to think Of Mice and Men should not be cancelled?

[Florenz]

I read this on the BBC website today. Kids are upset because it contains the N word. I do not think it should be removed from the school curriculum. It's a classic work of literature, one of the few books we read at school that I genuinely enjoyed and read ahead of where we were in class because I wanted to find out what happened. We went to see the film with John Malkovich and Gary Sinise with school as well.

By that logic we really shouldn't be studying poetry... barely any words at all.... how you can write anything on Blake is beyond me 🙄🙄🙄

I was forced to trudge through "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall".

😱 Totally off topic but I love The Tenant of Wildfell Hall! By far the best book to come from the Brontes IMO. Although not sure I'd have enjoyed reading it as a teen!

@Anyotherdude

But why should GCSE books (and it was studied as a book by DS and not a play) be so different in length? There’s a whole lot more to unpick from a novel that has nearly six times the number of words, and the GCSE is in English Literature, not psychology (which was the focus of the exam questions on it). I think it was chosen so that those who refuse to read could still get good marks - perfect example of a dumbed-down curriculum.

Length has little to do with complexity. Sometimes novellas are more complex than longer texts - the authors need to communicate a great deal with few words, so make greater use of plot, theme, sub-text, character, symbolism, etc. There can be no errors. A long novel, however, can hide all kinds of padding (particularly classic ones).

Having devoured Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, it seemed to be the booby prize.

However in hindsight it's quite a seminal novel. But it should have been taught from a point of view of "things are shit for women now. But they have been worse". Instead, the (establishment ?) messaging was "things are OK now, this was in the past". Not quite the same. And once the book is gone, so is that debate.

You could probably make quite a punchy Netflix drama from TToWH. Obviously you'd need to rewrite all the dialogue though.

I find "Nineteen Eighty Four" similarly a trudge. Don't get me wrong - it is an amazing book and the story is powerful and relevant. Just the prose itself is a tad ... leaden.

There's a thread (but not this one) for "great books that are a slow read". Tolkien can get in there.

Interesting discussion. Even though the language used is ‘of its time’, the racism and misogyny in OMAM isn’t as casually ignored and accepted as in other texts - the disadvantages faced by women, disabled and black people in American society is a key theme.

But there is definitely a growing expectation from the young that language should be sanitised and texts which portray overt discrimination from historical times without critique should come with a warning. Not to mention banning the work of anyone who has political opinions which they don’t disagree with….

I don’t agree with cancel culture at all but I don’t think the views of the younger generation should be completely ignored….more listening and reasoned debate is needed.

Characters in OMAM are all trapped in their society & the roles available to them. Isn't that rather an overarching theme, for each & every character? Not being casually racist was socially unacceptable to the sort of workers George & Lenny were. <shrug>

I agree with the other teachers who have found it an amazing book to teach because kids of all abilities can get something from it and have some of their own prejudices challenged. They are mostly all disgusted by the treatment of Crooks anyway, but many do take some persuading that CW is not, in fact, a slut. The fact that George, otherwise a 'good guy' speaks disparagingly of her and visits the 'cat house' is interesting because, as well as being of his time, it gives students an appreciation of the fact that people aren't simply good or bad and are also influenced by social norms and can be brutalised by their environment. I also don't really agree that minority groups are othered in the book in a problematic way. Well, they are, but pretty much every character is in such a group and suffers prejudice as a result. That's pretty much the whole point. Curley is white and in a position of privilege on the ranch and is presented as the most unlikeable character there. The minor characters who are white and have no 'othering' quality such as race or disability, are shown to be horribly limited in their outlooks on life. They've all been brutalised by life on the ranch, which is obviously a microcosm America at the time.

We currently teach it in Y9 and don't say the N word aloud but discuss the issues and use Strange Fruit, for example, to contextualise it. I completely disagree with the PP who said it can't be taught well with KS3 classes.

I do think there is a mindset in the younger generation that bad things should never be mentioned, and the idea that we should remember and discuss how bad things were in the past for minority groups is not accepted as valid. We have a young teacher in our department who came into the staffroom very distressed because she had had to use what she called 'the R slur' when reading Frankenstein with her class. She asked us how we had all dealt with it. I have to say I had no idea what she was on about until another young teacher whispered to me that the word was 'retard' or 'retarded' - can't remember which. The thing is, I'm pretty sure the word wasn't being used as a slur anyway and features in the original sense of 'late or delayed' and is not used to refer to a person at all. But for this generation, certain words need to never be said. Personally, I think it's quite dangerous as if you can't use the words in an appropriate context, how can you fully explain and acknowledge the past and its injustices?

@coffeerevelsrule

We currently teach it in Y9 and don't say the N word aloud but discuss the issues and use Strange Fruit, for example, to contextualise it. I completely disagree with the PP who said it can't be taught well with KS3 classes.

I'm curious how manage not to say the first word but say the second - a deeply offensive term? Do you explain the etymology of both?

An Edinburgh school proposes cancelling (or.has cancelled it I'm not sure which) 'To Kill A Mockingbird' because of racist terminology. The book aims fair and square at racism and provides a realistic reproduction of place and time.
I knew an English principal who claimed he never read novels by women. An English principal!
Kranks with a specific bee in their bonnet are everywhere. Books should never be.cancelled, pulped or burned on the whim of some eejit who either hasn't read them or hasn't understood them.

It's no loss to the ciriculum. If people want to waste their time reading it then it can be bought either electronically or in a skinny little book.

I'm curious how manage not to say the first word but say the second - a deeply offensive term? Do you explain the etymology of both?

