• Michael Gove 'axes To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men from GCSE syllabus' because he "really
    132 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Leestons;44903747]Of Mice and Men was great. Hated Shakespeare though.[/QUOTE] Shakespeare plays were among my favorite reads throughout my education. Hamlet and Macbeth are two of my favorite works ever. [editline]25th May 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=TestECull;44904971]Good riddance. Being forced to sit through that drivel in high school turned me off of reading for entertainment entirely. Let the kids choose their own novel within certain length and topic restrictions instead, they'll do better on the assignment and resent literature in general a whole hell of a lot less. I probably could have found something that I didn't mind too much...if I were to guess it'd probably be from Isaac Asimov...But nope. I was forced through these boring-ass fucking tomes. Fuck you too high school.[/QUOTE] I don't know, if I wasn't forced to read that "boring drivel," I probably never would have discovered The Kite Runner or The Good Earth, two excellent novels.
Finally someone wants to get this American shit out of schools. [highlight](User was permabanned for this post ("Barely resembling sarcasm while contributing nothing of worth - already had last chance" - Megafan))[/highlight]
I read of Mice and Men on my own, about two years before we were required to study it. It was a damn good book, what the shit.
replace them with finnegan's wake
[QUOTE=Dr.Critic;44904303] If anything, they should axe shit like[del] "Animal Farm"[/del]* and "An Inspector Calls" which are literally [B]just communist/socialist propaganda [/B](its not offensive, just nauseating) and are both a bitch to analyse because there isn't a whole lot of anything to do. [/QUOTE] If you think that, then I'm betting you probably failed English.
[QUOTE=The mouse;44907086]If you think that, then I'm betting you probably failed English.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Dr.Critic;44906745]I actually completely forgot about the last half, as Kennyawsum just pointed out :v: Again as I said above, I only saw a video or something of the first bit, heard a bit about it from my friends and that was it.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=The mouse;44905836]I can't even understand why studying English Literature is so important or at least in the way that it's taught, it should inspire those who want to read to read more and should be taught more as a hobby than a subject, not force everyone to read someone's favorite book to a tedious degree and call it education. Relative to other subjects, analysis of "classical" literature is such a pointless thing to do anyway and achieves nothing beyond a sense of personal accomplishment, let alone having little to no value as a skill in the real world apart from the ability to read which I'd expect people would be able to do anyway. At least English Language actually has some merit as a qualification, as the ability to express one's self and convey thought actually is of value as a skill.[/QUOTE] If you really think that's all the study of literature is then you probably failed your English classes as well. Almost every novel is a social commentary of some sort, there's always a deeper meaning that the Author is conveying through their story, most being still relevant today. Just because you're too ignorant to see that doesn't mean we all are.
[QUOTE=The mouse;44907086]If you think that, then I'm betting you probably failed English.[/QUOTE] An Inspector Calls actually is though if you read it/see it JB Priestly consistently aims throughout to make the higher classes in the novel look bad, idiotic even (Mr.Birling predicts no WW1, safe Titanic maiden voyage and world peace before the Inspector even arrives iirc) and then the Inspector leaves just after making a very obvious socialist rant after all of the higher class characters have been put in their place. Then the novel takes a twist and the Inspector seems to be some sort of avenging, all knowing angel on reflection, which implies JB Priestly is trying to tell us that what the Inspector says is sacred and true beyond doubt. I could be wrong there but that's how I always interpreted the ending.
Literature forms our textual relation to the world, without proper literature you never form this textual relation and many things will seem meaningless to you.
We also read To Kill a Mockingbird in school - excellent book which teaches a lot about morals.
we read romeo and juliet, of mice and men, to kill a mockingbird and an inspector calls romeo and juliet for some reason we only studied like two scenes in total for the exam of mice and men we read like 10 times for whatever reason to kill a mockingbird we never actually had to do an exam on, but we read it just in case and inspector calls was a pretty good play tbh i really enjoyed an inspector calls and reading of mice and men 10 times over killed off any interest I had in it.
