Do we need more contemporary novels about wealth inequality in the school syllabus ?

[mids2019]

The question arises as I have been discussing two of my daughter's set texts for GCCSR, a Christmas Carol and an Inspector Calls. Both texts deal with historical wealth inequality and power imbalance in Edwardian and Victorian society and are hugely y powerful but do we need a modern equivalent in our schools?

My daughter who fully comprehend the texts from an academic perspective is of a view that there is no real poverty in the UK and has quite a right wing perspective on these things. I don't quite know how the perspective evolved but I think it may be due to peer influence, the internet and the fact her school is in a moderately wealthy part of town.

The question is would more contemporary novels looking at wealth inequality in the 21 st century widen students' views? Who are the Dickens and Priestlys of this centrity?

I think you are right! A tiny few that come to mind which are more contemporary. Varying qualities.

Shuggy Bain.
Poor by Catriona O’Sullivan.
The year of the runaways (illegal immigrant experience)

All maybe too brutal for a teen.

One Day touches on it a bit - Dexter gets a leg up from connections etc but it’s not really central.

Now I think about it there are so few novels which reflect contemporary poverty - payday loans, gig economy, living in estates which are wastelands you can’t buy a pint of milk and buses don’t go to, call centre work which is out of town so how do you get there without a car… yikes. Maybe because no one would read them.

That is really interesting. I think because of school syllabus focuses on English texts set in periods where there was no welfare state or worker's rights there is a temptation to dismiss modern poverty as it isn't in absolute terms as bad as the Sickens era (no poor houses for example). Maybe my daughter views poverty as a historical feature of Britain alongside lack of women's voting rights etc. i.e. Something of another era.

I suppose one question would be would stories of contemporary poverty be viewed as political influence by a school i.e. teaching a little to the left?

Dickens produced Oliver Twist so is there a modern Sickens who can encapsulate the experience of the modern poor child. Oliver was a protagonist who could be warned to get poor feral children now are demonised?

Tbf poverty is a relative measure nowadays, so there will always be poverty no matter how rich we get - and poverty in the Victorian sense is rare in the UK. Compared to say third world counties, we’re not impoverished at all.

The Great Gatsby should be compulsory reading!!

But if you want your daughter to learn empathy from others, literature probably isn’t the way. Take her volunteering at food banks, baby banks, soup kitchens so she can see the reality of how other people live in the UK.

Surely a Christmas Carol and an Inspector Calls were meant as morality books/plays so wasn't the intention of the authors to have an impact? Interesting question.

I agree that there poverty in absolute terms isn't of a Dickensian level but does that mean there can be no great literature based on contemporary UK society?

Don't forget 25% of kids nationally are on free school meals and don't need teaching about poverty because they are living it.

I'm not sure that it would be a great experience for them for their classmates to be deconstructing their lives with immature tools.

There Is massive wealth inequality globally not just in the uk. Volunteering at food banks and getting involved in community projects may help her see things from a different perspective. We also have a massive debt bubble with payday loans, people owing money on high energy bills and unaffordable housing. I am not sure how a modern book would help your daughter see she is lucky and at the moment the right wing media are shouting louder than the left. They have done a brilliant job of dividing us so we just blame immigrants where in fact wealth inequalities are the reason for poverty.

Pretty much every work of fiction ever written will deal with inequality in one way or another - it’s never occurred to me that the topic needs specific seeking out.

But more broadly, no one who reads any random selection of articles from broadsheet newspapers on a daily basis can fail to be aware of vast wealth inequality across the world. You can subscribe to The Times online, or read The Guardian for free, or sign up to one of the several library subscription services that give access to a huge number of publications.

Fiction and fact place each other in context, so it’s best to read both.

@mids2019 Novels are not the sole influence of views though are they? Young people are allowed to form their own views and they might not agree with parents. Of course they see and hear a variety of views and you aren’t their sole influencer. I guess they could have modern books but English isn’t meant to be a politics lesson is it? Or be a propaganda lesson?

No workhouses (just detained refugees). We have come a long way and that’s worthy of debate in itself. Your DD might like a discussion on why the welfare state spending is never enough? What happens to all the taxes paying for it? Maybe have a more detailed discussion about poverty because poverty is a moving line. It’s adjusted to living standards for the majority so as we get better living standards, so do poor people and definitions change. Perhaps dd feels this more keenly than you right now? Even very leafy schools have fsm dc. She must know this and perhaps even knows who they are? She is allowed to have her own views.

