Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The GCSE exam is the basic grounding in the subject area - things which every schoolchild is expected to be taught. It seems to me that the main focus of an English literature course taught to English schoolchildren should be to introduce them to the literary and cultural heritage which has helped to shape the society in which they are living. Although books like "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Of Mice and Men" are without question important literary works, they really don't form a part of British cultural or literary history - they are American works and important to American history and culture, not Britain's. It's right and proper that the syllabus should concentrate on literary works which have shaped or which reflect British society, just as I would expect a literature course taught to American schoolchildren to concentrate on those works which are culturally important to the US.
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I don't necessarily disagree, though I don't necessarily agree either. I've only been making the point that the English Literature course in question most assuredly refers to the language and not the country.
On the broader question of whether it is OK or even propitious to focus more narrowly on British works, that I'm not sure of. I am not against having a certain amount of focus on local (i.e. national) literature in schools, as long as it is balanced at some point with world literature as well. While I think To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men and are excellent books for children from any country studying English literature to read, I do think the UK has an extremely strong literary tradition and there could easily be a very good general introductory English-language literature course that happened to only use books from the UK, though it would be quite exclusionary since there is so much excellent English literature from elsewhere as well. I suppose it does strike me as regressive to specifically target the course to make it more local when it already had a good established syllabus, but I can't argue diminished quality because there are plenty of British books that can fill the gaps quite nicely.