Michael Gove

[Albumen]

Anger fuelled any hyperbole in my post.

Where they were written isn't relevant in my view

Exactly.

 

[Buzzer]

It's simpler than that IMO. American fiction is better.

Gove is stuck in a bygone era. It's like when Major went on about warm beer an cricket.

Hmm..'better'. I think it comes down to personal taste. But regardless of that asking British kids to read a couple more British books by the likes of Orwell, Austen, Conrad and Woolf and a couple less of Harper Lee, Fitzgerald or Steinbeck is certainly NOT going to turn well-adjusted children into 'ignorant, uneducated and oppressed' which is what Albumen has claimed.

I've got no strong opinion on whether American authors are better than British but why do British kids need to get their morals from these books and do these books give people morals? Are American children more moral than British children because of the USA-centric nature of their own literature? And why are people so keen to be taught American literature but not upset that they're not given the opportunity to study Marquez or Allende or Cervantes or Solzhenitsyn?

What a fuss about nothing or rather what an odd aspect of this blinkered decision from Gove to get upset about.

 

[Buzzer]

It seems I learnt the same syllabus as you

I didn't enjoy English lit, although I passed it. I do enjoy reading but those authors and books left me cold ( Shakespeare was the best of the bad bunch for me)

I would have loved to had study a man for all seasons, or to kill mockingbird. Where they were written isn't relevant in my view

Agree completely. I would have loved to have studied Catch-22 when I was younger (not sure it's on any syllabus though). When I read that in my 20s it changed forever how I thought about literature but saying that 'Catcher In the Rye' another American classic leaves me stone cold. Self-indulgent adolescent, spoilt brat nonsense. Hardy leaves me the same but Orwell is another British author I read and re-read.

 

[Chicken Runner61]

Perfect, considering he looks like a fish!

View attachment 46963

Ha I think I know where this is and saw it and thought exactly the same

 

[Gwylan]

Back in the day all English Literature O levels were from British authors. I studied Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens. And I learned morals from a whole host of sources including life experience.

You're not older than me but I only studied one British author (Shakespeare) for my English O Level so it's not true to say that all set authors were British.

I suspect the real reason that the likes of Steinbeck and Miller are out is not that they're American but because they were communist (sympathisers if not actual members)

 

[Lady Whistledown]

Whilst I think asking kids to read more Hardy or Austen, say, will have little impact on their learning or morals (both are obviously worthy authors), it nonetheless seems a slight pity that they'll have the likes of To Kill A Mockingbird removed from their reading opportunities simply on the whim of a politician who's rapidly turning himself into a comedy figure.

I'm not sure it's fair for him to use the education of children to score cheap political points (which this presumably is, designed to appeal to the Little Englander mentality who feel all our kids should be force fed Henry VIII, King Harold, the Industrial Revolution and the Magna Carta until it's coming out of their ears, at the expense of more globally relevant issues).

I read TKAM at school, along with Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Chaucer, Webster, Bronte, Orwell, numerous poets of the Great War, and, er, Roald Dahl. I don't feel as though my education was compromised by the inclusion of Harper Lee in this.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

There are loads of excellent contemporary writers from the UK and the USA. But Gove doesn't like modern literature, or anything foreign, or of politics that he doesn't agree with. So pre 20th Century British writers it is.

The arrogance of the man, that he 'knows what's best'...it's just mind blowing. Teens, already distracted by all the electronic alternatives to sitting down with a good book, will be put off reading for good.

I love reading, but would never choose to read Dickens, can't stand Jane Austen and want to read books that have relevance to my life today.

Gove has got to go, as soon as possible.

 

[Buzzer]

You're not older than me but I only studied one British author (Shakespeare) for my English O Level so it's not true to say that all set authors were British.

I suspect the real reason that the likes of Steinbeck and Miller are out is not that they're American but because they were communist (sympathisers if not actual members)

Blimey, I do hope you're wrong. The idea that writers are omitted from reading lists for their political views doesn't seem possible in 21st century Britain. And I'd further be surprised because in which case JB Priestley would need to be removed from the list also. George Orwell certainly considered him a communist and told the powers that be as much. Dylan Thomas was telling people right up to his death that he was a communist. I rather suspect that Gove just doesn't like Of Mice and Men. I don't blame him, if I had any power over what children read I'd make sure that none of them was ever allowed near another Thomas Hardy novel again.

Maybe the answer is to introduce Anglo-American authors such as TS Eliot, Garrison Kieller and Henry James into the syllabus and then everyone's happy!

