Gove kills the mockingbird with ban on US classic novels ...what do you think?

[mrz]

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/article1414764.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2014_05_24

'GCSEs in many (all?) subjects have not been good preparation for A-level for quite a while, hence the requirement to get A or A* at GCSE in order to even contemplate the A-level.'

But by choosing challenging texts and teaching them thoroughly, introducing discussion that encompasses some aspect of criticism (feminist; historical context; cultural materialism for eg, whether or not you tell the students that's what it's called) I would say that English Lit GCSE is perhaps one of he easier ones in which to take students beyond requirements and towards A Level.

I used to think it was my job as teacher to introduce texts they wouldn't try by themselves or would find difficult by themselves. For example, My own children, apart from Shakespeare and poetry, did Pride and Prejudice; Gatsby; View From A Bridge; Streetcar Named Desire; Great Expectations; Silas Marner at GCSE ( plenty of American stuff there) it was good prep for A levels and introduced all students to texts they might not have done alone.

Incidentally, this talk of Gove 'banning' American literature seems a bit hysterical. He hasn't banned anything. The English Lit GCSE will include at least one Shakespeare play, at least one 19th century novel, some poetry and some British literature post 1914 in its detailed study section. It also says that candidates should study a wide range of texts, presumably in addition to these. So teachers can easily still bring in Of Mice and Men or get their students to read Mockingbird. It just won't be included in the detailed study bit, but would probably help with preparation towards unseen texts.

Unless people wringing their hands over the lack of US books are suggesting that English Lit students should only read four books over two years?

Thanks Noble for looking that up. I expect teachers will, as ever, try to choose books that best suit the classes they teach.

You can imply that I am simply an idiot who doesn't really understand about the literary and critical potential of various bits of literature and culture if you want but that is palpably crazy. I have several degrees now and those degrees were achieved by writing critically (and sometimes brilliantly) on a whole range of literature. I'm no idiot: I can find the critical text on "Dracula" that marked the turning-point for its inclusion into the ranks of texts-it-is-acceptable-to-write-on-to-get-published-in-peer-review-journals.

Wow - did I imply that? Wasn't my intent, actually. I think you are very mistaken however in your remarks about Steinbeck not neing a challenge for "able" students.

As a fellow academic, I surprised that you don't feel Steinbeck is an appropriate choice for the curruiculum. I think he is. That's my opinion. Professionally and personally. That's all. A great many well-considered institutions agree with me, and I am not yet convinced, despite your multiple degrees, that you are right and they are wrong in this case.

Just to be clear the content of the KS4 PoS published on 15th May 2014 is different to that published in November 2013.

November version
Pupils should be taught to:

increase the breadth of their reading
through:

studying high- quality, challenging, whole texts in detail including:

two plays by Shakespeare

representative Romantic poetry

a nineteenth -century novel

representative poetry of the First World War

British fiction, poetry or drama since the First World War

seminal world literature, written in English

choosing and reading books independently, including high-quality non
-fiction, for challenge, interest and enjoyment

re-reading books encountered earlier to increase familiarity with them and
provide a basis for making comparisons

May version

Pupils should be taught to:

read and appreciate the depth and power of the English literary heritage
through:

reading a wide range of high-quality, challenging, classic literature and
extended literary non-fiction, such as essays, reviews and journalism
. This writing should include whole texts
. The range will include :
•
at least one play by Shakespeare
•
works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries
•
poetry since 1789, including representative Romantic poetry

re-reading literature and other writing as a basis for making comparisons

By the way, cat, I'm confused about your use of quotation marks around the word "on". Are you a university-level educator?

We've had so many publications/consultations most quietly published during holidays you could begin to think the DfE don't want teachers to know.

poetry since 1789. Missed out the metaphysicals then.

How sad. I did it for 'O' level, all 3 DC's did it for GCSE, we all loved it and this seems like the end of a very long era.

I cant imagine it is a book that even the most bookish teenager would pick up unless it was recommended to them so I do hope the current generation of teachers keep it alive.

Mrz, have you got links, because that looks different to the specs published by the DfE.

June 2013

Government response to consultation saying the five detailed studies had been reduced to four
Nov 2013

Amended spec including changes above
Nov 2013

I can't see anything that specified two Shakespeare plays or world literature?

Edith Wharton, Henry James, Herman Melville, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald? In what way are they simplistic?

Or Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Faulkner, to add a couple of more classic American authors who are certainly not simplistic.

Actually noble, our Dept has known about the changes for...erm, I'm going to say over a month. Head of Dept. went on a course on the new NC, I think in March-ish.

However, we haven't got round to being outraged any sooner than this because we've been up to our collective arse in preparing current Y11 for the current specification GCSEs.

Now we're divvying up Y11 time/summer holiday tasks & obviously sorting out Schemes of Learning & resources for the new diktats is top priority, so just now taking a good look at it - & not impressed.

You're right that I shouldn't have described it as 'Gove's latest idiocy', though ; I'm sure he's come out with another one even since my last post, tbh.

The Romantic poets make my teeth itch
to the Eng Lit person who said that.

If the dc ever have to study them for Eng Lit, I'll pay good money for a private tutor who can explain, in terms suitable for the examiners, exactly why they make me feel like Gove is scraping his nails down an old-fashioned blackboard.

And I don't believe in private tutoring.

