The Scottish curriculum 26% LGBTQ+ authors.

[Herewegoagain29]

I didn't know that the SNP had decided that only Scottish authors would be studied in exams, so no Shakespeare or Orwell or Wilfred Owen, American Literature etc.
Add to this a 'queer' agenda and they have come up with an exam based around books like Jenni Fagan's 'Sunlight Pilgrims' in which a 12 year old boy thinks that he's a girl, and compares a lack of puberty blockers to an apolalypse.

It's got a very 'Chinese cultural revolution feel' about it to chuck away the best from the past and substitute propaganda pieces like this.

Scotland's Queer Culture War in Schools

Not a novel but dc did An Inspector Calls for a very recent SQA English exam. So doesn't have to be Scottish.

You think that there's too many LGBTQ+ authors, and you want to substitute in Wilfred Owen?

Interesting.

There has been a Scottish element to Nat 4-5-Higher- for literally years. Carol Ann Duffy was on the list and nobody blamed the Scottish Government for her inclusion as a lesbian writer. Although people argued about who should be on the list to choose from, no-one was in dispute regarding their fitness as authors. Shakespeare is still taught. You seriously don't understand the English higher

The link you give is to someone on twitter and bears no resemblance to the Higher English course. I've just gone to the sqa website and read through it. There have been slight changes in the Scottish element of the paper but not promoting a particular agenda.

I love Scottish literature, and all the languages of Scotland, there's lots to teach, but for years there's been a politically driven push, fuelled by small minded and parochial jingoism, to focus hard and narrowly on Scottish work.

There's some great work on the rec list, but I agree that the list should be far, far wider and more diverse.

https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/45672.html

Oh, actually, the website still seems to have an old list on it. So I'm a bit confused.

Anyway, there's also this:

'Teachers and lecturers will still have freedom in selecting texts for the
critical essay section, which means a wide range of literature will be studied at both National 5
and Higher English, including Shakespeare and other classic works.'

Over the last few years in N5/H English DD has studied Of Mice and Men, A Street Car Named Desire and this year is doing A Man Called Otto. I like that the critical essay can be written on a film or tv drama.

I enjoyed the days when we simply celebrated a person’s literary talent and what they wanted to say, rather than concerned ourselves with whether they had a penis and where they liked to put it.

Duck feet is being promoted & it's awful

I would support them moving on from Dulce et Decorum fecking Est, though. It was a horrible poem when I was at school, and I can't believe they're still teaching it.

It is a horrible poem. Which is the point. It’s one of the most powerful poems I have ever read.

But those days have never really existed have they? Just that "we" used to only celebrate those with penises.

I'm not sure I understand the OP's concern: is that there's too much LBGTQ++ stuff, or too much Scottish stuff on the curriculum?

And I am right in understanding from other posts that these are baseless concerns anyway?

Is this yet another example of taking anything on X with a large pinch of salt?

The concern is that the reading list is compiled according to political motivations, rather than educational ones.

I partly agree.

Perhaps works as a poem to read and absorb. But positioned as a text to study, intensively, over a period of months, it ends up defeating itself, imho. It both turns poetry into a miserable, depressing, grisly endurance test, and cheapens the original war commentary into a tick-box exercise in identifying metaphor and onomatopeia and trotting out approved emotional responses.

I stand corrected then and I am glad that the curriculum is wider than I thought, and books can be studdied from other countries in the exam in Scotland and I'm glad that this is the case.

It was just the thought primarily that the trans agenda was being added into English Lit, not the LGB but the concepts of breast binding, puberty blockers etc. etc.

It is a brilliant and very disturbing poem. The last two lines are superb.

I'm also glad I didn't have to "study" it and write about it at school; but then I don't like studying Shakespeare plays - I'd rather watch them.

I suppose I'm saying that most poems, novels and plays stand or fall on the response of the reader or watcher. They have their impact (or not) without us having to be told how to dig into their inner meaning or their construction. On the other hand, I did gain an appreciation of Conrad from having to study one of his short stories, which I hated until I had been made to study it, when I found out it had hidden depths.