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

IHeart
Don't forget CATS in yr 7 against which future targets and outcomes are plotted.

I really don't know how anyone can say that ability and potential aren't linked.

I have zero ability at tennis so my potential as the next women's finalist at Wimbledon is pretty remote. Even if I'd played tennis every day of my life I still wouldn't be good enough.

Rabbit, thanks for detailed reply. It sounds like you had a horrendous time. My daughter was nowhere near as bad with coordination as that, but still enough to make things difficult for her. And she has relatively poor memory, which hasn't helped. I agree about the need for more research; but at least dyspraxia and similar difficulties like your child's are slowing getting a bigger profile. But we're still a long way off from routine early diagnosis and putting into place the strategies that can help.

Lazy - I find it sad that you, as a teacher, thinks that D-G grades are worthless. For some students , it's a massive achievement.

As for your assertion that those incapable of Lit can do Drama - pah. The two subjects are entirely different. It's incredibly difficult to get A or A* grades at Drama.

Ability and potential are linked, but in an equal education system they should not be.

Children do well in their sats because they are tutored or hothoused at home, this then follows them and sets expectations high throughout their school life.It is nothing to do with innate ability.

Evil- there is no need to feel sad. I agree with you that for some students any grade is an achievement. But sadly in the world of employment, further and higher education those grades don't act as a passport for very much at all.

Not all students are tutored or hot housed for SATs. That's not a true reflection of what goes on. You can't tutor or hothouse a child beyond their innate ability. If that was true then all children could achieve Masters and PhDs with the right amount of input and we know that simply isn't true.

Evil- it's not an assertion, it's a fact! I have taught plenty of pupils and tutored dozens out of school too who chose to take drama instead of Lit. I don't know if you teach, but whether you do or not you don't seem to have been in a school where the Lit/ drama options exist??? And nobody has brought up the idea of it being hard to get an A in drama- only you!

I teach. I'm head of performing arts in a secondary school. I have never taught in a school where drama has been offered as an alternative to Lit, thank goodness. The assumption that drama is a "soft" subject which shouldn't be taken by academic students is frustrating. Presently, just over half of yr 10 at my school take drama either as a GCSE or a BTEC. It's not an "easy" option. I would not work in a school which offered drama only to those deemed incapable of taking Lit. My current Yr 10 BTEC group are working on a text-based unit, including "Journey's End", "Top Girls", "My Mother Said I Never Should" and "Equus" - some of which I didn't study until I was at university. That's not "soft" or "dumbed down". And it is a FACT that grade boundaries are higher for drama- feel free to research it but I can tell you that last year, a mark of 59/60 was required for an A* in the spec I teach, 57/60 for an A and 56/60 for a B.

'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!'

Heh. I took O-Level, actually. I did other stuff prior to teaching.

I came across some of my A Level essays a few months ago (I got an A in 1989) & was frankly embarrassed. The depth of language analysis simply wasn't there in those days of closed book exams. I'd managed to waffle on about The wasteland for three sides of A4 with barely a quotation to be seen. My teacher had annotated it with enthusiasm; I'd've sent any of my year 10s back to do it again.

Really not convinced by the 'dumbing down' argument.

I quite like lazy deciding I'm some inexperienced whippersnapper actually! It's put a veritable Friday evening spring in my step.

She's still talking shite, mind you.

Raven - Thank goodness you came back. I thought I was the only inexperienced whippernsnapper here. Mind you, now I've revealed that I'm only a Drama teacher, Lazy probably won't want to speak to me. I'm just for the kids not capable of doing Literature.

I'm boggling slightly at this:

'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.'

Might nick as a S&L discussion task in September, in fact.

How sad to have been teaching for several decades & not to have seen more in OM&M than that...& I say that as someone who is also not all that fond of it.

I have never ever ever heard of Drama being for the kids who don't do Lit. Literature has been a compulsory subject in every school I've worked in. If lazy has only taught Literature to 'more able' students, it would explain A LOT.

I got an A* at GCSE (sorry, whippersnapper of only 12 years experience here) and I know that what they have to do now is WAY harder than what I had to do. But we read loads of texts, even some we weren't going to be tested on. This is because the syllabus was smaller and manageable enough to spend time doing that. There isn't that luxury now.

