expected to know about prostitution in a GCSE exam?

[allinahuddle]

Just wondered if I am a prude or if this is inappropriate? Dd2 sat her English literature exam yesterday and the poetry section as expected had two poems to compare and contrast. The introduction to them said they were both about nature and how it affects the man made world. One poem was about prostitution and the other about mining. She said she found it confusing as the introduction made her think her instincts were wrong. She thought it was about drugs and maybe sex but didn't dare write it as she felt sure it wouldn't be that on an exam paper. I can see how perhaps prostitution could be studied as part of a social question in another subject I suppose but to include it as an unseen poetry question for 15 and 16 year olds seems inappropriate to me. To assume that this age group would feel confident to talk about this in an exam situation seems mad. It aldo seems to put the more anxious and less confident or less streetwise kids at a disadvantage as they felt embarrassed writing about it, especially after being told both poems were about nature. Only a couple of kids in the whole school actually wrote about prostitution or drugs even those on target for an A or an A*. AIBU?

I've never been told my swearing is poetic before.

I would love to have Dunmore on for a MN chat - I love her novels, too.

It's always so interesting to see what poets did and didn't intend.

I had (because I think about the motherhood bit of the poem more) thought of lilac as being a traditional gift for a new mother.

(Mind you, not even sure that's a 'thing' everywhere.)

I think it is fascinating that apparently so many 15/16 year olds assumed that a poem in an exam couldn't be about sex. They assumed that it wouldn't be something that would be put in an exam.

Is this because they have spent so much of their lives being told not to talk about it or do it (and some of those sitting the exam would have been below the age of consent)?

Is it because they think that adults who write poems, write exam papers and Mark exam papers don't think about/ talk about/ know about/ do sex?

Whether children should have known it was ok to write about the poem being about sex and prosecution (and quite crude at that) or not, from the sound of this thread a lot of them DIDN'T. So therefore something went wrong and needs addressing as it appears the paper "tricked" a lot of the children. Maybe 16 year olds aren't as streetwise and confident to write about sex as people assume.

I wouldn't have got this poem at age 16. I was very sheltered. I wouldnt have got "crack", I possibly would even have got the opened up line either. I hadn't had sex, I didn't read/ watch stuff about sex or prostitution. I knew the mechanics of course, but that is not what the poem is about. I certainly wouldn't have felt comfortable writing about it in an exam.

The Latin name for lilac is syringa vulgaris, which fits with the themes of the poem.
Brilliant!
Lilac doesn't flower till May hereabouts (Lilac day is 25th May) so we have to hope that none of the students were horticultural pedants.

I'd be curious to know what poems the students taking this exam had studied, to give some context to this unseen poem. My DD currently has her head in the 'Relationships' theme for her AQA eng lit tomorrow and grumbling about Marvel's 'vegetable innuendo'.

It seems to have been City Lilacs by Helen Dunmore.

I've only read the first page of this thread - but that poem is absolutely blatant about its theme: no matter how degenerate the man-made environment, nature will push through with beauty. The author's equally blatant about the judgements she expects her reader to take from it: love, like nature, will flourish in any circumstances and is open to anyone (up to you whether to make a judgement on "open to anyone"); it is glorious but short-lived.

I wish my O-level unseens had been this easy!

Now I'll have to read back & see why OP's DD was so confused, won't I

The Latin name for lilac is syringa vulgaris, which fits with the themes of the poem. Brilliant! - Ha, even better if you knew that!!

Interestingly DH's first comment when I read him the poem was, "Think she's talking about buddleia but neither bloom until may". Good job he wasn't sitting it.

Oh if you managed to get "The Latin name for lilac is syringa vulgaris," in to your answer you should be a straight A* surely? Did/does Helen Dunmore know?

