Now on the
face of it, this doesn’t seem too terrible.
I love the Brontës. Well, Charlotte and Emily - sorry Anne. And I love Dickens. Not flipping Dombey and Son though – you’ve got to be joking. And I love Mrs Gaskell – except for Cranford. And George Eliot – so long as we rule out Adam bloody Bede. And Thomas Hardy - if
and when I’m in the mood for pure misery...
And therein
lies the problem. I love reading. I always have done. And whilst I agree with Gove (did I just say
that?) that these English giants of
English Literature should NOT be forgotten, marginalised and pushed out of
classrooms forever, I also acknowledge that the work of Dickens and Company is
difficult, demanding, sometimes very dull – (because however much I love Charlotte Brontë
, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that Villette nearly killed me) and always
very very long.
Reading is
in decline. So are sales of books. If we lose the ability to concentrate long
enough to comprehend a novel, we’re in trouble.
And if we lose bookshops and booksellers from our high streets and lose literary
agents and editors from behind the scenes, the world WILL be a crappier place. Quality will fall.
So the last
thing we should do is put kids off.
Forcing all British fifteen and sixteen year olds to wade through the
never ending sentences of Bleak House
or the shifting narratives of Wuthering
Heights is pointless and very likely to put many of them off reading for
life. Reading habits have changed since
Michael Gove was at school. I appreciate
his sentiment but he’s got it wrong. These
huge and difficult novels must be saved for A Level. Give GCSE students something they can access. And that's what teachers – without Gove’s help – have been doing for years. Of Mice
and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird
and The Crucible crop up time and
time again because they are astonishing works of art, harbour
themes which are still very clearly relevant and are loved by the kids who read them.
I know this
twofold.
First, as an
O Level kid myself – yes, I’m that flipping old. I did To
Kill a Mockingbird. Aged 15, it blew
me away. And it was important too. Growing up in Felixstowe, I’d never spoken to
a black person in my life. I’d never
spoken to anyone of a different culture to myself – excluding that disastrous
week with the German penpal I didn't click with. But in my little corner of Suffolk, Harper Lee reached out, took me by the hand and showed
me the American south in the 1930s. And
I understood enough to know that racism stinks.
Anytime. Anywhere.
And second, as a
teacher, I’ve taught that book and helped classes comprised entirely of white kids
understand why we never have the right to say the N-word. Even if some black people do. Our history is different. And if, at any point our ancestors used
language as an offensive weapon, it means that we no longer have the right to
bandy that word around in order to sound cool.
And then
there was that bottom set of Cardiff boys – who sat in stunned silence after I
read them the closing line of Of Mice and Men.
‘What a sh*t
mate he was,’ exclaimed one of them in outrage - just after George shot Lennie in
the head. (Sorry if that’s just ruined
the ending for you.)
And then I
sat back amazed and listened as another boy – with an electronic tag on his
ankle – explained the kindness in that desperately sad act. And how it was, in fact, just a way of saving
Lennie from ‘a f*cking uncaring and sh*tty world.’
I pulled
them up on their blunt language obviously.
But I doubt
I'd have needed to if we'd been reading Middlemarch. I doubt such a discussion would’ve ever taken place.
And then
there’s Holden Caulfield – the original troubled teen - who wants to run
away and live as a deaf mute so he doesn’t have to talk to people. I’ve seen kids roll their eyes and tell me The Catcher in the Rye is dead boring. And then I’ve listened to them tell me Holden
is a tw*t. And then I’ve listened to them say that, actually, he really needs
help and counselling to come to terms with the death of his eleven year old
brother, Allie. Yes, there’s death in English
nineteenth century fiction too. Lots of
it. Perhaps so much that we start to
expect it. It’s certainly not the same
as Chapter 5 of Catcher when Holden
casually starts telling us about Allie.
In the past tense. I’ve been
reading that passage to classes for years. Still
can barely breathe by the end of it.
And then
there’s that other thing. English
Literature means literature written originally in English, doesn’t it? It’s about how our language has been used as
art. Or that’s what I’ve always
thought. But Michael Gove seems to be
implying ethnicity. I don’t like
this. I’m uncomfortable with it. Does he want school kids to get the
impression that Maya Angelou and Mark Twain and Alice Walker and Harper Lee –
and perhaps also Dylan Thomas and Robert Louis Stevenson - have got nothing of
significant importance to say to them?
Michael Gove
is not an English teacher. Or a
librarian. Or a bookseller. As far as I’m aware he has no professional
background in any part of the literary world. I
think he needs to stop choosing the books that our kids read. In his defence he says he’s NOT banning
American books. Or any books. But this again
just demonstrates his total lack of understanding. The GCSE curriculum is packed - so much so,
that some teachers opt to teach extracts rather than whole novels. This approach has always depressed me and
doesn’t prepare kids for A Level English at all. Or for anything needing more than a tweet of
concentration. Neither does it encourage a love of
books. But I reluctantly acknowledge that, perhaps,
it’s effective in getting kids 'through the course.’
However, in a future where we're all forced to teach lengthy
nineteenth century novels, there’ll be little time left for those fantastic
well-tested favourites that Gove says we're free to teach as an extra. We’ll probably
just have to divvy everything up into a load more extracts.
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