[QUOTE=download;44904222]Because analysing 400+ year old English isn't relevant in today's world. Shakespeare should be taught in History Class[/QUOTE] Either you had a terrible teacher, or you were a poor student. Shakespeare's works, and their messages and themes are relevant to any era.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;44906811]I don't know, if I wasn't forced to read that "boring drivel," I probably never would have discovered The Kite Runner or The Good Earth, two excellent novels.[/QUOTE] You would have found them anyway.
I did To Kill a Mocking Bird and it was such a good book. Oh well. Is this only being killed off from OCR as reported in OP, or is this more widespread? Wonder if this affects WJEC.
[QUOTE=Dr.Critic;44907764]An Inspector Calls actually is though if you read it/see it JB Priestly consistently aims throughout to make the higher classes in the novel look bad, idiotic even (Mr.Birling predicts no WW1, safe Titanic maiden voyage and world peace before the Inspector even arrives iirc) and then the Inspector leaves just after making a very obvious socialist rant after all of the higher class characters have been put in their place. Then the novel takes a twist and the Inspector seems to be some sort of avenging, all knowing angel on reflection, which implies JB Priestly is trying to tell us that what the Inspector says is sacred and true beyond doubt. I could be wrong there but that's how I always interpreted the ending.[/QUOTE] If anything it's a play about responsibility, not lampooning the rich. I think the message is that no matter how much money or power you have, you still have responsibility for your actions and the effect it can have on others. You'd be right about the socalism thing though, it was written after the end of WWII and at the time it was very relevant to the political climate in Britain, which booted Churchill out of office for not promising things like the NHS. It's not full marxism though.
[QUOTE=download;44904222]Because analysing 400+ year old English isn't relevant in today's world. Shakespeare should be taught in History Class[/QUOTE] Literature and history are not the same, and it's not as if history teachers specialise in literary texts. The only actual history you could learn about Shakespeare is about the man and not the texts, and usually when studying his work you're taught context anyway. Also they're still very relevant, not just the themes and issues but also the literary value. It goes without saying that's a long subject to get into though. [QUOTE=Call Me Kiwi;44904981]It might be good but have you ever really thought to yourself "I want to [I][B][U]read[/U][/B][/I] a play today". Read books. See plays.[/QUOTE] Sometimes I do read plays actually. There's merit in both reading and watching performances of them, both bring something to the table that the other can't.
[QUOTE=Bradyns;44903774]The story is pretty influential text about the oppression of the black populous 60 years ago. We read it in year 10. The themes are still pretty relevant, if you ask me.[/QUOTE] I agree, the book didn't make all of it's points perfectly IMO, but it is still a really important work that I think people should read in school.
You shouldn't remove books that actually make reading enjoyable. To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice an Men were books we were required to read, and yet they're two of my favorite books of all time.
ive read plenty of books in lit class, but the only ones that stuck out as shocking was Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 just because how interesting the stories were. Then again i normally hate reading, but if i am hooked like 5 chapters in, i cant stop reading it. the worst was fucking their eyes were watching god, WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT IT WOULD BE GOOD TO WRITE A BOOK IN BROKEN ASS AFRICAN AMERICAN DIALECT. my god it was painful to read it because i can normally skip through sentences real quick to read them, but when you get a sentence such as : "’Cause I hates de way his [Logan’s] head is so long one way and so flat on de sides and dat pone uh fat back uh his neck." or "Lawd, you know mah heart. Ah done de best Ah could do. De rest is left to you." for most of the dialogue its fucking painful.
