Malorje Blackman GCSE

[flexiblebenefit]

DD has just told me that the first text they're studying for GCSE English Lit in Sept is "Boys don't cry" by Malorie Blackman. She's a bit surprised. Like most teen girls she went through a Malorie Blackman phase in year 8 and read everything, but was very surprised to be studying it in year 10. I've just read it (I have a degree in English - admittedly 30 years ago!) It's a good book. Engaging. Lots of issues to talk about- but it's honestly not great in a literary sense. I'm hugely supportive of studying non white authors, expanding the range of books etc but there are a lot of really great lnon white authors published today who are a lot more "literary" than Malorie Blackman. It's a book designed to hammer home "issues" in a relatively unsubtle way.

What am I missing here?

I did Macbeth, P&P and poems by Tennyson for O level.

The 'G' in GCSE stands for General. I actually think the cross-subject curricular is far better these days than when I was at school. At my 'top indie' I couldn't even do all 3 sciences so had to stop biology aged 13!

I think the English subject curriculum possibly does more hard than good wrt getting kids generally enjoying literature. Maybe more Malorie Blackman is just what it needs.

The world and its wife do AIC at GCSE. Your DD would not stand out from a huge crowd. It's quite a problematical text and a LOT of English teachers want rid of it.

The OP's DD will still do a Classic writer. The 20thcentury is on top of eg Dickens.

Personally , I don't think that's a left wing tangent....

OP, doing An Inspector Calls at GCSE will not bring diversity to the workplace.

Could you expand on this please? Just for general interest.

DD was due to do AIC and we saw it at the theatre in preparation, but then we got the pandemic and DD didn't get to do it.

Just to pick up on tiers , they were a nightmare in English and I am glad they are gone.

I don't like schools, that make entire year groups do the same text.
Happily, at my school, teachers choose from within the spec. There is no evidence that classes doing AIC get better results than classes doing the prose, or more contemporary texts (eg DNA).

DS1's teacher chose Great Expectations at GCSE instead of A Christmas Carol. I did question this and was told 'better grades because stretch and challenge'. Hmmm... I love ACC and thinks its politics are very relevant and satisfying even now. They all hated it, most didn't read all of it, and the grades for that particular unit weren't great.

Sure thing. It's become the default text of choice (for AQA , this has relegated other texts, such as Lord of the Flies, to almost oblivion). Kids tend to provide paint by numbers responses form various tutor websites and books. And parrot out barely understood stuff about class and patriarchy. I'd guess the context of Blackman would actually be more applied and genuinely appreciated. Paint by numbers is not stretch and challenge , as a PP said.

It's done by something like 85% of candidates. if I wanted to stand out, I'd do something else.

The problematical stuff arises from issues surrounding rape and discussions of suicide and how far our sympathies are meant to extend to Eric, for example. It's of its time but some teenagers respond in an increasingly negative way to the issues presented - both in the 'oh my God, did s/he just say that out loud?' kind of way, and in the sense of being triggered. I don't teach it - not because of this but because I got bored to the back teeth of them not getting the ending. And I prefer Animal Farm, which students tend to love.

Gove got rid of Of Mice and Men , allegedly because of its ubiquity - but it seems AIC is allowed its monopoly!

AIC is great in the theatre though, and - unlike Great Expectations!- DS1 did like it.

DS2 did Blood Brothers at GCSE which I think is very simple and again hammers home its context. I was a bit hmmm about that in your vein OP, but he did other stuff, too, to push him. He loved A Christmas Carol and Macbeth, read Animal Farm in Year 9 lessons and adored it, read Lord of the Flies himself , and To Kill A Mockingbird and Frankenstein.Keep your DD reading at home. I hate that reading for pleasure is such a rarity these days. It's all about 'skills of analysis'. Whatever happens, the joy will be squeezed out, unless the teacher is a bit rogue!

Thank you, that was interesting.

DD1 did LotF under the old spec. Personally I find it really disturbing.
DD1 also did OMAM, and DD2 did OMAM in y9 which was OK but she found it bit confusing as she didn't really grasp the background.