(Conflict of interest: Did 20th Century History, and everything I learned still has obvious, daily, relevance to my adult life. Eng lit was TKAM, Romeo and Juliet, WWI poets, Seamus Heaney. And The Snow Goose. Which I hated, though others disagree. I know, I'll ban it from GCSEs)

Raven, that is really poor on the part of your HOD then, tbh. Does no one keep up to date with stuff? I'm a maths teacher and was aware of the proposed changes to the maths curriculum last year, and I was on maternity leave.
The November document was certainly reported in the news at the time, e.g. www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24759476 including details of the English lit spec and a link to the government doc.

I don't know, it probably does everybody good to have a change now and again! I did TKAM as my 'main' novel, and my DSis did LOTF. My school has taught those on rotation for years now.

We also studied Macbeth, Henry VI (all three parts), The Crucible, The Importance of Being Earnest, Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist and possibly Great Expectations (although that might have been in an earlier year).

So out of those, I think there are only two that wouldn't be allowed now?

But at my school we did one or two Shakespeare plays a year from starting and had studied a few of the current "allowed" books in younger years, so perhaps we covered slightly different ones for that reason?

OMaM is funny though, we were taught it quite young (year 8 I think) and although I enjoyed learning about the style, language etc I think I was too young for some of the themes, I remember finding it quite upsetting. Same as when I read LOTF at 14 (not in school, just at home).

Maybe we should all stop moaning, and just sign up to re-take Eng Lit GCSE. Quite fancy Gove trying to defend his own ideas once the whole country starts critically engaging with Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare.

The other thing is that the students won't know what they're missing - if the new books are carefully chosen and taught by the school to engage the year suitably, then I don't see why they should be any worse than anything taught now. There's nothing wrong with British authors! Yes, it might be a little more limited than it is at the moment, but hopefully that means there's been plenty of thought on the books that have been included.

Not really, noble.

we all (skim) read the November press releases at the time, & agreed to shelve worrying about it until current Y11 had left. Given the number of U-turns in English, we've learned since 2010 not to throw our toys out of the pram before we have to.

HOD then went to a meeting more recently which fleshed out the proposals, including more recent amendments, somewhat, & so far we've had one session reviewing changes we need to make to KS3 SOLs.

KS4 will be largely determined by the specifications the exam boards come up with tbh.

On a personal level, I'm happy to have a break from 'OM&M', say. I'm more pissed off by the exclusion of 'The Crucible' or 'Death of a Salesman'.

It is 'swings & roundabouts' - I'm looking forward to blowing the dust off 'Lord of the Flies', Richard III & Edgar Allen Poe .

But the proposals do generally make for a drier, less engaging diet of texts, & the rationale behind doing that is IMO fundamentally flawed.

Gove is a twat! We are allowing him to destroy our education system and the damage he is causing will affect a whole generation of children, our children.
He has a belief based on nothing but his own prejudices that children must not enjoy their education. How he can think today's 14-16 year olds will ALL relate to pre-20th century English novels and Wordswoth, I have no idea. It will put them off reading for life. And I say that as someone who has a degree and an MA in English Literature and hates Wordsworth and The Brontes.
I also have a PHD in Educational Research on the Teaching of English and English Literature in Secondary Schools, so have some idea what I am on about.
Gove is dangerous, uninformed and should be sacked immediately and his policies put on hold. Education professionals should make education policy, not politicians who are out for political gain.

I don't think he thinks that teenagers will relate to pre-20th century novels. I think he just wants them to read them and learn about them.

But Nobel, many of them will not read them and will not learn about them.
They will switch off and Eng lit will return to being an exam that only set one do (as it was at my school).

OMAM is, according to DD2, dire, but it is pretty accessible and mercifully short.

I own a teaching book, cheesily called Teach Like a Champion. It has some good tips, some rubbish ones, but one that has stayed with me is never apologise for the content

"Assuming something is too hard or technical for some students is a dangerous trap. At the first school I founded, the inner-city students we enrolled learned Mandarin Chinese as their foreign language. Not only did outsiders react with shock (“You’re going to teach those kids Chinese???”), but sometimes so did their parents (“She’s not gonna sit through that”). But millions of people, most of them far poorer than our poorest student, learn Chinese every year. And in the end every student did learn Chinese, much to their and their parents’ enjoyment. There’s a special pleasure in exploding expectations, and many of the black and Hispanic students in the school took special pleasure in using their Chinese exactly when people around them least expected it. This offers a reminder not to assume there’s a “they” who won’t really “get” something, say sonnets and other traditional forms of poetry, and that it’s therefore better to teach them poetry through hip-hop lyrics instead. What happens when they take Introduction to Literature in their freshman year in college and have never read a poem written before 1900? Kids respond to challenges; they require pandering only if people pander to them."

The whole section is here www.inkling.com/read/teach-like-a-champion-doug-lemov-1st/chapter-1/technique-5-without-apology

worth a read. It starts coincidentally with how the author inadvertently found himself in a class on the English Romantic Poets, and what he thought was going to be dull and irrelevant turned out to be fascinating.

Some DCs will fall in love with 19th novels, but most will hate them. The haters will talk and mess about.

My DD1, loves Romeo and Juliet despite being dyslexic, but the flowery descriptions and lack of plot in omam have it destined for the bonfire.

Mandarin may be hard, but it's interesting, a work of fiction someone says you have to read intrinsically isn't.

Gove's a twat but this is getting blown out of proportion by the press.

The new guidelines do indeed mean that students will not be examined on OMAM, Mockingbird or The Crucible, but kids at my school did Blood Brothers and A Christmas Carol this year for Lit, and they're both still fine so it's not like it's a massive change of every single text on the syllabus. An Inspector Calls, likewise, is popular and still ok. There are some excellent modern British plays - DNA & Kindertransport are on current specs.

Shame about Arthur Miller - The Crucible is my fav play of all time.