British books for British workers.
May. 29th, 2014 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyAbout 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.
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no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 11:31 am (UTC)Of course, continuing to rely on it after it had been debunked is a different matter, but presumably nearly everyone doing this hadn't heard it had been debunked yet.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 11:52 am (UTC)*Edit* BTW, I'll be quoting you on that next time you say anything rude about people who believe what it says in the Daily Mail :p
no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 12:48 pm (UTC)All of the following would reward study, and explore themes and/or ideas that are weighty enough to form the basis of an examination.
"Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury
A tone poem in a novel - beautifully written and wonderfully evocative, although perhaps the story is not saying that much.
"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
Fascinating exploration of gender politics.
"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley
Terrible, terrible book, but it is probably the first one to address the rise of rationalism, and there's a lot to say about precisely why it fails as a piece of literature.
"The Bell Jar" by Silvia Plath
It would certainly be interesting to discuss how well this book succeeds at conveying the experience of living with depression.
"Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" by Susannah Clarke
This book is both pastiche of and homage to the 18th Century novel, and as such would provide fertile ground for criticism and comparison.
"Dead Souls" by Nicolai Gogol
Russian literature is different, and interesting because it is different. But Dead Souls is a farce, and manages to encapsulate a lot of the tropes of Russian literature, while still being a very entertaining read.
"Was" by Geoff Ryman
Another book bursting with imagery and using the Wizard of Oz as a device for talking about the difference between fiction and reality. If "Wicked" had any soul, it would want to be this book.
Oh, and re your comment about the Daily Mail, the publication's record of journalistic standards does also come into it.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 12:53 pm (UTC)This is, I thought, the GCSE syllabus - I'd choose different ones for the A level. I considered Frankenstein before plumping for Dracula - largely because Dracula is the better book, and we do want the pupils to actually read the books!
I'd think the Bell Jar (one that also came up on conversation with teh She-David about this) was a no-no because it's probably too heavy for 14 year olds. We suggested Lord of the Rings (the Hobbit was a popular idea too) and decided no because it's too darn long to get through in a few hours a week as well as all the other stuff on the course, and I'd think the same problem occurs with Dr. Strange and Johnny Morris. Jolly good book, mind.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 03:11 pm (UTC)I think I read the Bell Jar in my A level years, and didn't find it overly heavy (I was very into Plath's poems at the time, because that was the kind of teenager I was.) I may not have been entirely typical though.
(Didn't realise the story came from The Mirror. In that case, it should definitely have been treated with more skepticism, although I'll suggest that Gove has advanced other equally surprising education policies in the recent past and this might have had an influence upon the story's credibility.)
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Date: 2014-05-29 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 12:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 05:37 pm (UTC)1984, "Brave New World", for interesting speculation, clear enough characters to analyse, and use/misuse of language.
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Date: 2014-05-29 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 01:00 pm (UTC)H
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Date: 2014-05-29 01:01 pm (UTC)how come you can post here again now?
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Date: 2014-05-29 01:04 pm (UTC)H
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Date: 2014-05-29 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 10:13 pm (UTC)I can tell you with absolute confidence that the only Shakey play 14 year old girls will voluntarily read is Romeo + Juliet. There's only one decent swordfight so 14 yo boys are likely to lose interest after Mercutio snuffs it. I am torn between Titus Andronicus and Henry V for the young chaps; but teach will probably make them watch Branagh rather than Olivier - so maybe just buckets of blood? Aren't all his Comedies just variations on gf/bf dresses as boy/girl and much hilarity ensures? Should tick the LGBT box then.
Dad used to read us Animal Farm as our bedtime story (shut up Wade), tho' he skipped Boxer being sent to the knacker's, a simple children's fable as I remember it. I can't remember any naughty propaganda in An Inspector Calls (though I expect there probably is). But, just in case, can we include Flashman? I have no clue about the contemporary stuff (Ishiguro, Meera Syal, Charlotte Keatly, Denis Kelly), is it any good?
Looks like they actually include some good bokes in the pre 20th Century selection: The War of the Worlds and Jekyll & Hyde. Adolescent boys will have no interest in Jane Austen - and why should they? (unless they are hopelessly in love, in which case Persuasion would be better than Pride). There's oral sex in Dracula? Well, that's a no brainer.
There is only one pome in the English language and we all know it is "The Charge of the Light Brigade". Though if they insist on gurly lurve stuff there is always To Lucasta on going to the Wars (The Lady of Shalott is ok also). Wasn't Beowulf some Danish fella? (If we are doing Diversity can we have Four Green Fields?).
D
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Date: 2014-06-03 12:10 pm (UTC)Clearly you didn't listen.