Make em read [I]At the Mountains of Madness.[/I] [editline]25th May 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=codemaster85;44909034]ive read plenty of books in lit class, but the only ones that stuck out as shocking was Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 just because how interesting the stories were. Then again i normally hate reading, but if i am hooked like 5 chapters in, i cant stop reading it. the worst was fucking their eyes were watching god, WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT IT WOULD BE GOOD TO WRITE A BOOK IN BROKEN ASS AFRICAN AMERICAN DIALECT. my god it was painful to read it because i can normally skip through sentences real quick to read them, but when you get a sentence such as : "’Cause I hates de way his [Logan’s] head is so long one way and so flat on de sides and dat pone uh fat back uh his neck." or "Lawd, you know mah heart. Ah done de best Ah could do. De rest is left to you." for most of the dialogue its fucking painful.[/QUOTE] I prefer 451 of 1984 because 1984(Just like Brave New World) are massive hyperboles. 451 actually vested most of the blame on the People for not caring but Ray wasn't cynical about it either and saw that we could fix our mistakes. BNW and 1984 are books you read if you hate humanity or just want to know why everyone keeps misusing them when talking about Government. If you liked 451, you might like [I]Somethign Wicked Comes this Way.[/I]
I honestly attribute reading as to why I am a high school graduate, otherwise I would have dropped out because it was a terribly boring experience. Books and a few good teachers kept me sane enough to stay out of trouble. I had a lot of friends and shit, but there is only so much you can do with friends in class that doesn't disrupt others or break bullshit rules.
I never had to read Of Mice and Men, and while I wasn't a fan of TKAM, to remove it would just be terrible.
[QUOTE=macdoo999;44905255]Shakespeare's plays really are brilliant, but not when read out in a class. You need proper actors to actually convey it. I mean, imagine reading the script to Fight Club or something in English class without any of the acting or props or physical acting. It would be one of the dullest things you could do yet that's exactly what reading Shakespeare in English class is.[/QUOTE] Fight Club is a book.
I just read 1984 in my freetime cause I heard HL2 was based on it :v: I was rather dissapointed, but it allowed me to make witty sounding yet simply angsty quotes that made my friends hate me, so... win?
[QUOTE=Kwigg;44904233]Of Mice and Men was miles better than that bloody Lord of the Flies we had to read. Axe that instead.[/QUOTE] What the fuck they are both fucking great?
Swear this man is hated by every single person in the educational system on every level. Fucks over year 11's 2 years ago with English results because "they have it too easy", then changes the marking system half way through my A-Levels so it's been modular one year, and now I have all my exams in a 1-month period.
What id give to have read either of those instead of pride and prejudice, that fucking book bored the hell out of me, and while i can appreciate shakespears work i really did not want to read any of the 3 books that was forced upon me. The only book we read that was somewhat entertaining was hatchet. I read quite alot now but at the time i was completly turned off by the establishment that was trying to do the opposite.
Regardless of personal opinion about these books, one man should not be able to remove them from the GCSE syllabus because of a personal dislike of them. These books are very suitable for 15-16 year olds to analyse and report about, and it also introduces the students to historical events and classic books - something which many of them would not have had an opportunity to study otherwise. Also, now teachers will have to learn new material which will lead to misinformation and lessons not being taught to the best of their ability. This will further cause a disparity between the GCSE results of pupils during the 2000s-2013, and the results from students taking the exams after 2013.
[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;44904394]Which is hilarious because there [I]is[/I] a clear answer if you look deep enough, and you'd be wrong to say anything else. Thank god my junior high school teacher taught like that giving absolutely no shits for the curriculum. [editline]25th May 2014[/editline] The thing is that it really depends on what author you're talking about when referencing this graph. Some authors really delve deep into pointless meanings and others just do raw descriptive backgrounds, it really depends on the situation. The real problem is that they over analyze the wrong things in the wrong way. Modern teachers have no freaking clue how to teach kids in ways that entertain them, which I think is principle in getting kids to learn. If you like something, you'd be completely willing to learn about it.[/QUOTE] Well sometimes you're reading certain Tolkien novels (like "Lord of the Rings") where he can spend pages describing a fucking tree. And sometimes you're reading a Hemingway short story (like "Hills Like White Elephants") and you don't even get told what's happening, you have to infer it from the text. I personally favour Hemingway's approach but most of my english teachers disagreed and had us run every god damn paragraph through a sift to find some assbackwards meanings, which were often really forced and weakly supported. [QUOTE=ForgottenKane;44904427]One perfect example would have to be history: everyone I know talks about it like it's the worst subject ever, but the class never really delves into interesting historic topics or even important ones to get the kids interested. Seriously, when's the last time anyone's heard a history teacher talk about the children's crusade or the great tulip collapse of the Ottoman empire?