natives as "savages" in the white settler document the 'declaration', and having ethnically cleansed the Natives from their fertile land and forced the few who remained into reservations, owned hundreds of Africans to work the stolen land).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/05/facebook-declaration-of-independence-hate-speech

So instead of owning it, as Germany has done with their history in WWII (excellent book on this which contrasts the two countries), and shown some humility over your crimes, they look to minimise it and write books about how moral the white man is, a result of which is the white saviour trope which To Kill a Mockingbird is a prime example, thus is aptly "their beloved book". Of course it is (the white folks anyway, for black people it is a demoralizing book), as it allows you to excape the reality of what you have done.

To quote Hitler in 1928, you "gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keep the modest remnant under observation in a cage".

I was one of those teenagers that read Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath, Pride and Prejudice and a load of others even when it wasn't required by the curriculum. I just loved a good story. Now I struggle to read anything - that's a whole other thread.

To those who have said how annoying it is to be required to dissect a book to the extent it kinda doesn't exist any more - I totally agree. I used to read for pleasure and I do worry that rigid curriculum can kill a love of literature. Same thing with Art.

My kids love fantasy books and probably the odd sci fi book but I can't think of that many that are in that category other than Tolkien.

@mossylog how do you suggest they test children if the schools can read any book they like? At the moment you look through the test paper and answer the question on the text you read from a selection.

Not to mention as schools use more non specialists to teach having a load of resources and analysis available online for teaching staff to dip in to is probably massively useful.

I mean, they could not test them but that is a different debate.

More likely because the majority of books in English are by Americans and certainly 20th and 21st century English literature is completely dominated by American authors.

This toxic, narcissistic trash should not be polluting the minds of any child

That is censorship, pure and simple, and I cannot agree to it.

The death of freedom of expression and thought in my lifetime is something that I find saddening and sickening.

The question surely should be 'what is it we are trying to teach and what materials best look at things from other angles that we can discuss'.

Because in the U.K. exams are set by national boards, not by individual schools.

Blimey,that book has been on the syllabus for a long time.I studied it( in Scotland) and I'm in my 60's

I think it’s useful to discuss these things and understand the historical context the book was written in, even the uncomfortable parts. The alternative is to sweep it under the carpet and have young people imagine society has always been vaguely enlightened which isn’t true.

It was in the GCSE syllabus in the '80s when I sat it, so it's been there since GCSEs started. Long overdue for swapping out for something more relevant. Is I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings still on the same syllabus? - I remember that being taught alongside OM&M for English Lit GCSE.

Exam boards used to offer a short lists of texts that schools could chose from, and these were changed on a rolling basis. So for example 3 x plays, 3x novel, 3x poetry, and the school would choose one from each. And every year, just one in each category would be replaced by another. Do none of them operate like this any more?

And of course in the years before you start on the set texts, the schools can choose whatever texts they like.