gcse set texts

[holloway]

just wondering what the consensus is in ED regarding gov proposals to remove classic, albeit American ones, such as 'to kill a mockingbird' from English gcse programmes??

Mockingbird is one of my all time favourites although I've never read 'of mice and men' another set text facing the axe. some boards want to introduce 'never let me go', too modern..?

[minder]

Maybe it's time for a change. I sat my 'O' Level English Lang and Lit in 1979 to 'to kill a mockingbird' and found it hard going (passed by the way) but I think it should be phased out for something else.

[Nigello]

Literature can be as much about culture and history as it is about the art, emotion etc, so Dickens, Woolf, Jonson, Thomas, du Maurier, Austen etc deliver a "triple whammy", if you like, that could help pupils in their other areas of study. (British) English literature is so diverse that I don't see the need to go to the US, Australia, Canada etc for GCSE or 'A'-level. A good teacher can recommend such texts for personal reading or - get this - an inspired pupil could discover what they really like themselves. Such curiosity, though, does depend on parental and school input to an extent.

[steveo]

I wasn't fond of Mice and Men or his meisterwerk Grapes of Wrath but I loved loads of other Steinbeck stuff especially Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat, magical books which ought to be read when you are a teenager.

Unfortunately the Mailonline seems to be the standard of literature the whippersnappers are most fond of these days.