My biggest issue is that I have some very sheltered but very able year 10 tutees from an Asian back ground. Hopefully they will have talked about the intrusion/restoration offered by nature, innocence versus brutality etc., but they would be highly unlikely to mention prostitution or drugs, even though we've talked a lot about sexual exploitation and rape imagery in set texts - the girls are rather naive and very innocent (though highly intelligent) and their minds just don't go there by themselves...

year 10 because their (admittedly outstanding state) school, in its wisdom, gets them to do literature in yr 10 and Lang in yr 11, whereas I would argue that you need as much maturity as you can before you tackle some of the set texts - whilst Lang is far more straightforward media analysis, usually on uncontroversial topics such as travel and adventure.

In response to a PP ... The whole point of an unseen poem is no learning in advance what a set of poems mean. It's testing reading and interpretation there and then.

YABU about the theme. As PP have said, English Lit is chock full of sex and violence and GCSE/O Level texts have always contained such stuff, because Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens etc are awash with it.

YANBU about the exam being tricky and favouring some students. It was part and parcel of the government interference with exams a year or 2 ago.

I remain We had to do Homer for Latin 0-level: all homo-eroticism, hetero rape and detailed bloody murders. It's hard to believe the 16-year-olds of 2015 are more sheltered than those of 1973. And the Le Grand Bastard Meaulnes in French, which you'd be hard pushed to read without seeing metaphors for sex every other sentence.

I think iheart made it clear enough that they wouldn't have to discuss prostitution or drugs to get decent marks. They might do better than a kid who got those aspects but in a facile sort of way.

nags - I do agree that doing eng lit early seems particularly misguided.

I like the poem.

I think there would have been plenty for the student to write about and still stay within their personal comfort zones.

In Latin, my personal favourites were the Catullus poems (is it 78? I forget) which are all about punish fucking and anal rape. And our Latin teacher saying that eheu was unlikely to mean oh dear but more likely to mean fuck.

And I do think that unseen poems are a good idea to check that students understand the principles behind imagery and can independently identify and reflect on literary techniques. But they should have more open poems - this poem actually seemed to posses a rather easy central message but with some very adult themes. It would be better to have a more ambiguous poem for the unseen that could be interpreted in a number of ways, whether reading it as more explicit or in other directions. Keats and other romantic poets would be good for this - can either read bucket loads of sex and drugs, or focus on isolation/loss/suffering/nature etc.

But they may have to discuss prostitution and drugs to get A* results. Surely that is where a certain unfairness arises. And yes, some of Nag's students may be just 14.

Interesting about the lilac

here the city lilacs
release their sweet, wild perfume

I did wonder if it was because lilac is more traditionally about scent one that man made perfumes contain or imitate a lot.

At least our none typical buddleia isn't notably scented - plus it's harder to scan obviously - so all the other reasons are very interesting.

I though IHeart said they definitely didn't have to, tinkly?

Honestly, I teach students who are 19 and 20 and I think some of them wouldn't have got that 'crack-haunted' referred to actual, you know, crack, and not cracks in the paving.

especially as the piece was 18-rated/in Latin/written by lesbians/set in Comic Sans.

Those lesbians and their comic sans. Disgusting.

Yes, Jeanne just reread, IHeart thought the sleazy stuff unlikely to be crucial.

To be honest, I am surprised the mark scheme is so apparently open to interpretation. But then I am a scientist and more used to nailing things down.

This is all very interesting to me. Poems are obviously like those Rorschach blot things, it's all about your own intpretation. Personally, my brain saw "crack" as drugs before I even thought of the pavements.

Helen Dunmore is very clever.

I remember being given Latin and Greek translations so deeply, utterly disturbing or depressing that I doubted the wisom of letting teens loose on them (at the time).

An allusion to prostitution at 16 seems fine. Do you feel that 16 year olds should actually be unaware that prostitution exists OP?

Does anyone know, do they try these things out on anyone? I mean, would they show this poem to a sample of kids and take note of the range of answers? And would they try to ensure there was no bias in terms of class/race/geographical location?

I'm talking bollocks aren't I? They won't do that.

But it kind of strikes me that perhaps unseen poetry exams are a test of your cultural/life experiences as much as your analytical skills. That would seem to discriminate against some kids.