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

As MrsRuffalo says Gove has not banned anything. In December the DfE issued new guidelines requiring greater use of works by British authors. This did not ban the use of texts from American authors.

You are factually correct, prh, but American Post-1914 text HAVE been removed from exam specs so in reality, will disappear from KS4.

Have they, though, Evil? Given that no one has produced the specs and Gove seemed to suggest that exam boards were free to include it in addition to the basics if they wished.

Raven someone has just posted on Twitter the AQA specs for 2007/8. They specified that six texts must be studied for examination, 3 pre-1914 and 3 post-1914. In addition, three pieces of coursework were to be written, on different texts to the ones examined. So that's 9 texts to be studied.

If that was the case, then how can it be argued that with the four texts suggested by the DfE, there couldn't possibly be any room in the course for teaching anything else?

Noble - the govt guidelines say that post-1914 has to be from the British Isles, so yes, they have.

Those guidelines tell us what will be examined. Exam boards have yet to publish which texts they will supply exam questions about,

The guidelines state:
1 play by Shakespeare
A pre-1900 novel (not short story)
A post-1914 novel or play from the British Isles
Poetry (including Romantic)

THAT is what will be in the exam. Teachers can choose to do other stuff as well, but in reality, how many will have the time?

Evil, see my previous post. The DfE have specified the basic requirements. If the exam boards only specify the basics, then the qualification would be significantly poorer than that of a few years ago. I think if that were the case then questions would rightly be asked.

Because, Noble, this will be the first cohort to be assessed by terminal exam and in the world of league tables and OFSTED judgements in which we live, it would take a brave teacher to do that.

Also, short stories and extracts of texts could be used before, now they can't. I taught English under that spec. We did a Thomas Hardy short story and compared it to a modern short story - that's two texts covered. Scenes from a Shakespeare play - that's another one. Now whole texts need to be studied in depth - don't get me wrong, I think that is A Good Thing. However, it will take a hell of a lot longer to study Tess of the D'Urbervilles in detail than A Tragedy of Two Ambitions,

It also bugs me a bit that there is a suggestion that outdated attitudes to women/ assault /class in some texts mean we shouldn't look at them.

Something that Richard Hoggart discusses and which resonates with me is that the pattern of conversation in working class communities can centre on the concrete rather than ideas. I can confirm there is truth in that from my own life. We tend to talk about the quotidian quite a lot.

School provides a forum for discussion of ideas -including challenging ideas in literature for being outdated or mistaken; introducing new, feminist ideas or challenges to the dominant culture. English is better than most subjects for this. I believe I did more sex ed and relationship lessons in my time through teaching literature and poetry than the Science/phse teachers. .

I thought TKAM was timeless and had powerful themes. There was so much to learn from that book. Everything becomes dated.

Ah, that's the crap 'don't need to read a whole book' spec is it? No wonder people complained about it.

If you're worried about getting through it all, starting GCSE in Y9 is an option.

Starting GCSE in yr 9 is not something I agree with, personally.

If the other option is plonking kids unprepared in front of a lit paper for them to fail in order to collect league table points, then I'm all for it.

So is there no Other Cultures section/option at all now?

However noble an idea it may be to expose the masses to nineteenth century novels and two whole (WHOLE) plays by Shakespeare, I suspect the people arguing that this is such a good thing are not going to be the ones having to teach the damn things to a class of 30 year 10 kids (and not just so they enjoy it but so they can pass an exam on it together with all the other things they'll need for the exams) some of whom can't actually read at all.

It's a sure way to kill not encourage a love of literature.

EvilTwins - The guidelines state English Literature must include the items you have listed. They do not state that English Literature must only include these items. An exam board could, for example, include To Kill a Mockingbird as a fifth set text with the other four matching the specification. I don't know what happens these days but there were certainly five set texts when I took English Literature.

Prh - I think it's highly unlikely that exam boards will include extra in their exams. I expect the exams will consist of the four things specified in the guidelines. It's enough to have to teach those in sufficient detail, without adding another text.

