Question for English teachers

[WinterCarlisle]

This is something that’s been bugging me since I was at secondary school.

WHY are so many of the set texts so bloody depressing? When I was at school (mid to late 80s) we did A Kestrel for a Knave which was pretty tragic swiftly followed by Z for Zachariah which was utterly terrifying. They were no fun AT ALL to real and tbh I’m still a bit traumatised <dramatic>.

My DS is 13 and has just finished The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas and they’ve now moved onto A Monster Calls. He’s quite a sensitive boy and he’s really not liking the second one at all, especially as a family friend recently died of cancer in her mid 40s.

Obviously I understand that they need to explore different themes and life isn’t all jolly but AIBU that maybe a few cheerful books might encourage them to read a bit more rather than DOOOOOOOMMMMM??

So:

YABU - Buck up kids, stop being Wet Hens and just read about life’s depressing abyss

YANBU - There’s enough doom and gloom already in this world. Let’s read some cheerful, yet literary books while we’re at school

We do a range of texts where I work, Oliver Twist, Noughts and Crosses, Stone Cold, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Ruby in the Smoke etc.

personally they probably should do a greater range of texts. Do you know what texts they do in other years. Personally I don’t like Boy in the Striped Pyjamas but that’s the historian in me

It’s cos we’re all goths, wannabe goths and ex-goths.

Honestly, though, in my experience there aren’t many really well-written light-hearted books that are appropriate for KS3 and KS4. They’re all too juvenile or too adult. (I’d be happy to be corrected on this and would pass any recommendations on to my head of department.)

Also yes, as you mentioned, part of the job is about addressing big life (and death) issues. Doing this through literature can help young people to navigate tough experiences when they encounter them for real. I’m sorry about your family friend; ‘A Monster Calls’ is a beautiful book but I can imagine it’s a really tough read when grief is raw.

I'm an English teacher and I agree. Often you can 'tick a box' when choosing a text which has some sort of minority representation. But often it ends up being a text which features suffering. Jews? Holocaust. African Americans? Lynching. And so on. It's depressing and things are slowly changing.

Some very recent research by an esteemed English professor asked schools to send in lists of all the poems they teach at key stage 3. The researchers read the poems one by one in one sitting and said that after doing this they felt extremely depressed due to the poems' content. This needs to change, but it is - unfortunately not soon enough for your son.

Also, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a book which the Holocaust Society have said should not be taught in schools. It takes a while for things to change: books are expensive, time to plan new schemes of work is very short

@Skyblue92 my history teacher friend agrees with you about The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

@FourEyesGood haha my brilliant A Level English teacher was a goth. We all thought she was soooooo cool.

@TheBitchOfTheVicar I’m glad you agree. I just feel that we’re trying to encourage our children to read rather than being on screens but these gloomy, tragic and depressing books don’t really help the cause! That’s shocking about the poetry.

This. Name a book or poem with literary merit with is both lighthearted and suitable for KS3.

There, to be honest, is not a lot of jolly literature. Sex, war, death, love with added sex, war and death.

Sex tends to come in at A Level...

Yup. We are all goths, basically.

It's got better. When I started teaching, you couldn't do Y9 without a nuclear holocaust.

We had nuclear holocaust and The Troubles.

Often we get complaints from secondary that the primaries have taken a lot of the good texts that they used to do. Maybe they know we don't want to touch these ones!

I can’t think of a single book in existence that is age appropriate, well written and not depressing!

I guess Christmas Carol is a bit uplifting? So long as you read to the end,obviously. You have to get through Ignorance and Want and people rifling through a dead man's belongings first.

Quite. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas shouldn't be used in schools, imo..

I also do not approve of the boy in the striped pyjamas.

Z for Zachariah gave me terrible nightmares as a kid even tho I went on to be a massive Stephen king fan.

I do like a Christmas carol tho because the context and history around the plot is very interesting.

They should do a Terry Pratchett, not just funny but full of irony and comment on human nature.

I never taught it (ex Eng teacher) but Adrian Mole possibly? Judy Blume and Anthony Horowitz are what I recommended to encourage reading, but not really class novel material.

I always did a Shakespeare every year and the pupils always loved them. A comedy usually, or Macbeth if it wasn’t our GCSE text for further up the school.

Couldn't they study Harry Potter? Kids love that.

Popular appeal, but not really literary.

A lot of the 'fun' texts were removed with curriculum reforms- Holes was great fun with year 7, but is now mostly taught in primary schools.

Completely agree that Boy in the Striped Pyjamas should not be taught in schools.

We did 'My family and other animals', and my kids liked Mervyn Peake. Both a bit old fashioned now perhaps. Pratchett sounds like a good idea.

Morris Gleitzman is your friend (Once, etc), or Frank Cottrell Boyce (Millions). Serious subjects but very funny.

Holes gets a mixed reception; it's a clever book but it's a fairy story really, and it runs long. You never have enough time.

Some of the problem is that Year 8 (particularly) just love a spot of Serious Problems and even more if there's Murdering. Stone Cold is always a roaring success. Boy in the Striped PJs has also always gone over well.ime.

The end of Pigeon English traumatised me! And as for the old days when we used to have to do Goodnight Mr Tom 🥲 (until the primaries started doing that and Holes).
Heroes anyone?
I love My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece as it's bloody sad but hopeful.
A good book needs every element of sadness and happiness!

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Pride and Prejudice
To Kill a Mockingbird (dark but not depressing, possibly problematic re false rape allegation)

Sorry @Maireas but in our family it's not liked. My 7 year old demanded to know why pages of references to Dudley's weight and diets etc was funny. He was puzzled, and bored. I also think the style is verbose, and too full of adjectives.

@KTheGrey We loved Holes!

@Skyblue92

Personally I don’t like Boy in the Striped Pyjamas but that’s the historian in me

Me too. It's horrifying that, according to research by the Centre for Holocaust Education at University College London, more than a third of teachers in England use the book and film adaptation in lessons on the Nazi genocide.

It's riddled with dangerous and misleading implausibilities, and one thing that I hated was the focus on Bruno's family's grief when their son is killed in an 'accident' (what??), and because he 'shouldn't have been there'. None of the people in the camp 'should have been there'.

Maybe worse, another study by the London Jewish Cultural Centre said that 70 per cent of readers thought it was based on a true story and that the death of the two boys in the gas chambers of Auschwitz saw the end of the Holocaust.

English lecturer here. I think it's because it's harder to write good comedy than good tragedy. Even on university courses, there aren't that many funny books. Syllabi lean dark, and I think most students like that. The comedy is usually satire or black comedy.

I think it's also because comedy often requires a specific set of shared reference points. It might be hard to find a text that is funny for a socially and ethnically diverse class. I was trying to think of quality, funny books for KS3 and came up with Jeeves and Wooster (but would any of them get it nowadays?), Oscar Wilde (but again not laugh out loud for 13 year olds), some Shakespeare (again, not funny funny).

There are more happy ending books, of course, but they usually have some sadness in along the way.

I do wonder whether some English teachers lean towards violent/horror/war themes to try to engage boys. I'm not sure if that really works.