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

"You can get an A* on of Mice and Men because it is a brilliant, many-layered book. Not dumbed down."

But when students are expected to do close textual analysis, there is so little to analyse in this way in this book that it ends up all being covered in class, so there is no scope left for more able kids to do their own extended analysis. How is that not dumbed down?

Also, Evil suggested that the only possible result of Rabbit's expectations was for kids who can't read to do Great Expectations. But if the school uses setting, surely books of different levels of challenge could be chosen for different classes? I thought that was how the new exams were to be set up, with questions for each of the texts?

'Of Mice & Men' has been keeping people busy with its layers well beyond graduate level for nearly 80 years, so I do think it's a shame some are so entrenched in the conviction that there's nothing much for a bright GCSE student to go at.

I've found a couple of interpretations - of a passage I could recite by heart - in exam scripts this evening that have been entirely new to me, & I've been teaching it right across the ability range for 15 years & examining on it for 5.

To be honest, I'm perfectly happy to have a break from it. It's not a personal favourite!

Oh & setting wrt reading whole long texts - yes, I would certainly expect higher sets to read large chunks of a substantial novel independently. One or two won't, & will probably crash & burn unless they are particularly brilliant at extemporising & particularly lucky with the exam questions.

Apart from anything, if they're really turning up at University bemused by the notion of sustained independent reading, we aren't actually doing them any favours by reading whole texts in class every time.

No wonder English teachers spend so long on their marking if they can't come up with the definitive correct answers after 15 years.

I know, I keep meaning to switch to Maths so I can just get all my classes to look the answers up in the back of the textbook.

It's taking me more like 30 years to come up with the definitive answers to Macbeth, given I studied it myself at school...busy, busy...

It's not that easy.....some textbooks don't have answers in the back and I have to read them out.

I first taught OM&M in the early 80s to what was then a bottom set CSE yr 10-11 class.

Higher ability groups studied other books.

To say you can get an A* because of the 'many layers' is nonsense.
You can get an A* because it's a short , easily read novel(la) without much depth of character or plot. Personally, I hate it- a set of cardboard cut-out characters, depicting stereotypical sexist and racist attitudes in the US at the time. End of.

IMO teachers choose it because it enables the less able to have some chance of passing the exam and improving results in league tables.

Raven, I wasn't talking about interpretation in a general sense, I was talking about the need to learn to do close textual reading in order to develop the skill of identifying and analysing language devices, etc. There simply aren't enough passages in OM&M with those kind of features to prevent the problem of in-class teaching identifying them all and doing them to death.

Raven if you have 'only' been teaching for 15 years then you are younger than my former pupils, some of whom are now 50+.

You might ask yourself if you have a true perspective on the way GCSE Lit has evolved which some of us oldies have!

This is something that is very hard to convey unless you've been in teaching for decades and have seen the gradual but constant introduction of easier texts, no requirement to read whole plays or novels, being able to take texts into exams ( yes I know that is changing...) and so forth.

Anything which addresses this is, for me, a move in the right direction.

Lazy, I can't remember OM&M (which I read as a teen, not at school) but surely the issue there is about 'banning' novels which aren't complex enough for GCSEs - rather than 'banning' American novels per se?

well, yes it is.

Not sure I understand your point because the whole thread is about 'unsuitable' texts including OM&M.

lazy - how very rude. Some of the worst teachers I've worked with are the ones who think that their longevity trumps everything else. They're also, IME, the least likely to take on new ideas and manage change effectively. Just because you've been in a job longer, you're not necessarily better. If it was impossible to get an A* with OMAM, then no one ever would, and that's not the case.

I am not the only examiner on this thread to say that some of the responses on OMAM this year have been stunning (and obviously not spoon-fed by teachers). I know this because I am marking a whole school at a time - the independent thinkers take it above and beyond the stuff that the rest of them trot out. Not much depth of character or plot? You must be joking. But, you know, don't listen to us, what do we know?

Dammit lazy, your breathtakingly rude post lured me back...

I only came on to find a recipe for ratatouille!

"Just because you've been in a job longer, you're not necessarily better. If it was impossible to get an A* with OMAM, then no one ever would, and that's not the case."

I'm really confused now. Where did Lazy say she was better because she'd been in the job longer? Or that it was impossible to get an A* with of Mice and Men?

And I never seem to get an answer to my point about the shortage of narrative devices etc, no matter what forum I post it on.

See her post at 09:48

And also at 9:06

Hmm. I thought lazy was forthright and EvilTwins downright rude, personally. The former did not say young teachers were no good, just pointed out a fact - they have less experience of how GCSE English literature has evolved, which doesn't mean they don't know how to teach GCSE English lit as it is, now, or can't have opinions on how it should be, just that they know less about what went before.... EvilTwins on the other hand, went straight for the jugular and almost said directly that she thought lazy was an example of the worst teachers she's ever known...

I can't stand the "I've been here longs and therefore I know better" crew. I have worked with them snd they're usually bloody awful.

The evolution is irrelevant. It has no effect on what kids have to do. Knowing what the spec was in 1976 does not make one a better teacher in 2014. Teachers have to jump through the hoops the current government set out. No one gives a toss if you know how it was back in the day.

Also, my interpretation of what lazy posted is that she thinks it's only TOO easy to get an A if you study Of Mice & Men, not that you can't get an A studying it.

EvilTwins - and your point is that this makes it OK to be astonishingly rude?

That's rubbish. The exam boards set the texts, the questions and the mark scheme. How can it be "too easy to get an A*"?

I'm entitled to my opinion.

Maybe not giving a toss about experience is a sign of arrogance?