This makes me feel unutterably sad and desperate. But it has also spurred on a decision: from now on, when I am asked to read to children anywhere - including my beloved Southeast Asian schools where I read via Zoom - I will always choose the classics.
I was prepared to scoff at your takes here — making an unwarranted assumption that you objected to anyone examining the fact Orwell was a vicious asshole (if we’re being polite), because that’s what I’ve come to expect when I see “Orwell” — but out of a sense of fairness, decided to read both your review and this post fully.
Mea culpa; we fully agree.
I grew up until age ten in Russia, both Soviet and post-Soviet; my mama was a philologist by training, and even if she hadn’t been, my Russian primers were by and large classic short fiction, sketches, and extracts from longer romans and novels — sometimes but not necessarily ones written by Great Russian [sic — Gogol was a Russophone novelist, not Russian, I will die on this hill] Novelists specifically for children and adolescents.
As a result, I have zero fear of the classics (I don’t read them often because I’m still on a bizarro nonfiction and theory kick. I barely read pulp [complimentary] and popular [derogatory] novels any more, never mind classics from any genre, contemporary standouts, or anything else.) It genuinely helped to have those texts presented as accessible and age-appropriate.
If we’re going to chuck out Orwell, why not replace him with a notable author working in the same era and rough genre? Why not … idk, Zora Neale Hurston or somebody (I’m aware she was an anthropologist, but given enough time, a memoir becomes an autoethnology)? Since like … the other thing here is, a biography is not the same kind of text as a memoir. If we’re chucking “Down and Out In Paris and London”, at least replace it with something with a similar relationship to sources, verification, etc.
So: I followed the link to the syllabus, and it seems to me both a lot worse and slightly better than I understood from reading your summary.
Slightly better, in that I didn't understand that some of these are options, rather than a compulsory syllabus: it is still possible to study Emily Dickinson instead of Carol Ann Duffy (not your fault: reading back, you did say "allow the teaching of", and I simply misunderstood!).
But a lot worse, because I'm flabbergasted about just how limited and narrow the syllabus is as a whole. These are, if I understand correctly, people taking English as one of just three or four subjects at the school-leaving age of 18. And that's it? That's all they study? Fifteen short poems by one poet (only two of whom are writing before 1980)? One play, which doesn't have to be by Shakespeare? One (not very long) novel (only one of which was published before 1900)? And two factual books, both published (as they point out) after 2000? That's what they're spending a third of their time on for a year or two at school in their late teens? And this is meant to get them ready for studying English at university - or indeed for reading literature more widely at home?
Personally (and unlike C.S. Lewis), I think it's not a bad idea to include the occasional modern work in an English syllabus. I still remember the pleasure of studying Watership Down in school at the age of 12: it was less than 5 years after it was published. It's a book that I perhaps would have gotten round to reading eventually, but probably not so young, and I feel like I benefited hugely from reading it then - it's stayed with me for the rest of my life. But that was (a) a longer book than most of the ones on this syllabus; (b) challenging enough for a 12 year old so that it was helpful, if not essential, to read it with a teacher's guidance, and (c), crucially, being read in the context of a lot of more classic literature, which formed the main body of the syllabus.
I know teenagers are unwilling to read nowadays - in my own university-level teaching I push the students through a lot of difficult texts, and I'm met with constant complaints, as well as my own private realization that most of the students don't do all or even most of the reading, taking every short-cut they can to avoid it while still getting a reasonable grade. But I've never seen anything like this: these are students aged 17 or 18 who have actively chosen to study English, and they are made to read less in two years than I have on my syllabus for 6 weeks' worth of reading.
I don't know what can be done about this ("Old man shakes his fist at the heavens at the cluelessness of the young"). My feeling, like yours, is that there is still the desire for literature out there - novels are still being written and sold, even classic literature still seems to have a market. It's as much the lack of ambition on the part of the syllabus-setters that surprises me: presumably they COULD create a much more challenging syllabus if they wanted, and people would study it because they would have to. But apparently they don't. Is this about competition between subjects: the fear that if they make English too "difficult", people will abandon it for easier subjects instead?
