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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

Is the homework 'to research Ian McEwan suitable for an 11year old?'

73 replies

Jellybeanz1 · 17/09/2013 19:38

My daughters yr 7 class has started reading Ian McEwan's The Daydreamer ; for homework they have been told to research him. I then found my dh consoling my daughter as she was distressed with something that she had read re: The Cement Garden which comes up as a prominent feature when you google it. The review comes up straight away. It contain issues of incest (brother and sister). She has a db and I don't want to visualising this, even if she hadn't I wouldn't. Also a murdered parent under the floor. I thought Jaqualine Wilson had some tricky issues (which she has enjoyed). Should I write a few lines in her English book or a letter. She has just moved up to this school so I don't know any teachers yet. Is the Teacher BU to set this research with no warnings or is this what her age should be considering? It was only 6 months ago we signed the form for sex education. This seems to be progressing too far too fast.

OP posts:

marzipanned · 18/09/2013 13:20

valium have you read his early stuff? I hated Solar, didn't much like Saturday/On Chesil Beach, had mixed feelings about Atonement... but I loved First Love Last Rites and Cement Garden. They've got a completely different feel.

In any case - whether or not people enjoy McEwan is kind of besides the point.

valiumredhead · 18/09/2013 13:24

Oh I might give him another go then...

pamish · 18/09/2013 13:31

They are not reading The Cement Garden, or Atonement, THEY ARE READING THE DAYDREAMER. Sorry to shout but this seems to have passed you all by. The Daydreamer is a children's book, sort of. It contains no rape, no incest, no messy honeymoons, no OCD balloon accident aftermaths. It's a very clever and very readable book of the imaginative experiences of a ten? year old boy, where he swaps lives with others - a common enough plot device but McEwan uses it well.

Borrow your dc's copy, or get one for a penny from Ama*on, read it. You may even learn something about your place in the universe. I love the bit with the baby, I used it in a teacher training essay as being a brilliant way of describing a baby's perceptions.

marzipanned · 18/09/2013 13:36

pamish that hasn't passed me by at all. I don't think the choice of book is remotely inappropriate in itself, but researching McEwan is going to lead a child to his other books, the subject matter of which is obviously distressing for some kids (such as the OP's daughter).

pamish · 18/09/2013 13:38

For chrissake don't let them read the bible. Full of rape, incest, murder....

PeterParkerSays · 18/09/2013 13:38

I agree that it's lazy homework. The book they're studying is eminently suitable, but they need "examine Ian McEwan's use of colour in The Daydreamer" not some general "Ian is X years old and grew up on Mars" type rubbish. That will tell them nothing on the book.

Your issue needs to be establishing what this homework was supposed to have taught them, rather than complaining about the author per se.

marzipanned · 18/09/2013 13:44

I think the bible is a bit too dry for most 11 year olds :)

pamish · 18/09/2013 13:45

I may be just a bit jaded by teaching 16-19's who were not top achievers, but 'research' at school esp at age 11 is not about actual depth. If any of them do more than print off that Wikipedia page, let alone read what it says, I'll be surprised.

I was a bit stunned to find some of the young people I taught, presenting me with mood boards by way of research/referencing; as far as I could judge, this was what we would have called Colouring In.

valiumredhead · 18/09/2013 14:02

Research means research that you will be questioned on at ds's school. I would prefer specific questions though to avoid what the OP has described. And the whole Freida Kahlo situation

lottiegarbanzo · 18/09/2013 14:12

pamish, the book being read had not passed me by at all, or any other poster as far as I can tell. No need to shout or talk down to us.

I got into reading Agatha Christie at 11 or 12, so same school year as OPs dd because we were asked to write some piece of homework from the pov of a detective. I don't think it was even English homework. I'd heard of Miss Marple but didn't actually know anything about her, so I found an AC story featuring her, read it and wrote the homework over a weekend.

No harm done then and I'd say the simplistic, formulaic style of AC's writing was well suited to my 11yo immaturity. (I moved on to Dorothy L Sayers and all sorts of adult fiction by 13 or 14). I also think it was entirely a good thing that when, at 13, we read Animal Farm, I moved straight on to 1984 and other Orwell.