This wasn't a comment to me, but I was wondering what you meant? What do you mean by the 'second'?

And yes, at my school at least we have a big focus on etymology and morphology. I can't speak for the person you were asking of course, but I would imagine it's common sense to look at the context for the words we are omitting to say!

Do the children of colour in your classroom ever get to balance out all the trauma by seeing themselves represented (either through authors, or texts) in a positive light?

@surreygirl1987

This wasn't a comment to me, but I was wondering what you meant? What do you mean by the 'second'?

This is what I was responding to:
"We currently teach it in Y9 and don't say the N word aloud but discuss the issues and use Strange Fruit, for example, to contextualise it. I completely disagree with the PP who said it can't be taught well with KS3 classes."

The second word is 'strange fruit'. I'm curious how this is approached in a classroom environment, particularly given the 'n-word' is avoided.

I don’t understand this question either. You can teach the cultural context of lynching without using the n-word. I don’t teach OMAM any more but when teaching texts within the context of the civil rights movement I have used the case of Emmett Till as an example, and approached the lyrics of ‘Strange Fruit’ as a poem. I do this with year 9, no younger. OMAM has ended up on some schools’ year 8 curriculum which is too young IMO.

I hit post too soon. ‘Strange fruit’ isn’t a racial slur. It was an anti-lynching protest poem, later song, which marks an important shift in the start of the civil rights movement at the end of the 1930s.

This was me. I'm not altogether sure what you mean about not being able to explore the lyrics to Strange Fruit without saying the N word? We obviously discuss the issues explicitly and that doesn't require saying the N word. Sorry if I've misunderstood.

Do the children of colour in your classroom ever get to balance out all the trauma by seeing themselves represented (either through authors, or texts) in a positive light?

Yes, I would say they do, or at least, they are not offered a persistent representation of themselves as victims. We look at plenty of post-colonial poetry; we read The Tempest (not the whole text) from a post- colonial perspective; we read The Merchant of Venice and focus on the presentation of Shylock; we read the play version of Noughts and Crosses and The Bone Sparrow novel. In addition, we look at a massive range of extracts, both fiction and non-fiction and are mindful of diversity and representation when we are selecting these. I am absolutely not suggesting that the texts I have listed all have relevance to the minority groups in our school (we do not have a diverse intake), or that they represent an alternative representation of race that counters the one offered in OMAM. Neither do they all offer a positive experience of being a person of colour. Part of our aim is to expose students to voices that counter the white mainstream culture and I do believe those texts help us meet that aim. I honestly believe the OMAM is an engaging and accessible text that has opened the eyes of my students to the suffering of others.

@ThanksItHasPockets

I don’t understand this question either. You can teach the cultural context of lynching without using the n-word. I don’t teach OMAM any more but when teaching texts within the context of the civil rights movement I have used the case of Emmett Till as an example, and approached the lyrics of ‘Strange Fruit’ as a poem. I do this with year 9, no younger. OMAM has ended up on some schools’ year 8 curriculum which is too young IMO.

Apologies to all - I worded my post badly. 'Strange Fruit' was originally a poem. As a euphemism, isn't a slur per se, but it is confronting. I was interested how this would be approached in a classroom. I don't believe it should be avoided, but addressed carefully.

@GoldenAye thanks for clarifying. It is a metaphor rather than a euphemism and this is our way in to the text, and the wider context.

It's both, really. As it's referring to a horrifying reality, yet using gentler words instead, that's a euphemism.

It really isn't a euphemism. Euphemisms have the purpose of toning down or evading the harsh reality of an idea or situation. That is absolutely not the case with the words of Strange Fruit - there's nothing gentle about the majority of them, quite the opposite. Even the phrase itself, strange fruit, once you realise what the 'fruit' is (which you would by line 3, even if you were reading/listening for the first time) becomes more horrifying, not less, once you realise the hideous fact that there is nothing 'fruitful' going on there and death/murder is the only 'harvest' being reaped in that society. It's about as far from a euphemism as you can get, which it is why it is so effective in getting kids to realise how appalling life was for people of colour in a country known as 'land of the free,' less than 100 years ago. I teach the kind of kids who are inclined to say things like 'black people are racist to us,' (despite most of them never having met someone of colour) and this song, and the novel, really does take the scales from many of their eyes.

I completely disagree. The purpose of a euphemism is to conceal an unpleasant or taboo truth. Meeropol’s purpose with the metaphor of ’strange fruit’ is gradually to reveal the horror of the lynchings as it slowly dawns on the reader that the ‘strange fruit’ are hanging bodies. It is intended to maximise the horror; a euphemism would seek to minimise it.

@coffeerevelsrule

If you separate the phrase from the song or the poem - it is the very definition of a euphemism. The Jim Crow Museum defines 'Strange Fruit' as "a euphemism for the lynched bodies of African Americans hanging and swaying from trees". I am not referring to the any lyrics. I am talking about the phrase in general.

In any case, I believe the phrase itself hasn't been used in racist terms so there's little point debating it.

@ThanksItHasPockets

I completely disagree. The purpose of a euphemism is to conceal an unpleasant or taboo truth. Meeropol’s purpose with the metaphor of ’strange fruit’ is gradually to reveal the horror of the lynchings as it slowly dawns on the reader that the ‘strange fruit’ are hanging bodies. It is intended to maximise the horror; a euphemism would seek to minimise it.

Meeropol's words are indeed powerful. However, I'm not referring to those directly. 'Strange fruit' exists as a phrase outside the poem and it is this I'm referring to.