"Old Tongue" by Jackie Kay - set text for Nat 5.

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DS was quite cross about this poem which he has been studying in class as a set text for Nat 5 English.

www.childrenspoetryarchive.org/poem/old-tongue

It's about someone moving from Scotland to England as a child and bemoaning losing their accent and vocabulary.

DS has real issues with it. He has an English accent as he was born there, lived there until he was 7, his Dad is English and despite being in Scotland longer than he was ever in England, hasn't lost it. He's proud of his heritage. The very first line says the writer was "forced south" - because quite clearly no-one in their right mind would want to go to England of their own accord.

She uses words like "ghastly", "awful" and "dreadful" to describe English accents. She also asserts incorrectly that English people rhyme scone with stone - DH, DS and all the inlaws rhyme "scone" with "gone" - just as I do.

Now DS is perfectly capable of standing up for himself and arguing the toss with his English teacher over attitudes, reading for intent and having his nationalist propaganda detector set to pick up this sort of bullshit but really - this is an acceptable poem for kids to be looking at?

As Jacke Kay's father was Nigerian I thought it was about a black kid ! I first heard this as an adult Scot living in the SE of Engkland and it resonated with me as I had had to move because of my husbands work - sometimes I felt very alien.

Jackie Kay is an amazing woman. She talks of identity and displacement as a black child adopted by white patents griwing up in a glasgow with few other black faces at the time. She’s not snp propaganda

I really enjoyed this interview with her, it really helps to understand the place she's writing from. I also love hearing her read her poems, there's so much warmth in her voice.
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7800799/Jackie-Kay-Interview.html

Lidlfix I loved "Originally" my dd studied it for Nat 5. "Now, Where do you come from? strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate".
It totally resonates with our whole family! (I was born in Scotland and lived all my life here but my parents were English)
I can see OPs point from both sides but imho they are being oversensitive about it

Jackie Kay, that well known stalwart of nationalism

It's literature! I despair. We shouldn't be censoring any literature and kids should learn to critically analyse it. It wasn't written for the curriculum to support a political agenda. Jackie Kay was the Poet Laureate for Scotland and is one of the most celebrated poets in the UK. She is mixed race and was adopted- she has lived in England and is not anti-English! Her poems draw a lot on her experience of belonging and a lot of her poems are asking us to question what makes someone belong. In this case- Is it their accent? Lots of people feel conscious about their accent when they move, particularly as a teenager because sometimes you can feel like you don't fit in. It's a poem about how it feels to lose some of the words you loved. I believe it draws on her own experience of now living in England and some sadness she feels for losing some words. I can't believe how much uneducated tripe is in this feed.

I can't believe how much uneducated tripe is in this feed.

So much so that you had to resurrect a year old thread to point it out! Bravo.