But schools would choose the correct number to teach and you wouldn't even look at the other question would you? When I did it we covered a lot of books, but we knew in the exam we'd answer the question about TKAM.

noble

'Raven someone has just posted on Twitter the AQA specs for 2007/8. They specified that six texts must be studied for examination, 3 pre-1914 and 3 post-1914. In addition, three pieces of coursework were to be written, on different texts to the ones examined. So that's 9 texts to be studied.'

Can you link?

Off the top of my head (I was teaching it, but my memory's like a sieve - we chopped & changed between AQA & OCR a lot back then) - at least one of the coursework pieces 'crossed over' between Lang & Lit - also, doing them as coursework, not CA, required, ahem, less rigorous preparation.

I seem to recall the pre-1914 requirement was largely satisfied by poems & extracts rather than entire novels...

It's certainly not got noticeably easier to hit the grades since the new spec came in in 2010.

twitter.com/soarpoints/status/471187666051293184
twitter.com/soarpoints/status/471189953125548032

9 texts offers so much more breadth, but I understand the need to study whole books. 4 doesn't seem that many though, especially with a top set. In maths we do a whole extra GCSE with our top sets in the same time that other sets just do the one, so I don't know, it just feels like they're being a bit short-changed.

Note that three of Ted Hughes's wives committed suicide. I never cared for him.

As an American, I must say Ihave never quite understood the whole obsession around To Kill a Mockingbird. I don't care for Southern authors generally.

BUT the AQA Anthology included only poetry and short stories. So it WAS possible to cover a larger number.

As I commented on this thread (or the other - can't remember), it takes a hell of a lot less time to teach A Tragedy of Two Ambitions than Tess (both Hardy)

I'm pretty sure for AQA the written paper was in two sections, prose and poetry. The first section was post-1914 prose and you either did the anthology short stories, or a novel.

The second section was poetry, and you had either Duffy/Armitage or Clarke/Heaney for post- and a mixture of poets for pre-.

Coursework was two written and one oral when I did it (as far as I can remember). I did Shakespeare and The Crucible as written and Dickens for my oral.

So three for coursework is correct, but only three in the exam (post-1914 novel, post- and pre-1914 poetry).

Yes, I'm right. Here's a 2007 past paper.

Thanks. I make that 6 texts in total though.

Think we did OM&M (again!) & a response based on Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, & two pre-1914 poems for the exam.

Then the coursework was:

R&J (crossover piece with Lang)
Pre-1914 - Oliver Twist (can't believe I'd forgotten that - I wrote the SOL!)
& Drama was 'In Inspector Calls' for Higher Sets & 'Our Day Out' for lower.

So certainly less breadth than either the current or proposed specs, in fact.

Oh I see, I saw the six texts, then the three for coursework saying they had to be different and thought they were different to the original six. Yes, that was a pretty rubbish spec.

If Oliver Twist is on the new offering, you can just wheel out your old resources and relax

Do they have to read a book for lang too?

That'd be nice, but sadly, Eng Lit seldom lets you wheel out the old stuff - so much of the teaching has to centre on whatever assessment objective a given text is currently being pointed at...

Anyway, if we're doing Dickens, I'd rather do 'Great Expectations' - I've been teaching it to Y10 as a stimulus for creative CA & they've loved it.

Also, we weren't preparing 'Oliver Twist' for examination - as a coursework piece, we did a close text analysis of the chapter where Oliver goes to visit Fagin in prison. There's roughly 500 pages of the entire novel, so that'd take at least a term just to read & do a fairly cursory discuss & annotate.

I'm not convinced you'd gain much in terms of learning by ploughing through the whole text from soup to nuts - although I do think it's a great independent read for kids. I loved it when I was 10 & still re-read it every few years.

Actually, I don't think the old spec was entirely rubbish - some of the poems were pretty good, & I liked that students had to compare four poems as an exam response, rather than two as now, which can be quite mechanistic.

It was a bit scattergun, maybe, but did at least introduce a wide variety of genres & styles - certainly a lot more varied than Gove's joyless suggestions.