I could easily have taken this apparently flabby, ill-defined homework task as a reason to read anything at all by McEwan and, at 11, while I wouldn't have come to any harm, I think it would have been a foreseeable consequence better avoided.

That is what I'd be saying to the teacher.

valiumredhead · 18/09/2013 14:18

I was devouring AC books at 11, loved them!

valiumredhead · 18/09/2013 14:19

Oh and I agree Lottie.

Lcbirdy · 18/09/2013 15:48

YANBU. His writing, while fantastic, is loaded with issues. He has written a short story which includes the sexual assault of and death of a child. As long as the teacher is teaching in an age appropriate context, then fine. But... It is reasonable for you to have concerns over open ended research. (Lucky you're so on the ball).

That said, don't write in the English book- maybe request a phone call?

valiumredhead · 18/09/2013 16:11

Yes but the day dreamer is ok isn't it and age appt? have just googled

MisguidedAngel · 18/09/2013 16:23

If anyone is tempted to try a book by Ian McEwan after reading this thread, I beg you to start with Enduring Love. If you don't like that, you won't like any of them.

lottiegarbanzo · 18/09/2013 16:54

I agree about Enduring Love. I enjoyed Atonement and Saturday too, though Saturday is 'neat' in a way that could irritate. Amsterdam is one of his worst and least memorable I think. The Cement Garden is good, of the early grim ones.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 18/09/2013 17:03

I quite liked The Cement Garden. It's the only one of his I liked, though I haven't read the one the OP's daughter is studying. I loathed Atonement and Enduring Love and at that point vowed never to read another of his.

'Skellig' on the other hand, is stunningly good, in my v humble English teacher opinion.

OneUp · 19/09/2013 00:51

RemusLupin I never really got skellig.

Glitterandglue · 19/09/2013 02:36

I did Enduring Love for AS Level (I think? Maybe GCSE) and hated it. I found it soooo boring. It was written like a jigsaw puzzle (as in, you could see all the joins). I didn't care about any of the characters. The only ones I even found interesting were the guy who smoked weed and the kids who'd lost their dad. And my English teacher spent the whole time asking us if we still believed the narrator, and all I could say was, "yeah, why not?" all the way through. Supposedly he's meant to be unreliable because he wiped the machine messages so his girlfriend didn't believe him. Yeah, not so much. And the random description of having a shit in the woods - I got that it was meant to be about the guy's tension and anxiety, but it just stood out as pointlessly graphic to me.

Even thinking about it makes me irritated again, heh. But back to your point...lazy homework, worth making a comment about.

Blont · 19/09/2013 04:08

I don't think Ian McEwan's appropriate for anyone, because his writing sucks.

I didn't like Enduring Love because I didn't give a shit about any of the cold, distant, self-involved characters.

And his prose is that beige, sort-of-florid, oh-look-I'm-a-novelist-look prose that I just hate a LOT.

The allotted homework is, as many have said, lazy. If you can't give engaging homework out don't give it out at all.

englishteacher78 · 19/09/2013 07:26

I hated Enduring Love, and I hated the whole McEwan's great I was confronted with on my PGCE. For some reason I don't recall I gave Atonement a try. I loved it (although I could do without the last look at me metafiction part). I love teaching it at A Level, the students really get into it. One group even set up a Facebook group 'We hate Briony'.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 19/09/2013 17:29

V well said, Blont. :)

ButThereAgain · 19/09/2013 17:44

McEwan's early short stories are among the most sordid and disturbing things I have ever read. I still have vivid images of the bondage and laxatives incident, and of a very disturbing paedophile murderer story, from reading these in my late teens.

I don't mean "sordid and disturbing" in particularly negative way. There is a place for sordid and disturbing. But it would certainly stop me setting a vague general research task into McEwan for a year 7 pupil. I can't see that he is a good writer for that age group anyway.

He isn't my fav writer -- agree with the "cold and self-absorbed" comment about his lead characters. But I do like him. The wordsmith preoccupations of the young girl in Atonement (and I suspect of McE himself) are excellently described.

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