AIBU to hate An Inspector Calls?

[Evasmithsghost]

English teacher so have to teach this dirge every year.

I hate the superior, haughty, lecturing tone taken throughout.

Hate Gerald and the way he’s partially let off the hook.

Hate the way Mrs Birling is given such harsh treatment by the playwright when in fact she is quite right and Eva did lie.

Really can’t stand this play!

@Carrotsandbroccoli

Also find it a bit weird when people question it ‘still’ being taught… The main criterion for a literary text is not its newness!

I think people have been questioning it being taught as a modern text.

Did it at school. Hated it then and still do. Don't get me started on Silas Marner.

TKAM wasn’t banned, just no longer a GCSE text, along with OMAM.

True @Carrotsandbroccoli, I was going off the AQA exam board but of course not every school does this

I'm an English teacher and love teaching it. Literally read the end of it today with my Year 10s and they had so many (brilliant) responses. Agree it's hardly a modern text but also agree that it feels so relevant even today.
I took a group to watch the Stephen Daldry NT version when it was on tour and it was fantastic.
No excuses for Eric's behaviour whatsoever but I HATE Gerald!!

Hmm. It is modern though. Literature goes back a long way!

@MrsHamlet

*They have to study

• a Shakespeare text. Most schools do Macbeth or R & J, but I’ve known some do The Tempest.*

I used to teach Julius Caesar. Now we're only allowed to teach one play to the whole school and it's Macbeth. Because witchcraft is much more relevant to teens than backstabbing mates.

- a nineteenth century novel. Nearly every single school does Jekyll and Hyde or Christmas Carol.
We don't.

If you think about it, Macbeth is equally about backstabbing mates, though. The witchcraft is just a crowdpleasing vehicle for him putting the vague ideas in his head into action - they're doing the same as Cassius.

Only liked British writers... don't get me started!

I didn't know that! Not surprising, I guess.

Right, well, fuck you Maya Angelou, Harper Lee, John Steinbeck, Philip Roth, Louise May Alcott, J D Salinger, Zora Neale Hurston and God knows how many others. Michael Gove reckons you've got nothing to show us.

Fuck you, Gove.

Even Margaret Atwood???

We did absent friends by alan ayckbourn.

As a 15 year old I was bored by it. I realised as an adult I wasn't old enough to really get that play. It's about much older adults and relationships teens have little experience of, it's so irrelevant to teens.

(I know she's Canadian and the others I mentioned are American. But there are lots of countries outside Britain. Apparently.)

@Evasmithsghost

TKAM wasn’t banned, just no longer a GCSE text, along with OMAM.

True @Carrotsandbroccoli, I was going off the AQA exam board but of course not every school does this

OMAM is a GCSE text! Currently teaching it.

You are definitely not unreasonable. It's shit.

Hectoring, moralistic, dull shit.

Oh, which exam board?

We now have to do it with Y9s due to the abundance of copies in the stock cupboard

@MrsHamlet

We're no longer allowed to teach lord of the flies because it's too long. I'm teaching this unbearable shite under duress and I hate it.

My dyslexic son did Lord of the Flies for GCSE in 2009. I had bought him a simplified version of Great Expectations so that at least he could get a gist of the story but for Lord of the Flies l bought a second hand copy for myself and read it to him while he followed with his own copy. I have to say that I detested it, although I can see why it is a good text for GCSE. When I was at school myself, only the top sets took English Literature O level. We had Far From the Madding Crowd, which l loved, and The Catcher in the Rye. I enjoyed it at the time but would not want to read it again. We did The Taming of the Shrew, which is a fantastic play for this standard and, yes, the misogyny was very apparent even in 1981. I did English A level but in those days it was English Literature and, while I loved Chaucer and the poetry, I still shudder every time I think of Portrait of a Lady. I would have much preferred English Language A level, which many youngsters are able to do now. I found all the hidden meanings in the depth needed to study the texts at A level profoundly irritating. I am with those who think the GCSE course needs to be updated. There are many, many more relevant texts that could be chosen.

I have always fucking hated it.

I don't mind it really.

A lot of my department have done Lord of The Flies though so I might try that next year for a change.

Currently teaching A Christmas Carol and love that one.

I didnt realise how good my english teacher were. Other people all did the same r&j Shakespeare, we did did merchant of venice and measure for measure!

We are allowed to teach novels americanos in NI so still do Mockingbird. Stuff u Gove. But it is soo long! Tgats why we follow up with Inspector. U can whizz through it.

I had a great few years teaching Blood Brothers instead of AIC,but the exam specification changed and I no longer am able to. The students absolutely loved it and seeing it on stage was always fantastic!

@Lottie2017

I had a great few years teaching Blood Brothers instead of AIC,but the exam specification changed and I no longer am able to. The students absolutely loved it and seeing it on stage was always fantastic!

Oh bright new day!

Not a fan of Blood Brothers - there's not much to it.

@ChannelLightVessel

This is probably TMI, but until comparatively recently birth assistants had to learn how to dismember a dead baby stuck in the birth canal, to save the mother’s life. (I learnt this fact during my degree; archaeologists had found a skeleton from Roman Britain showing evidence of this.) Must have been very traumatic, even if it worked.

ABout forty years after my first baby was born I decided to look up what it said on the record about the birth method, wish I hadn't, apparently it's a method now banned for precisely the reasons you are studying.

Disagree I found it very powerful.
It's exactly true how we are all linked, we don't know what other people are going through and yes, maybe the way we talk to someone at any given time might be the straw that pushed them over the edge

You need to work on your HOD. Despite Gove’s best efforts, we don’t have to teach dead white men. Edexcel has added more diverse ‘modern’ texts. Here’s the current list:

An Inspector Calls – J B Priestley Hobson’s Choice – Harold Brighouse Blood Brothers – Willy Russell Journey’s End – R C Sherriff
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Anita and Me – Meera Syal
The Woman in Black – Susan Hill
The Empress - Tanika Gupta
Refugee Boy - Benjamin Zephaniah (adapted for stage by Lemm Sissay)
Coram Boy - Jamila Gavin
Boys Don't Cry - Malorie Blackman

I’ve often thought similarly. It does seem to place particular blame on the women

no, it doesn't in any way. All of them
come across as bad.