@noblegiraffe

Interesting point. I guess though that the books in question were partly written to aid in social change or at least make their readers reflect on the nature of their society. Could one not say that Dickens was absolutely right to publish his novels despite people in Vitorian society suffering in the ways of his characters? Dickens would have been dead by Edwardians possibly by many pupils in poverty so despite there being discomfort there was still an important message.

I would think contemporary novels about poverty would need to be thought about sensitively but should this mean they shouldn't feature in the modern school landscape?

It would need to be something dealt with more sensitively than some schools are capable of, because their own staff don't have the experience of contemporary poverty either.

I am reminded of a school I heard of who planned a geography trip to see 'urban deprivation' to a neighbourhood where some of the pupils lived.

This. Even though that wasn't the OP question.

I suppose the question is why at least our school chose two GCSE texts to study at depth that are linked with wealth/ power inequality at their core? Weren't the books written as means for people to reflect on society in social morals/responsibility?

I think One question about these texts is whether it is right to relate then to modern social issues for context. Who are the Tiny Tims, Scrooges and Eva Smith's out there today?

@noblegiraffe

That is a really interesting point. It seems though that even though the texts area tidied in depth in a sense they can be somehow abstract and the core message may be glossed over because of the spam of time.

If historical literature isn't a means to influence the minds of the young how and even should this be done? I agree poverty awareness is important but how should this be done? (Sorry for the aside)

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” From The Great Gatsby

In recent years film and tv have done this more effectively than novels. Ken Loach is an obvious one.

There are quite a lot of books that include protagonists who live in poverty, are refugees or in the care system on primary school suggested reading lists (The Boy in the Tower, The Breakfast Club Heroes, all the Onjali Rauf books, the majority of Jacqueline Wilson all come instantly to mind, but are not the only examples.)

I wonder how many of the people Dickens is describing actually read his novels at the time though - I mean had the chance to. All DC (pretty much) are in education until age 16 now, which was not the case in 1850. So I think Dickens was trying to instruct his readers who perhaps were unaware.

It’s a tricky one I agree, but reading newspapers and watching the news and discussing it is a good way in I think. I agree with @noblegiraffe that it's a challenge now bc so many of the people in the class will be living in 21st-century poverty; at least with Priestley it is at a few generations’ remove.

Books for your DD possibly:
yy Shuggie Bain (it’s grim tho)
Demon Copperhead (America but totally contemporary; brilliant (five stars from me) and truly disturbing)
Where the Crawdads Sing (controversial I know but I found the first part especially well written)
NW or anything by Zadie Smith

These are all challenging texts in my view but all equally worth a read. I loved Demon Copperhead.

Sometimes its about the resources available. There's so many film versions of a Christmas Carol and lots of theatres put on both texts as a play.

Also a Christmas Carol is short and quite a simple plot which is good for pupils who don't have reading stamina anymore.

Also @mids2019 ACC is from the Victorian list – so all of those novels are from the 19th cent obviously. I actually think it’s important that DC study that period (tho I am not a huge fan of the current spec GCSE Eng lit in general). Yes ACC is chosen bc it is short, and the themes and story are straightforward for weaker students (no F tier here!) to get a grip of and be able to write something meaningful. The other texts don’t all deal with poverty but some do (Great Exp, Jane Eyre) and even P&P touches on it (the Bennets will be made homeless for example when Mr B dies).

All maybe too brutal for a teen.

What is actually there in the books that is more brutal than homeless people everywhere and suicides on the tube happening nearly every day now? Are those books really that disturbing?

@clary Dickens was very interested in slum clearance in London. He obviously observed how awful living conditions were for some. However the new London Council housing merely shifted the poor elsewhere and the new housing was allocated to the deserving poor. I too doubt those cleared from the slums read Dickens.

I think there’s something a bit “off” bling dc reading a modern poverty novel and then pointing the finger at dc they know! Or who live in another part of town! I think most dc get poverty info from tv and on line. They don’t need it pushed at school.

Having worked in social housing and supporting residents, I'd recommend reading 'Round about a pound a week', a real-life study by Maud Pember Reeves. About 1910 - 1913, a different era, but some of the issues all too familiar and accounts of 'working class' families.