 

[Gwylan]

Blimey, I do hope you're wrong. The idea that writers are omitted from reading lists for their political views doesn't seem possible in 21st century Britain. And I'd further be surprised because in which case JB Priestley would need to be removed from the list also. George Orwell certainly considered him a communist and told the powers that be as much. Dylan Thomas was telling people right up to his death that he was a communist. I rather suspect that Gove just doesn't like Of Mice and Men. I don't blame him, if I had any power over what children read I'd make sure that none of them was ever allowed near another Thomas Hardy novel again.
!

Yes, that's a good point. If there were political reasons, Orwell would scarcely be allowed. Is Priestley on the syllabus these days? Thought he'd be a bit old-fashioned for modern tastes.

I do have some sympathy for Gove on this. It's shocking that some kids can get an English A level and not read any Dickens or Hardy (some don't even have Shakespeare) but there's no need to proscribe American authors - it's not a zero sum game

 

[Buzzer]

Yes, that's a good point. If there were political reasons, Orwell would scarcely be allowed. Is Priestley on the syllabus these days? Thought he'd be a bit old-fashioned for modern tastes.

I do have some sympathy for Gove on this. It's shocking that some kids can get an English A level and not read any Dickens or Hardy (some don't even have Shakespeare) but there's no need to proscribe American authors - it's not a zero sum game

I agree completely (except for being made to read Hardy!) The comment about Dylan Thomas was that Thomas was a self-confessed communist. I believe that Under Milk Wood is on the list as is Priestley's An Inspector Calls.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Yes, that's a good point. If there were political reasons, Orwell would scarcely be allowed. Is Priestley on the syllabus these days? Thought he'd be a bit old-fashioned for modern tastes.

I do have some sympathy for Gove on this. It's shocking that some kids can get an English A level and not read any Dickens or Hardy (some don't even have Shakespeare) but there's no need to proscribe American authors - it's not a zero sum game

Why is it shocking that kids get English A Level without reading Dickens, Hardy or even Shakespeare? People can have a very deep understanding of Literature without having read these authors. Why not make it compulsory to study JG Ballard? Or Martin Amis etc? Who decides that some writers are inherently 'better' than others?

 

[Gwylan]

Why is it shocking that kids get English A Level without reading Dickens, Hardy or even Shakespeare? People can have a very deep understanding of Literature without having read these authors. Why not make it compulsory to study JG Ballard? Or Martin Amis etc? Who decides that some writers are inherently 'better' than others?

No-one's saying they're "better" but it's the historical context. Shakespeare has a dominant presence and influence over so many writers that it's hard to study any later period without at least a nod to him. Similarly so many novelists have Dickens to thank: you mention Amis but Dickens' fingerprints are all over Amis's work, it's something that you can't ignore.

It would be like doing physics and jumping straight into quantum mechanics without considering Newton's laws of motion -shoulders of giants, and all that

 

[joeinbrighton]

Dropping 'To Kill A Mockingbird' from the GCSE set texts is lunacy. I read it for my GCSEs 20 years ago and thought then as I do now that it was an inspiring and educational read that has a lot of themes for discussion that are still relevant today.

 

[Husty]

What a pillock.

 

[clippedgull]

You lot must have gone to posh schools, we read The Beano and The Dandy!

 

[Buzzer]

You lot must have gone to posh schools, we read The Beano and The Dandy!

Durrington High - posh? Haha!

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

You're not older than me but I only studied one British author (Shakespeare) for my English O Level so it's not true to say that all set authors were British.

I suspect the real reason that the likes of Steinbeck and Miller are out is not that they're American but because they were communist (sympathisers if not actual members)

Was John Cunningham your English Lit. master ? I can vaguely remember Romeo & Juliet and Under Milk Wood being on the syllabus.

 

[Gwylan]

Was John Cunningham your English Lit. master ? I can vaguely remember Romeo & Juliet and Under Milk Wood being on the syllabus.

Nah, we had Bernie Lewis. I dropped English after O Levels - it was Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath that finished me off

 

[Norman Potting]

Hated Shakespeare as it was force fed to us by a Psycho English teacher (wife of the headmaster) who would have had his babies (Shakespeare's) if she could have. Seeing it performed has made me understand it a bit better but hasn't compelled me to find out more about his work. Our long haired hippy-ish Eng. Lit. teacher engaged us much more in things like "The Importance Of Being Ernest" and Evelyn Waugh's "..An Officer and a Gentleman" - I read the rest of the trilogy many years later.

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

Nah, we had Bernie Lewis. I dropped English after O Levels - it was Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath that finished me off

When I saw the film years later it was still no better than what I had visualised reading the words on the page.