I can’t say that I believe that, for the last 20 years at least, that schools’ reading lists have meant that children have left school with a feeling for the rich literacy heritage of English. Some may well have done, but I bet that the majority of these would have been, in the main, supported and role modelled by their parents literacy and the books on their shelves. However, there will have been some who were stimulated by their English curriculum. Now being accused of a “Dumbing down” of the Key Stage 3 curriculum Alan Johnson, the Schools minister says that the place of “heritage” novels has been secured. Though, it appears, very little else is sure to remain. What it does mean is that, it appears, modern novels (modern say, after the first world war !) seem to be likely to disappear as do novels written in English by writers from other ethnic heritages.
I can’t say that I believe that, for the last 20 years at least, that schools’ reading lists have meant that children have left school with a feeling for the rich literacy heritage of English. Some may well have done, but I bet that the majority of these would have been, in the main, supported and role modelled by their parents literacy and the books on their shelves. However, there will have been some who were stimulated by their English curriculum. Now being accused of a “Dumbing down” of the Key Stage 3 curriculum Alan Johnson, the Schools minister says that the place of “heritage” novels has been secured. Though, it appears, very little else is sure to remain. What it does mean is that, it appears, modern novels (modern say, after the first world war !) seem to be likely to disappear as do novels written in English by writers from other ethnic heritages.
There is going to be a review of some categories of writers by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, these categories come under three headings: fiction by major writers after 1914, including EM Forster, William Golding, Graham Greene and DH Lawrence; recent and contemporary fiction, among them JG Ballard, Laurie Lee, and Alan Sillitoe; and fiction from different cultures and traditions, including Maya Angelou, Nadine Gordimer, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The QCA's review of English teaching, English 21, launched by the poet laureate, Andrew Motion, has provoked an occasionally furious debate about the merits or otherwise of prescribing texts. Much to the QCA's surprise, some teachers consulted are against the plan to give them more flexibility over choice of books.
According to the existing curriculum, 11- to 14-year-olds should study a Shakespeare play, eight major poets and four major fiction writers - half from before 1914 - and "drama by major playwrights". Formal consultation on the new curriculum will not begin until February 2007 and it is not expected to be implemented until September 2008. Nick Gibb, shadow minister for schools, said: "We welcome this change of heart by the government."
11-14 English curriculum
Staying in
Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, John Bunyan, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Henry Fielding, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jonathan Swift, Anthony Trollope, HG Wells
Under threat
EM Forster, William Golding, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, DH Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, George Orwell, Muriel Spark, William Trevor, Evelyn Waugh, JG Ballard, RK Narayan, Berlie Doherty, Susan Hill, Laurie Lee, Joan Lingard, Alan Sillitoe, Bill Naughton, Mildred Taylor, Robert Westall, Chinua Achebe, Maya Angelou, Willa Cather, Anita Desai, Nadine Gordimer, Ernest Hemingway, HH Richardson, Doris Lessing, John Steinbeck, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
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