On a diverse authors note, fairly sure one exam board has added Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie which is a great shout. Sadly, schools just keep on sticking to the same old same old.

Yes, LOTF is really troubling!

OMAM used to be so loved by kids. It's another one that people are finding more and more difficult in terms of misogyny and race. I think that's a problem with it being moved to years 8/9 as much as anything.

hi @Piggywaspushed that's interesting about tiers. My subject is MFL and the foundation paper is deffo a good thing there as it makes the language GCSE a realistic and achievable goal for a weaker but keen student. The teaching for it is different tho and IMHO (despite what I read on MN) you do need to decide pretty early on who is going for H and who F. Is it issues around that which make you not like tiered papers for Eng lit?

Maybe the answer is to have a specific qualification for the weakest students to take, which includes some literature but stops short of the expectation of grasping a complete Shakespeare play.

Interesting too about AIC, I agree it raises some tricky themes, and also that if everyone does it, that's just dull. In DD's year at her school the teachers chose all their own texts and she did Frankenstein and Animal Farm both of which she loved.

I don't know whether this is your experience Piggy but ds did quite like OMAM which he did in Year 9. The reason it seems to have been moved to Year 9 was when it came off the syllabus the school already had the books. It seems it is all about resources.

@flexiblebenefit I'm with you on this. A great author, but lacking the literary depth. It's all upside down at the moment. The expectation at primary is to cover classic novels. The Railway Children, for example, would be technically more challenging, yet regarded as a children's novel.
On the one hand, yes, we need relevancy and books that address questions and issues - but that is not what an English Literature GCSE is for. It's for understanding and analysing the author's use of language.
For "O" level, I did: Julius Caesar - Shakespeare, The Mill on the Floss- George Eliot, The War Poets - Sassoon and Owen and The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley.
I feel a great sense of loss for this generation that they won't get to know and understand these great works and similar.
I also think that the aspiration should be there to make these texts accessible to teenagers. Those texts were no more relevant to me at fifteen than they would be now to our current teenagers, yet we studied them and took exams in them.
If you compare a Year 6 Reading Sat test with the text of Malorie Blackman and consider that this text is being studied five years later, then you do seriously have to question the depth of study for GCSE.

The problem with tiers in English specifically clary was the grey area and there were , statistically, a lot of 'wrong' entire where kids were getting top marks in foundation tier or falling off the bottom of Higher - not sure this happens as much in maths of MFL. And they all did the same texts so it really wasn't necessary. To be honest, a really weak kid ca love Animal Farm as much as a top grade student.

I feel a great sense of loss for this generation that they won't get to know and understand these great works and similar.
It's OK @Ashard20 as I and others have pointed out on this thread, students, even those studying Blackman, will also be studying a Shakespeare play and a 19th century text, plus poems - which in my DCs' case included a range of war poetry. DD wrote her exam essay about Wilfred Owen's Exposure. So all is not lost

Yes, that was exactly why!

We tried that fro a year but stopped. Lots of us had issues with kids being really insensitive which hadn't happened when we taught it in year 11.

wrong entries

@Ashard20 But O level was only studied by 20%.
GCSE has to at least be vaguely accessible to the mid-low ability pupils.

Yes I agree about Animal Farm, but some texts studied and some of the ask of the GCSE are just too much for some children. I had a student in my form who was in tears about how hard she found Eng lit, and felt that there should be some other option for her. And others obvs.

I don't think that grey area would happen in MFL tbh - a student gaining top marks in F would have the skills to get a 4 in H - but they might not as they would be overfaced with the level required if that makes sense. They tend to be much more comfortable with the ask of the F paper, which allows them to be confident that they know how to use the past and future tense etc.

That's sad. I hate what's been done to English and English Lit. Hate hate :(

I am forced to teach AIC and Macbeth against my better judgement (both as an experienced teacher and examiner) because we all have to teach the same thing.
Back in the day, I taught mockingbird to F tier candidates who did very well - because they were engaged by it and made genuine personal responses. I am heartily sick of being told to teach everyone the same thing from the same shit PowerPoint so they all write the same thing in the exam. Funnily enough, that doesn't get them very good marks.

Zadie Smith?