[/QUOTE] History is one of the most important classes in school, because it's not the study of some theoretical garbage, most of which will never be used by anyone you know: history is the study of human success and failure as far back as we knew how to record that sort of thing. This is important because you will get people saying things like "Rome fell because it became immoral and gay" (exact quote from a guy I knew). That's not even an oversimplification, that's just plain retarded. But then these assholes will use "history" to back up the arguments, trying to prevent gay marriage in America and shit like that. History does repeat itself, in a fashion, and when you tie history into other topics, you see some very interesting trends. Tie it into sociology and you get the waves of culture/counter-culture that shift every generation or two. Tie it into economics and you can watch various firms cause stock bubbles to grow and collapse again and again, and pretty much for the same reason every time: unfettered growth (with the wealth concentrating at the top but no one caring because times are good) and complete failure (with nothing left to go around because the "benevolent" leader ran with the money). As you can see, there are very practical and real applications for historical study that almost never get talked about, except at maybe the university level. Good luck getting any real information out of a high-school history class (my province thinks we should spend our precious time in high-school learning about totally useless shit like the Canadian fur trade... so much for being able to apply that knowledge to the future) The most important thing about history is the realization that we are standing on the backs of the people who came before us. Everything we do today is possible because of something someone else did yesterday. On that note, our class time should be spent on two things: how people succeeded in and with human history, and how people failed, especially by ignoring it. Understanding the success and failure of others and how you could have done better might help you make better decisions in the future... which is what I think is really the point of learning human history. [QUOTE=AK'z;44906165]yeah that's not gonna happen m8. and then that creates much more work for the teacher.[/QUOTE] In my last year of high school, the teacher gave us a list of approved books and let us choose. It was a really neat way of doing things that allowed us to pick what we were interested in. She actually specifically recommended one to me, which was both hilarious and very serious at the same time. It was called "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime". It's a book written from the perspective of an autistic kid investigating the death of someone's dog. It's not a book for everyone, but for the people who can get into it it is so damn weird and funny while also being an interesting look into what an autistic mind might look like from the inside (don't have to look too far to see it from the outside I'm afraid). [QUOTE=ForgottenKane;44903996]I think that schools just teach Shakespeare the wrong way. His plays are fantastic comedies and people don't realize it. Hell, my favorite play is his first one, where the story is about a man who bakes his daughter into a fuckin' pie. It's amazing dark comedy but we treat it like it's some high class sophisticated shit when the plays back then were always aimed toward the lower class. [editline]25th May 2014[/editline] Romeo and Juliet is a dark ironic comedy and people don't realize it. Hell, the ending itself is a giant givaway to that fact.[/QUOTE] Shakespeare's plays are excellent... when presented as plays. They make for kinda shitty books and I have no idea why schools insist on teaching them that way. But on the topic of Romeo and Juliet, I was very surprised no one else thought it was funny. All I could think the whole time was "how can two people be so consistantly dumb?" while I laughed at their angsty teenage lust. "Love at first sight" my ass.
I'm taking an English Language GCSE exam in Mice And Men in a week or so. I didn't read the book, but as long as you have decent bullshitting skills it's fairly easy. The course is literally called 'literature of other cultures' so unless Gove is planning to axe the entire course in separate cultures (which in my opinion would be a bad fucking idea) the other books will stay. (The source only mentions the OCR exam board will be axing the books anyway, and AQA and Edexcel are more common, I'd have thought.) Gove is a complete twat and has come up with some of the worst reforms in education in a long time. And this reform isn't any change. I really think we should be ditching Shakespeare because there are no skills I learned from Shakespeare that I didn't or couldn't learn from more contemporary authours - besides, shakespeare's really getting irrelevant and honestly is treated as unintelligible drivel by most students. Worst of all the kind of shit you have to make up in these courses is unbelievable, and I feel like it's teaching us to be a salesman or politician who can pull facts out of their ass, rather than developing any relevant skills. English Lit should be purely AS/A2 level in my opinion. And Gove can go fuck himself.
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