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British books for British workers.
May. 29th, 2014 12:07 pmAbout ten years ago, I briefly went out with an English teacher. At one point she gave me a copy Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, a collection of short stories which she told me was on the syllabus for the GCSE. I took it home and read it and when I gave it her back observed I thought it quite a light tome for exam work. To my goggle-eyed amazement she explained to me that I was wrong - her pupils only had to read one story in the collection for their exam. I was, let us say, taken aback.
You might have seen last Sunday that two papers - The Sunday Times and The Sunday Mirror ran stories suggesting that education secretary Michael Gove was set to ban books including To kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men from schools. Certainly I noticed this as probably a half-dozen people on my feed linked to these stories with their own negative comments about Michael Gove appended. The story as reported was that Gove had personally rewritten the syllabus for the English Literature GCSE and in so doing had cast out books written by beastly foreigners and insisted the curriculum must consist entirely of books written by decent, God-fearing British folk. The problem with this story being, somewhat predictably, that it wasn't true.
Now I'm aware that there's ongoing internecine war between the Department of Education as headed by Gove and large chunks of the teaching profession and I'm no expert but in this instance my sympathies are entirely with Gove for the simple reason that if your argument against your opponent involves making stuff up then I'm automatically going to side with them as all you've done is tell me you don't appear to have any actual real arguments*.
IN this instance what appears to happened is that one person told the Sunday Times that "Rumour has it" Michael Gove wrote the new guidelines himself, and this became in the translation a headline of "Gove bans books". Perhaps the most surprising thing about this is that I always thought the Murdoch press were supposed to be pro-Conseravtive and here they are having a clear pop at a government minister. I guess the world is a more complex place than it might immediately appear. Who knew? Indeed, even the Guardian waded into the debate (via a piece by the former editor of Living Marxism, no less) to point out that the 'banning books' thing was a load of old pony and that Michael Gove actually had a point.
Anyway. This all seemed to be exciting strong feelings amongst my various teaching chums so I read into it, and what the new rules say is that pupils studying for the GCSE must study any one novel written before the dawn of the 20th century (note, not a British-written one. Just pre-C20), one play by Shakespeare, and one piece by the Romantic poets. Beyond those guidelines exam boards can put anything else onto the syllabus they like - such as, say, of Mice and Men or To Kill a Mockingbord should they so desire. Even the pre-C20 requirement for a novel leaves the board open for American books if that's what is desirable. I'd recommend The Scarlet Letter.
I'ma ware this is something which excites strong emotion in people. I've been told that educationalists broadly agree that a great predictor of educational outcomes is the variety of literature that pupils are exposed to, and I reckon that's probably true. One of the more interesting observations in Freakonomics is that one of the best indicators of future academic success is the number of books in the home a child grows up in. It doesn't even appear to matter if parents read to the child - I guess the conclusion from this is that the child sees grownups reading as a formative experience, internalises this is what grownups do and then reads more as an adult or something. So I'm happy to accept that variety is the spice of life but I would, on the other hand, be prepared to put a fairly chunky bet on the nonexistence of research indicating that reading Of Mice and Men has a statistically significant effect on outcomes** or any other specific book either.
That said I totally get why, if you're planning to raise children to live in a specific country, it might make sense to teach them something of the history and cultural heritage of that country.
Still, all this got me to thinking which books I'd stick on the syllabus if I got to choose. British books, obviously. None of that fancy foreign nonsense.
I'm not certain how syllabusses really work, but if I were to pick a selection, I thought I'd go for this one:
William Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew
You can't lose Shakespeare, and not just for the purpose of sentiment. His facility with words is nigh-unmatched, and his influence on the language is certainly so. You just need to pick the right plays. Adults tend to think A Midsummer Night's Dream is a great play for adolescents because of all the fairies and stuff, but adolescents despise it because of all the fairies and stuff. On the other hand taming of the Shrew is all about bickering teenagers.
Bram Stoker: Dracula: The "Book written before the start of the C20" thing is going to make most people immediately think of Dickens, Austin or Bronte. Speaking personally, after sitting through year upon year of my English teacher lugubriously labouring through Dickens' leaden jokes I wouldn't wish Dickens on anybody and there's hardly many chuckles in the Brontes either. I can't help but think they're not that great to engage 14-year-olds.
On the other hand with Dracula you've got instant brand recognition coupled with the fact that the book, written as it is in the style of letters and diary entries, is a good way to demonstrating a story doesn't have to be a straight narrative and to give ideas on how to give direct engagement with characters.
Plus it's got vampires and stuff in it.
Seamus Heaney: Beowulf
Heaney might not be British but Beowulf is (or is enough to count as far as I'm concerned). If there's got to be poetry on the syllabus I'd go for this one - it combines the oldest surviving Old English poem (which opens doors to discussion on stuff like oral tradition and the evolution of language) with a master of the modern craft (which opens doors there as well).
Virginia Woolf: A room of one's own
One criticism that tends to get leveled at literature reading lists is that they're dominated by "dead white men".
Yeah, they are. There's a reason for that. And this is the book about why. If you want to talk about literature, why it is the way it is, and maybe give some 14 year old girls ideas about what they can do, start here.
Failing that, how about Orlando?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
A masterclass in constructing short-story narratives, looking at motivations and how to build an adventure/mystery story. A friend who is a teacher at one of the better public schools gets his pupils to write murder mysteries (and murder mystery games) to teach them how to construct plots. It's a great exercise.
Grahame Greene: Brighton Rock
It's a great little book. it's explores character, motivation, postwar Britain, society, even a mystery (how did they kill the victim?), and a film with Dickie Attenborough to help students with visualisation. Given a straight choice between To Kill a Mockingbird and this for GCSE groups I'd go for this every single time.
