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

I think you shouldn't really read Astin until your about 25, or you tend to miss the jokes.

Of all the twisted things that have been spewed out of Gove's hyperactive and warped brain, this is one of the most disturbing.

How can we have a system where one man's views dictate significant curriculum decisions? It's all too important to be left to politicians - especially this lot.

Will parents want their younger child studying texts that feature rape?

I'm trying to remember what I did at GCSE. Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men, All Quiet on the Western Front, a selection of war poetry.

Replace that with Romeo and Juliet, Animal Farm, Great Expectations and a selection of romantic poets - would that be worse? Less inspiring?

How can we have a system where one man's views dictate significant curriculum decisions? It's all too important to be left to politicians - especially this lot

This is what I don't understand... Why is this the case?

If it's dictated by one politician with an agenda and not educators for the good of education then yes, it's worse noble.

Another question is - where does the money come from to replace set texts? Around 600, 000 pupils sit GCSEs multiplied by number of texts multiplied by cost per book

TKAM has inspired generations of young readers and it often seems to be "the book" - the one that turns them on to fiction. I didn't do it at school but have read it and can see its power. Love Steinbeck - what on earth does Gove have against OMAM?

We did a very tedious DH Lawrence for O level and I have never read another word of his. Ditto Ted Hughes whom I hated with a passion. And at A level Byron's Don Juan which nobody ever reads any more for good reason (long, boring). All of those should be up for refreshing - has nothing more exciting materialised in the 30 years since I did O level?

I'm all for covering some of the classics but why force 15 year olds to read tedious DH Lawrence or Byron. Byron particularly has not stood the test of time imho.

Mockingbird is more complex, but what about the killing of Curley's wife in OMAM? She's all pretty and she wears make-up and leads him on and ends up 'petted to death' like the poor old rabbits. And then simple Lennie has to be shot so he doesn't mess up the 'live offa the fatta the lan'' dream.

I personally think it's a crap book, and it does more harm re. rape myths than Mockingbird. It's also short and clunky. I remember dd having to point out all the 'foreshadowing', which is done in an incredibly hamfisted and boring way.

More than all of this, though, I dislike the way that English Lit is taught in school with endless emphasis on 'what does it make the reader feel' and a bit of 'historical context' such as 'in that time it was incredibly sexist and it would have been frowned upon for a woman to marry for love/offer an opinion' for your AOBs. Blerk. Loathe Gove, but there's definitely room for improvement here.

saga that rather depends on the agenda, doesn't it? I'm first in the queue at thinking Michael Gove is an appalling Education Minister, but I don't think his agenda is to make education worse. He doesn't seem to have replaced TKAM with The Hunger Games (not that we know, but I'm sure the Times would have mentioned it if he had).

Is the focus mainly on English authors a bad thing seeing as these exams will be sat by English kids? Do other countries not mainly focus on their own literature? Is Of Mice and Men to be preferred over Animal Farm simply because it's American?

We haven't even seen the list yet!

My DSS2 is about to sit his "bac de français" - the French literature exam (written and oral) that all students doing the baccalauréat général take in the equivalent of Y12. He has read more than 50 works of classic French literature (including poetry anthologies and plays) and seen 15+ plays on the stage since Christmas.

The description of GCSE English literature seems a bit feeble by international comparison.

I don't think it's a bad idea. It's important for English children to have a thorough knowledge of English books. There is also an historical and cultural context that it is important for students to understand.

Why Bonsoir?

Who says quantity is desirable?

I studied the Crucible for O level many years ago. The lessons it taught are still with me and still relevant, and I was reminded of them when reading Mackays "...Madness of Crowds" recently. I've long believed Gove is a menace and a fool and none of this tripe surprises me, especially after his funding of religious nut jobs to run schools, and handing out Bibles with his name on it.

Ii think what Bonoir is extolling is that the French are widely renowned for never having caved in to all this democracy-in-the-curriculum nonsense that we Anglos angst and wring hands over. It's not so much their quantity as the fact that they are still ruthlessly teaching the elements of classical French style and rationality through their Lit. "Or-ni-car" and Racine. Not much change since the teaching Colette satirised in that first Claudine novel.

Is that true? Or is that a wicked Anglo myth and calumny upon the French?

Does English literature mean literature written in English or written by the English?

On a course in a school yesterday; admired the wall displays in the English Department until I realised the school was a Secondary school, and the work displayed was that of Year 7 to 11. It was all the type of work I had done with primary school children, story boards, posters, postcards from the front, spells; all beautifully drawn and coloured in, but with little evidence of writing other than captions and headings; the book one class was studying was a novel by Michael Morpurgo; excellent writer, but again one studied at Primary level. For the first time I begin to understand what Gove, not my favourite person, is trying to do; work against low expectations. It makes sense of our low rating in PISA if this is the sort of work expected at Secondary level; my first studied book at age eleven in secondary school was Tales from Chaucer, and I enjoyed it.

It's works written originally in the English language do USA, aus, nz , Canadian etc

I'm not extolling anything. I'm drawing attention to the massive discrepancy in standards and expectations between systems in two neighbouring countries, both of which are major contributors to the history of literature.

bonsoir, would 50 books be normal and expected if all kids or is it a private school?

I am sure when I studied English Literature at O'Level the texts changed every year, so with the exception of the Shakespeare texts we had to provide our own copies of books. I still have my copies of Jane Eyre and Tennyson, with all my scribbles in.

Also we had to read a number of other books as a class which were not included in the exam syllabus, which if I remember included Of Mice and Men, My Family and Other Animals and The Old Man of the Sea. These books I think school did have copies of. According to DH, who is a few years younger than me so sat GCSEs, in his school they only read the books that were on the syllabus and didn't actually take an exam in English Literature. Is this what still happens now?

In France the curriculum is the same in all schools - DSS2 is a hard worker and goes the extra mile but he is no literature buff - 50 books is a normal number for DC who want to do well.

50 books in what kind of depth?

In very great depth!!!