11th June 2014 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The announcement that the new English GCSE will not include works by the seminal American authors Harper-Lee, Steinbeck, Miller and the recently deceased Maya Angelou has caused outrage amongst educators. Although the department for education has stated that it has not banned any books, it has become clear that their guidelines for exam boards have left no room for them to be included. Concerns have been raised that the department for education has played a far greater role than it should in determining what children study at school, fuelled by the revelation that the education secretary expressed his personal dislike of the former set texts.
Educators of all types around the country are now tasked with responding to this as best they can. Teachers are now having to adapt to brand new syllabi featuring works such as Meera Syal’s Anita and Me, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, which have replaced Harper-Lee’s tale of racism and social justice in the American South To Kill a Mockingbird, and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible which uses the Salem witch trials as a means to explore the political and social tensions of the Mccarthy campaign against communism in America. This change has come as the department for education has demanded that the category “prose from different cultures” should be replaced with “modern works from Britain”. Naturally teachers may well struggle to prepare for such a drastic change in the syllabus, in addition to grappling with their own feelings that students are not being given access to some of the most important works of the 20th Century.
It is important that, as hard as we campaign against the damaging decisions of the department of education, teachers and tutors continue to provide the best education that we can for students. It will be crucial that we do not prejudice our students against the new works by airing our grievances unreservedly. However, it has now fallen to individual educators to encourage students to read the seminal American works exploring social justice, and this should be a priority for us. The themes explored in these books remain highly relevant, a fact which teachers can use to promote them amongst their students. Whatever happens to the English Syllabus, teachers, tutors and parents now have a responsibility to encourage students to read these vital works.