But that's my thoughts. Which books would you want to see on the syllabus, and why?
*Unless the stuff you make up is funny, in which case it's totally justifiable.
**And I'm pretty sure that A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield reduces them.
You might have seen last Sunday that two papers - The Sunday Times and The Sunday Mirror ran stories suggesting that education secretary Michael Gove was set to ban books including To kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men from schools. Certainly I noticed this as probably a half-dozen people on my feed linked to these stories with their own negative comments about Michael Gove appended. The story as reported was that Gove had personally rewritten the syllabus for the English Literature GCSE and in so doing had cast out books written by beastly foreigners and insisted the curriculum must consist entirely of books written by decent, God-fearing British folk. The problem with this story being, somewhat predictably, that it wasn't true.
Now I'm aware that there's ongoing internecine war between the Department of Education as headed by Gove and large chunks of the teaching profession and I'm no expert but in this instance my sympathies are entirely with Gove for the simple reason that if your argument against your opponent involves making stuff up then I'm automatically going to side with them as all you've done is tell me you don't appear to have any actual real arguments*.
IN this instance what appears to happened is that one person told the Sunday Times that "Rumour has it" Michael Gove wrote the new guidelines himself, and this became in the translation a headline of "Gove bans books". Perhaps the most surprising thing about this is that I always thought the Murdoch press were supposed to be pro-Conseravtive and here they are having a clear pop at a government minister. I guess the world is a more complex place than it might immediately appear. Who knew? Indeed, even the Guardian waded into the debate (via a piece by the former editor of Living Marxism, no less) to point out that the 'banning books' thing was a load of old pony and that Michael Gove actually had a point.
Anyway. This all seemed to be exciting strong feelings amongst my various teaching chums so I read into it, and what the new rules say is that pupils studying for the GCSE must study any one novel written before the dawn of the 20th century (note, not a British-written one. Just pre-C20), one play by Shakespeare, and one piece by the Romantic poets. Beyond those guidelines exam boards can put anything else onto the syllabus they like - such as, say, of Mice and Men or To Kill a Mockingbord should they so desire. Even the pre-C20 requirement for a novel leaves the board open for American books if that's what is desirable. I'd recommend The Scarlet Letter.
I'ma ware this is something which excites strong emotion in people. I've been told that educationalists broadly agree that a great predictor of educational outcomes is the variety of literature that pupils are exposed to, and I reckon that's probably true. One of the more interesting observations in Freakonomics is that one of the best indicators of future academic success is the number of books in the home a child grows up in. It doesn't even appear to matter if parents read to the child - I guess the conclusion from this is that the child sees grownups reading as a formative experience, internalises this is what grownups do and then reads more as an adult or something. So I'm happy to accept that variety is the spice of life but I would, on the other hand, be prepared to put a fairly chunky bet on the nonexistence of research indicating that reading Of Mice and Men has a statistically significant effect on outcomes** or any other specific book either.
That said I totally get why, if you're planning to raise children to live in a specific country, it might make sense to teach them something of the history and cultural heritage of that country.
Still, all this got me to thinking which books I'd stick on the syllabus if I got to choose. British books, obviously. None of that fancy foreign nonsense.
I'm not certain how syllabusses really work, but if I were to pick a selection, I thought I'd go for this one:
William Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew
You can't lose Shakespeare, and not just for the purpose of sentiment. His facility with words is nigh-unmatched, and his influence on the language is certainly so. You just need to pick the right plays. Adults tend to think A Midsummer Night's Dream is a great play for adolescents because of all the fairies and stuff, but adolescents despise it because of all the fairies and stuff. On the other hand taming of the Shrew is all about bickering teenagers.
Bram Stoker: Dracula: The "Book written before the start of the C20" thing is going to make most people immediately think of Dickens, Austin or Bronte. Speaking personally, after sitting through year upon year of my English teacher lugubriously labouring through Dickens' leaden jokes I wouldn't wish Dickens on anybody and there's hardly many chuckles in the Brontes either. I can't help but think they're not that great to engage 14-year-olds.
On the other hand with Dracula you've got instant brand recognition coupled with the fact that the book, written as it is in the style of letters and diary entries, is a good way to demonstrating a story doesn't have to be a straight narrative and to give ideas on how to give direct engagement with characters.
Plus it's got vampires and stuff in it.
Seamus Heaney: Beowulf
Heaney might not be British but Beowulf is (or is enough to count as far as I'm concerned). If there's got to be poetry on the syllabus I'd go for this one - it combines the oldest surviving Old English poem (which opens doors to discussion on stuff like oral tradition and the evolution of language) with a master of the modern craft (which opens doors there as well).
Virginia Woolf: A room of one's own
One criticism that tends to get leveled at literature reading lists is that they're dominated by "dead white men".
Yeah, they are. There's a reason for that. And this is the book about why. If you want to talk about literature, why it is the way it is, and maybe give some 14 year old girls ideas about what they can do, start here.
Failing that, how about Orlando?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
A masterclass in constructing short-story narratives, looking at motivations and how to build an adventure/mystery story. A friend who is a teacher at one of the better public schools gets his pupils to write murder mysteries (and murder mystery games) to teach them how to construct plots. It's a great exercise.
Grahame Greene: Brighton Rock
It's a great little book. it's explores character, motivation, postwar Britain, society, even a mystery (how did they kill the victim?), and a film with Dickie Attenborough to help students with visualisation. Given a straight choice between To Kill a Mockingbird and this for GCSE groups I'd go for this every single time.
But that's my thoughts. Which books would you want to see on the syllabus, and why?
*Unless the stuff you make up is funny, in which case it's totally justifiable.
**And I'm pretty sure that A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield reduces them.