The point also really needs to be made (if it hasn't been already) that English teachers are under enormous pressure but that the pressure is to achieve targets for the ENGLISH LANGUAGE GCSE. This is because schools used to be judged on the amount of students who achieve 5 or more A-C grades, and now they are judged on the amount who achieve 5 or more A-C grades INCLUDING MATHS AND ENGLISH. English teachers have to get them through both, but senior management only care about the Language grades. In that system of course you choose the shorter book, for your lower sets at least. (I said shorter, Lazy, not easier!). Of course you do. And let's not forget that as well as that set text they are all also studying Shakespeare, poetry, a modern play and a modern novel on the existing syllabus, all of which they will be examined on. Non-teachers, please put yourself in that teacher's shoes, in front of a class who may also need help with writing, punctuation or general comprehension just to pass English Language. You can see why we are in the position we are in, surely? You can see why we feel the way we feel?

Sorry I really should have said MORE pressure for the Language. There's pressure to get the grades for all subjects of course!

Of course I can see what pressure you are under. It doesn't stop me thinking that's not good news for my children. I never said I blamed the teachers for the mess (since I don't...), I just said that in my view the way things are done doesn't sound that great and I don't see how anyone could be happy with it.

I once taught in a school where the less able did Media Studies instead of Literature. I thought it a bad idea. I'd far sooner have taught them literature. I didn't stay long.

There is almost no such thing as innate ability, research is well and truly out there, the differences between one healthy baby and another are tiny.

By the time they reach ks4 there are huge differences, brought about almost entirely by their environment. The point of our current education system is to direct them to the holy grail of academia and anything else is second rate. This has to stop, it's hugely counterproductive and divisive on many levels.

The relevance to this thread? That in reaching the holy grail of academia children whose parents are not academically natured fail. I'm arguing that a wider less Brit-centric literature curriculum which didn't overanalyse could be taught throughout the school years and with the use of e-books could encourage all young people to enjoy literature as a tool in life, not just an abstract study subject.

I have children too.

Concern for their education makes me much crosser than the prospect of teaching Gove Levels on Dead White Blokes for a few years.

I can do that bit quite easily, & personally I'm looking forward to a break from OM&M. It's a terribly dull & narrow syllabus, though. It's a shame for all our children.

I don't see how it's any more dull and narrow than the current offering. Switch an international novel for an old one and it's pretty much the same, isn't it? A fairly tight selection of 4 books.

unrealhousewife Out where? This is the quick BBC take on one of several research papers published last year on heritability & UK school exams:

Exam grades 'more nature than nurture'

It's serious stuff and I get the impression Prof. Plomin is a bit of an ermm.. lefty i.e. this isn't some extremist non-entity.

AQA have managed to game it so it's basically 'more of the same', certainly, noble. So what a total waste of everyone's time.

But I do think lobbing out everything written in English but not in the British Isles is fairly dumb. Swap 'Death of a Salesman' for 'Blood Brothers' & that'll make the course loads more rigorous, won't it? Oh, wait...

It's not about Gove getting rid of OM&M.

It's about him chucking another diktat, written on the back of a fag packet, at the press to bolster his projected leadership bid, & creating yet another fuck up for the rest of us to try to work around.

It's not really what I want to be paying his salary for, tbh...

Pique the inherited intelligence thing really needs its own thread in science and nature.

unrealhousewife It might need it's own thread, but I think that thread belongs in Education because that is specifically what those papers were about and where they are most relevant. For instance the paper built around GCSEs[1] has this final section in the discussion:

A genetic model of education
Education has been slow to take on board the importance of genetics for educational achievement ... It is to be hoped that better policy decisions will be made with knowledge than without. Part of that knowledge is the strong genetic contribution to individual differences in educational achievement.

That section is worth reading and comprehending.

[1] Strong Genetic Influence on a UK Nationwide Test of Educational Achievement at the End of Compulsory Education at Age 16

'Education has been slow to take on board the importance of genetics for educational achievement ... '

Well yes - because it raises an uncomfortable question: if this is the case, what are we teachers for? The authors state explicitly that they find heritability has a far greater effect than teachers or schools. Even so, they say the heritability factor is about two thirds, leaving a third which might be encouraged by educational and family environment. This isn't insignificant, is it?

And again,the social and political implications of the claim would be very unpalatable to a large proportion of voters.

Genetic inheritance is not two thirds at all. Read it carefully it is more complex than these quotes

Yes it is more complex and educational achievement is found to be more heritable than intelligence ( 68% v 42%). but it seems that the greater the uniformity of the shared environment,the stronger the genetic influence on outcomes. Or am I missing something?