GCSE students are to study the writings of…
Shakespeare..? Dickens..?
… Southend anti-poverty campaigner, cookery writer and blogger Jack Monroe.
*puzzled face*
The former Echo reporter’s blog posts on social deprivation, Hunger Hurts and I Can’t Even Open My Own Front Door have been put on the syllabus for 14 and 15-year-olds across the country.
What next, selections from the ‘Beano’..?
Announcing her writing’s inclusion on the exam syllabus on Facebook, she said: “Just got a letter to say two of my pieces of writing are going to be taught for GCSE English.
“Don’t really know how to react to this one, except I suspect it’s a very good thing that 14 and 15-year-olds up and down the country will have to study harrowing, first-hand accounts of poverty in Britain and therefore may be a generation that doesn’t try to deny its existence.”
Or might be a generation that thinks ‘Hmmm, better not get up the duff by some unsuitable bloke, then chuck my job in and spend so much money on tattoos I can’t afford food’.
I was at a Christmas party a few years ago and found myself sitting next to a colleague's wife, who teaches secondary school English.
ReplyDeleteAs we were chatting, at one point I asked her who her favourite novelist was. She shrugged and said "I haven't really got one."
"Ah, you're more into poetry!" I said. Blank stare.
"Drama?" I prompted, in desperation.
"No not really" she replied. "Though I did read something recently that I thought was absolutely incredible."
Thank God, I thought, something to talk about. "What was it?" I asked.
"My Booky-Wook by Russell Brand."
My God.
ReplyDeleteBunny
ReplyDeleteDear God and that is in charge of impressionable minds. Jack Monroe thinks that she knows about poverty, I can just imagine them in sub-Saharan Africa or my parent's generation comments about actual poverty.
There are a multitude of good writers and good writing out there that we could be giving to our young people quite apart from the stuff in the canon of literature like Dickens and Shakespeare. What about The Black Jacobins by CLR James for example if they are looking for stuff from a non-western leftist background, why pick this socialist attention whore?
ReplyDeleteIt's an unfortunate fact that such writings have an audience. I am old enough to have grown up in a generation which learned simple homemaking from mum and dad. Anyone born after 1965 may be fortunate to have someone helping them today. I don't like the look of the girl, but she's filling a need. GC blinking Es though? Is this some sort of indoctrination exercise? My old Sec Mod got a new English teacher from oop north, we were given The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists as our compulsory book. Most parents complained. So we got The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner instead. We still had to do Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm, so there were plenty of opportunities for our teachers to create nice little socialists.
ReplyDeleteState education - we'll sleepwalk your kids into PC stupidity. After we've taught them how to brush their teeth, of course.
ReplyDeleteFor once my comments echoes Melv. Spot on Melv - dear God indeed.
ReplyDeleteNever mind, Anonymous. The dark nights are coming and with them, the excuse to don the old stained Santa costume for more kiddie-fondling sessions.
ReplyDelete"Thank God, I thought, something to talk about. "What was it?" I asked.
ReplyDelete"My Booky-Wook by Russell Brand." "
*weeps*
" Jack Monroe thinks that she knows about poverty, I can just imagine them in sub-Saharan Africa or my parent's generation comments about actual poverty."
Quite! It's actually rather obscene, isn't it?
"..if they are looking for stuff from a non-western leftist background, why pick this socialist attention whore?"
Well, indeed.
"I am old enough to have grown up in a generation which learned simple homemaking from mum and dad. Anyone born after 1965 may be fortunate to have someone helping them today."
ReplyDeleteAnd yet there's never been more cookery shows, supermarkets give away free recipe cards...