19th century novels for GCSE English....

[Hakluyt]

What do people think about this? In the new GCSE English syllabus, students will have to study a 19th Century novel. I think the choice is Great Expectations, The War of the Worlds, Jane Eyre, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Pride and Prejudice. (I might have missed a couple)

I suspect this is really going to stymie our school and our kids- they really need the C (or equivalent) for all sorts of things, but for the lower end of the ability range- which most of our kids are- are really going to struggle with the language.

I think studying whole books, rather than extracts is a fantastic idea, but there are so many wonderful books that are much more accessible. What's so special about the 19th century anyway?

Women are like rabbits. You pet them and then you kill them. Whoopsy.

Did you talk about Lennie and the rabbits and the "touching the dress" thing and curley's wife?

How can they be 'of no relevance'? They are there!

I take the point about the dodgy sexual politics in OMAM, but surely the ams point can be made in relation to any number of important pieces of writing. Ovid, for starters...

What 'human nature'? ( leaving aside the massive question as to whether there is such a thing!) human nature that pretty girls who wear make up kind of ask for it?

Well, you could teach that it is disturbing that a woman is like a dog or a mouse. But that is difficult.

I don't think the content of that book is easy at all. It's one thing tell a class that killing a woman (even if she's an annoying character we're set up to dislike) is possibly as bad as killing a puppy. But it's another thing to get across how the narrative is pushing us to disagree with that morality and to sympathise with Lennie, and it's another thing again to add in the extra layer that Steinbeck probably did not have the same sense of rape myths we do.

I do know teachers are generally about 100 times better at communicating these things that I believe anyone will be, but still - when we did it, with a really great teacher, and in a class where a good quarter of us ended up doing English at university, we didn't get that. At all.

Yeah but nobody says Ovid is great for engaging and great for year 10 boys!

But the key theme of the book is Lennie and the little animals and the women. Surely you must have talked about this stuff when you taught it?

Must we prioritise boys, coolas?

Surely there are also at least a few girls in this category of struggling students, who might matter?!

Why does it always have to be boys that the texts have to engage?

And I do see why children would get sucked into the discussion of Curley's wife's 'manipulation' - but how do you get out of that one?

Because surely, either you let them continue to be duped by the book (which would be poor lit crit), or you have to find some way to explain that their first response of finding her manipulative and naive, is manipulated in itself? That cannot be easy.

Fair enough. It's just something that bothers me.

I said upthread, but don't worry, it is a really long thread - mine are 18-21, which is why I am second-guessing my own worries really. I know teachers are able to bring out things I couldn't get my mind around, but it feels like a big ask to me.

More problematic about the new specs, I think, is that they are closed text. Never mind the texts themselves (plenty of discussion about that already) - learning quotations for a range of possible examined contexts is going to be a problem for a lot of the lower-ability students that spring immediately to
mind. Especially if they are struggling to identify with said novel they are expected to quote from.

'Is Curly's Wife naive to think she can dress and act as she pleases and not get 'petted' to death; or is she just manipulative?'

loveable totally agree: learning 'quotes' is a terrible way to engage with the literary text. What researcher sits down to write having put the text out of reach first?