A level Lit

[Piggywaspushed]

Anyone got any ideas or thoughts why the decline in popularity of Lit? Is it just the cult of STEM? (no offence STEM ists)

At my school, the numbers for next year have twice as many doing economics as A level lit, 3 times as many doing maths and 3 times as many doing physics and psychology...

Politics has fallen off, too, but history remains very popular.

Large comp - high achieving - lots of A level choice. Usual issues of MFL being dead on its feet.

Working as I do with trainees a lot, I am also rather concerned by the academic ability of lots of people coming into English teaching. They can't inspire students to take A level because they scraped one themselves (well.... maybe a C if that's scraping) and have degrees in something which isn't actually lit. It does all lead to an emphasis on lower end 'skills' in lessons rather than passion and love for literature and learning.

The trainee attached to me has mispronounced three words in one lesson... we genuinely have a person in our department (two years in to career) who can neither punctuate nor spell.

Sigh.

To Kill a Mocking Bird is worse than Of Mice and Men. So worthy...
DS did Never Let Me Go in year 10, which he and I both enjoyed, and then new teacher in year 11 (rightly I think) decided that best chances of higher grades with An Inspector Calls. Although he enjoyed it, he found it a bugger to analyse essay style.

Piggy - DS would be fine with Oliver Twist I reckon (he's playing the role of Oliver for a local amateur theatre co next week!)

He's top set maths & science & bottom remedial set for English!!!!

I do hope the school doesn't use the word remedial???

This is why I love English. No one ever agrees. I hate Never Let Me Go. Dull dull dull.

To be fair, I haven't taught TKAM myself. And even that has - violence against women! Surprise!

Gove probably decreed Oliver Twist too easy...

No - that was me. But there are only 6/7kids in the set & head of English told me it was to give him more support.

OK! It's a v dated word...

It's very odd (not unknown and usually the other way round)) for someone to be in top sets and bottom sets. Especially one who does performing arts!

Ironic as his INCAS (bit like CATS I think) score for reading in junior school meant he was put in a g & t enrichment group for English. But he has huge problems writing.

Yes, so odd I think that head of English personally contacted me to expain rather than me just get the standard English set letter.

It's an area with the middle school system so he's only been there since September & he didn't go to a feeder junior school.

Glad to hear Hardy is back , actually I have a 16 year old ds who is enjoying mice and men but has just read The Great Gatsby( at his teachers suggestion as comparator) and loved it .An Inspector Calls has also gone down well. I also had a fascinating if surprising conversation with one of his friends who is a real Hardy fan so don't under estimate 16 year old boys . 😊

I just think of mice and men and to kill a mocking bird have become over used , My ds1 studied them 8 years ago and ds2 4 years ago . There is so much out there to read and yet for years it seemed like it was the same every year. Don't the teachers get bored with it as well?

I'm sure they do get hired but schools can't afford to buy class sets of different Set texts so tend to stick with the same choices year after year. The new syllabus has forced a change.

that's the thing. never bored of teaching Of Mice and Men!

Hardy actually never went off a Level. he's always been there. Suitably left wing I guess Don't tell Gove.

TKAM has been in the syllabus since I did O levels, and that was a long, long time ago... surprised the books are still in one piece!

To digress, I always wondered why schools haven't converted to an agreed e book standard, like Kindle, possibly owned by child, so that backpacks could be lighter and all texts delivered to it on a subscription basis, for all subjects as part of a VLE. Someone commented that it might disadvantage children on FSM, but surely not more than children from families without Internet access. My DS is enjoying English A level and has largely learned to cope with his very bad visual processing, but still prefers to listen to books, and Kindles do text to speech (badly, I concede). Schools would subscribe, based on roll numbers, and think of the cupboards that could be emptied!

Mainly because you can't underline ,annotate etc (well, not effectively!)

Also, students really do, in the main, say they don't like e books. They laos lack the colour/ diagrams etc etc

The FSM children tend to be the same as the ones without internet access.

Carnage would also ensue with flat batteries, broken screens etc etc. Many books are actually fairly cheap - as cheap as the Kindle versions.

All true, and valid objections, Piggy.

I am also rather concerned by the academic ability of lots of people coming into English teaching.

Is this a new thing? A decline in quality because of increasingly desperate training providers? Or were there always dodgy ones?

Are there any set texts that are actually good for girls at KS3 or KS4?

Girls will generally be all right to be fair.

In terms of 'good' in a broader sense, I'll have to have a good long think. Duffy is absent really .

My class of girls do enjoy Macbeth...

Girls will generally be all right because .... ?

Because they generally do well in English as you pointed out upthread! They are responsive to a range of texts ,ask questions and react with sympathy and empathy : so fairly ideal skills. Yes, it would be great if more of literature represented us, of course it would. But, actually, women as victims is a great topic to highlight ingrained misogyny . A lot of discussion is quite empowering for them .

It is odd though how so many girls opt for A level when so little of literature is really for or about them. Even JK Rowling now has a male detective and female victims in her crap detective books.

The one thing most girls find offputting is political satire (Animal farm aside). My A level class are not warming to Gulliver's Travels.

I'm not sure that the choice of books is ok for girls because girls do ok in exams is necessarily a valid argument, especially in light of falling numbers opting to take it for A-level. It's probably something worth considering.

Re JK Rowling - her fame came from a male protagonist and hiding the fact that she was a woman! I remember reading Diana Wynne Jones writing about the fight she had to be allowed to write Fire and Hemlock - a book with a female hero. She had to build up her credentials with male heros first.

We do have to do what is on the spec noble. And I love most of the books I teach and am a girl. There has , of course, been some consternation about boys' literacy levels so some people do tend to chose crowd pleasers for boys (if such a thing is exists!). It's almost the polar opposite with books for 8 -12 year olds. they are mainly written by women (which is a good thing) with female protagonists (also a good thing). My DS2 is a reader and is open minded so does read them but it's a shame there aren't many good books for that age group for boys which aren't just repetitive fantasy series or books about football with isshoos thrown in (he likes football but not the fiction books about footballers). This, I reckon is a contributing factor to boys stopping reading.

Studies have shown that boys like books to represent their gender with male central characters and that girls are not so bothered by this, but like a good narrative most.

I also like Kate Atkinson - she is a strong writer but, again, her most popular books feature a (flawed! surprise!) male detective.

I am genuinely struggling to think of a book (of GCSE or A Level standard) that might fit your brief! And, if I did, it wouldn't be on the spec.

I also like Lord of The Flies. Not a female in sight. Although that is the point. Actually, boys definitely do prefer that book to girls. Girls find it nasty. Boys are better with books that have political or philosophical meaning. they like engaging in those debates.

We have single gender classes now (hmmmm....) but are all doing the same books as each other which is bizarre. I'll be interested to see whether more boys form the higher ability choose A level Lit in two years time.

I am quite sure Austen was put on the spec as a 'girls' book' but I , personally, would rather serrate my own eyeballs than teach Pride and Prejudice to 15 year olds. I know it is a popular text choice in selective girls' schools.

My a level group chose Jane Eyre last year and quite enjoyed it. They are 80% female though...

And I love most of the books I teach and am a girl

Yes, but you're a girl who ploughed through that same male-centred diet and weren't put off so are naturally less likely to see any problems with it. Obviously it suited you!

Boys liking male leads and girls not being bothered is surely just reflecting the media they've been fed up till then. Look at the state of kids' TV for example. And look at the surprise when The Hunger Games was enjoyed by both sexes!

I get that you're restricted by syllabus at KS4/5, but what's the offering at KS3?