This makes me feel unutterably sad and desperate. But it has also spurred on a decision: from now on, when I am asked to read to children anywhere - including my beloved Southeast Asian schools where I read via Zoom - I will always choose the classics.
yes! good!
I was prepared to scoff at your takes here — making an unwarranted assumption that you objected to anyone examining the fact Orwell was a vicious asshole (if we’re being polite), because that’s what I’ve come to expect when I see “Orwell” — but out of a sense of fairness, decided to read both your review and this post fully.
Mea culpa; we fully agree.
I grew up until age ten in Russia, both Soviet and post-Soviet; my mama was a philologist by training, and even if she hadn’t been, my Russian primers were by and large classic short fiction, sketches, and extracts from longer romans and novels — sometimes but not necessarily ones written by Great Russian [sic — Gogol was a Russophone novelist, not Russian, I will die on this hill] Novelists specifically for children and adolescents.
As a result, I have zero fear of the classics (I don’t read them often because I’m still on a bizarro nonfiction and theory kick. I barely read pulp [complimentary] and popular [derogatory] novels any more, never mind classics from any genre, contemporary standouts, or anything else.) It genuinely helped to have those texts presented as accessible and age-appropriate.
If we’re going to chuck out Orwell, why not replace him with a notable author working in the same era and rough genre? Why not … idk, Zora Neale Hurston or somebody (I’m aware she was an anthropologist, but given enough time, a memoir becomes an autoethnology)? Since like … the other thing here is, a biography is not the same kind of text as a memoir. If we’re chucking “Down and Out In Paris and London”, at least replace it with something with a similar relationship to sources, verification, etc.
yes indeed
So: I followed the link to the syllabus, and it seems to me both a lot worse and slightly better than I understood from reading your summary.
Slightly better, in that I didn't understand that some of these are options, rather than a compulsory syllabus: it is still possible to study Emily Dickinson instead of Carol Ann Duffy (not your fault: reading back, you did say "allow the teaching of", and I simply misunderstood!).
But a lot worse, because I'm flabbergasted about just how limited and narrow the syllabus is as a whole. These are, if I understand correctly, people taking English as one of just three or four subjects at the school-leaving age of 18. And that's it? That's all they study? Fifteen short poems by one poet (only two of whom are writing before 1980)? One play, which doesn't have to be by Shakespeare? One (not very long) novel (only one of which was published before 1900)? And two factual books, both published (as they point out) after 2000? That's what they're spending a third of their time on for a year or two at school in their late teens? And this is meant to get them ready for studying English at university - or indeed for reading literature more widely at home?
Personally (and unlike C.S. Lewis), I think it's not a bad idea to include the occasional modern work in an English syllabus. I still remember the pleasure of studying Watership Down in school at the age of 12: it was less than 5 years after it was published. It's a book that I perhaps would have gotten round to reading eventually, but probably not so young, and I feel like I benefited hugely from reading it then - it's stayed with me for the rest of my life. But that was (a) a longer book than most of the ones on this syllabus; (b) challenging enough for a 12 year old so that it was helpful, if not essential, to read it with a teacher's guidance, and (c), crucially, being read in the context of a lot of more classic literature, which formed the main body of the syllabus.
I know teenagers are unwilling to read nowadays - in my own university-level teaching I push the students through a lot of difficult texts, and I'm met with constant complaints, as well as my own private realization that most of the students don't do all or even most of the reading, taking every short-cut they can to avoid it while still getting a reasonable grade. But I've never seen anything like this: these are students aged 17 or 18 who have actively chosen to study English, and they are made to read less in two years than I have on my syllabus for 6 weeks' worth of reading.
I don't know what can be done about this ("Old man shakes his fist at the heavens at the cluelessness of the young"). My feeling, like yours, is that there is still the desire for literature out there - novels are still being written and sold, even classic literature still seems to have a market. It's as much the lack of ambition on the part of the syllabus-setters that surprises me: presumably they COULD create a much more challenging syllabus if they wanted, and people would study it because they would have to. But apparently they don't. Is this about competition between subjects: the fear that if they make English too "difficult", people will abandon it for easier subjects instead?
One thing we can do is to publicly insist on higher standards!
This is a really brilliant article.
I’m curious about- alas Fitzgerald?
I read Tender is the Night twice (both versions) and hated it both times