0
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
0 points (50.0% liked)
United Kingdom
4108 readers
145 users here now
General community for news/discussion in the UK.
Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.
Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The main complaint is that for people of colour, to be sat in a classroom with their peers whilst the derogatory words are read out loud is highly uncomfortable for them. I totally can understand that and why this is now coming up as more and more of the UK are becoming multicultural.
It should be taught in a classroom yes, but probably not in English literature class and something more like a Modern History of British Culture class, where it can be explained why Of Mice and Men was originally selected for a GCSE book, why it’s no longer acceptable, why the derogatory words are disgraceful and then why it was removed from the syllabus. This gives an all round education on the subject. Not perfect but it’s a start.
When I was in high school I was told half-caste was an acceptable term in the mid 2000s, and I still accidentally used it till a couple years ago because I was never told otherwise. It was only because of a friend who is more social than I am told me it’s no longer acceptable to use to refer to people with mixed racial parents.
It's possible to read the novel and see discriminatory language without speaking it aloud. It needs to be taught in a context where the racism (and misogyny and abuse of disabled as well) are called out. English lessons are the best place for this to happen.
There's a great poem that's been taught in English classrooms for years by John Agard called "Half-Caste" where he demolishes the racism of the term.
Teachers - English teachers - need to challenge and discuss racism.
Sounds like I had a crap English teacher then if being taught “half-caste” was meant to frame it as a racist term.
Quite likely. There are a great number of poorly-educated terrible English teachers. Pot luck if you find a good one in a school.
I can see why, only if it is still being taught as it was 30 years ago - ie without addressing the language used - and I hope thats not the case. I can't imagine anyone doing so in 2023.
If you start pulling stuff for those reasons (and for the record, I dont understand why they are still reading Steinbeck anyway) you go down a slightly dodgy path.
Of Mice and Men is a good novel for lower-attaining teens who struggle with reading. It's very short (5 or so chapters), deals with "adult issues" and is a bit like a "novel-by-numbers" where you can introduce things like setting, theme, characters, symbolism in a pretty straightforward way. One of the problems was that when schools began chasing exam grades in earnest because of accountability, ALL kids started studying the novel including the top end who should be academically stretched by something more challenging.