Uk exam boards to drop To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men

[alanHd]

To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men are among the US literary classics to be dropped by a GCSE exam board after the education secretary called for more British works to be studied.

Story here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27563466

[HarryT]

A reasonable decision. A GCSE course in English literature should study just that: English literature, not American literature.

[CommonReader]

Courses in literature shouldn't be parochial in their outlook but I do wonder if those two works are really so relevant for students today.
I do recall "To Kill a Mockingbird" as being part of the syllabus of the English language course at my German school

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A reasonable decision. A GCSE course in English literature should study just that: English literature, not American literature.

Only if the course is called 'British English Literature' surely? Otherwise American English is as valid as British English.

Andrew

[rollei]

It is a pity that these great works are dropped

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

Only if the course is called 'British English Literature' surely? Otherwise American English is as valid as British English.

Andrew

I guess it depends whether you interpret the word "English" as meaning the language or the country. Given that "American Literature" unambiguously means the country, by analogy I'd interpret "English Literature" in the same way.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A reasonable decision. A GCSE course in English literature should study just that: English literature, not American literature.

I think you are misinterpreting it; otherwise, they would only be studying literature from England and not only exclude the U.S. but also Scotland, Wales, Ireland and so forth.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

I think you are misinterpreting it; otherwise, they would only be studying literature from England and not only exclude the U.S. but also Scotland, Wales, Ireland and so forth.

Fine - I'm just saying that it seems reasonable to me personally; you don't have to agree .

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Fine - I'm just saying that it seems reasonable to me personally; you don't have to agree .

I wasn't disagreeing or agreeing on which novels the course should contain; I was simply pointing out that "English" probably referred to the language and not the country; otherwise I think they would call it "British Literature" or some such.

[ShellShock]

I think that "English" literature has always rather chauvanistically referred to the language, and not the country, e.g., it dates back to when "England ruled the waves". "English" literature as literature from the country of England, or by English authors, is not something I recognise. Now, "British" literature is definitely a geographic disctinction.

[Mike L]

What a lot of confusion here.

Let's get this clear. The story refers to a decision by the English Dept. of Education and the English exam board. Not British. Not United Kingdom (in that respect, the title of this thread is wrong). It's concerns books taught in English literature courses in England.

A Scottish literature course would presumably teach the likes of Robert Burns, Walter Scott, and perhaps Muriel Spark. When I took an American literature course, we read Hemingway, Faulkner and J. D. Sallinger*. On that basis, it seems entirely reasonable that an English literature course should focus on Keats, Dickens, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy and the like.

It's not as if the English Dept. of Education is saying that students can't read American books, or can't take a course in American literature - any more than they are saying they can't read Walter Scott - or for that matter Voltaire or Zola. They are simply defining what goes into their curriculum.

And by the way, it's Britain that supposedly ruled the waves, not England.

And for anyone who thinks these distinctions are unimportant, there are around five million people where I live who will give them an argument any day of the week.

Mike
* But we did do T. S. Eliot in American literature, which surprised me at the time.

Originally Posted by HarryT

I guess it depends whether you interpret the word "English" as meaning the language or the country. Given that "American Literature" unambiguously means the country, by analogy I'd interpret "English Literature" in the same way.

I live in America, so I can assure you we call the literature written in English "English Literature" and make no distinction of whether it is written by an American, Brit, Australian, Canadian, New Zealander, etc. We note who wrote it and which country they call or called home, but we call it all "English Literature." One can certainly take an "American English Literature" class in college, just as one can take "Middle English Literature" class or "French Literature" or whatever. However, our degrees in "English Literature" contain a required mix of literature written in English from all over the world throughout the history of the English language. To say English literature in England should only contain works by British authors seems rather arrogant to me, but then I'm just a child of the colonies.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by Mike L

What a lot of confusion here.

Let's get this clear. The story refers to a decision by the English Dept. of Education and the English exam board. Not British. Not United Kingdom (in that respect, the title of this thread is wrong). It's concerns books taught in English literature courses in England.

The inference here is incorrect. You are stating that this is a course for English in England, not Britain or the UK, so therefore you seem to be inferring that they are OK in focusing on works from England in particular. In the very first sentence of the article it states that (bold mine) "the education secretary called for more British works to be studied." And later on one category mentioned is (again bold mine) "post-1914 fiction or drama written in the British Isles". Never in the article is a focus on England in particular mentioned.

And if you are still uncertain, it would be very strange to have an England Literature course (substituting the country name to make it explicitly clear) and then include, as they have, "a 19th century novel written anywhere".

This is an English Language Literature course that, since it is in the UK, some want to focus on more British works and less American ones, which is the matter up for debate.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

The inference here is incorrect. You are stating that this is a course for English in England, not Britain or the UK, so therefore you seem to be inferring that they are OK in focusing on works from England in particular. In the very first sentence of the article it states that (bold mine) "the education secretary called for more British works to be studied." And later on one category mentioned is (again bold mine) "post-1914 fiction or drama written in the British Isles". Never in the article is a focus on England in particular mentioned.

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.

[corroonb]

A crude display of chauvinism from the Tories! I am shocked.

Shouldn't Irish authors be excluded since they aren't British by definition? So no Heaney, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Stoker, Swift, Wilde and so on. What about writers of mixed ethnicity or cultural background? Rushdie? Conrad?

Education is not about inculcating values or particular cultures to the exclusion of others. English literature is a broad church and is all the richer for being so. How can one study TS Eliot as an American poet?