I've been teaching GCSE English re-sits in the local college this academic year. It's a complete departure from my usual subjects and it's been something of a challenge but also totally fascinating to get a glimpse into what sort of thing the less-academic students read. Basically, they read nothing! However, a lot of them have said they enjoyed Mice and Men which was their set book in school for the Eng. Lit. exam.
But I read that article on BBC website yesterday and kept groaning aloud. Gove wants a syllabus that is exactly like the O-level I sat almost 50 years ago. The very same O-level that put me (a bright pupil) off studying English at A-level. And this was despite me being a keen reader who hoovered up books and who was writing fiction in secret and had ambitions to be a novelist. I hated Shakespeare (based on studying plays for exams) until I did an OU Shakespeare course as a mature adult and suddenly "got" him and achieved a distinction for that module. So if the old O-level syllabus did that to me, what effect is it going to have on the kids with no academic ambitions who want to do vocational subjects? It's just setting them up to fail and will put them off reading fiction for life. :(
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Date: 2014-05-26 10:44 am (UTC)But I read that article on BBC website yesterday and kept groaning aloud. Gove wants a syllabus that is exactly like the O-level I sat almost 50 years ago. The very same O-level that put me (a bright pupil) off studying English at A-level. And this was despite me being a keen reader who hoovered up books and who was writing fiction in secret and had ambitions to be a novelist. I hated Shakespeare (based on studying plays for exams) until I did an OU Shakespeare course as a mature adult and suddenly "got" him and achieved a distinction for that module. So if the old O-level syllabus did that to me, what effect is it going to have on the kids with no academic ambitions who want to do vocational subjects? It's just setting them up to fail and will put them off reading fiction for life. :(