As the co-founder of the West London Free School, I receive a lot of junk mail from ‘educationalists’ trying to sell me various bric-a-brac, most of it pretty harmless. Occasionally, though, I get something genuinely disturbing. For instance, this week a publisher tried to interest me in the novels of Charles Dickens ‘retold in a sophisticated graphic novel format’. ‘With atmospheric black and white illustrations and simple text this series is ideal for drawing in readers who struggle with the original version,’ he wrote.
It’s a truth generally acknowledged in the state education sector that children aged 16 and under cannot cope with the novels of Charles Dickens. His books are rarely included in the GCSE English syllabus and most school libraries, if they stock any Dickens at all, only carry grossly simplified versions, such as the ‘graphic novels’ above. Claire Tomalin, author of the latest Dickens biography, seems to share this pessimistic attitude. ‘Children are not being educated to have prolonged attention spans and you have to be prepared to read steadily for a Dickens novel,’ she told the Press Association last week.
Is it true that children can’t cope with Dickens? Not in my experience. I’m reading my eight-year-old daughter the original, unexpurgated version of Oliver Twist and she loves it. Admittedly, she sometimes asks me what a particular word means — but that’s called ‘learning’, isn’t it? I don’t think she’s particularly exceptional, either. Last December, I arranged for all the pupils at my school to go to the Arts Theatre to see Simon Callow reciting A Christmas Carol and they sat there, absolutely spellbound, for the duration. Teachers were placed around the theatre ready to quash any outbreaks of bad behaviour, but not a single child needed to be told off.
So what are children studying instead of Dickens in most state schools? I’m indebted to Joseph Reynolds, the tireless campaigner against the dumbing down of the GCSE English curriculum, for enlightening me on this point. Mr Reynolds first came to national attention two years ago when he complained that his daughter’s school had ditched Shakespeare in favour of The Simpsons. He lost that battle, but he struggles on valiantly, a one-man crusader against falling standards.
He tells me that the latest horror in the Edexcel GCSE English syllabus is a ‘unit’ called ‘English Today Theme Two (Talent Television)’ in which pupils are expected to study the ITV1 homepage of Britain’s Got Talent, an advert for a reality show called Got to Dance and a 2009 cover of Heat magazine. When Mr Reynolds’s wife complained (Edexcel won’t respond to his letters any more) she was told that Heat conformed to the National Curriculum requirement that texts studied in English should be ‘of high quality, among the best of their type’. ‘It must be assumed that any magazine front cover is of “high quality” in terms of media,’ wrote Alan Pearce, an Edexcel employee. ‘Consequently, the study of any magazine cover can be considered to satisfy NC requirements.’
Pearce is confusing two meanings of the phrase ‘high quality’ here. I think it’s a safe bet that what the compilers of the National Curriculum had in mind is a piece of text that contains some literary value, not a magazine cover that exhibits high production values. Consequently, the fact that the picture on the cover of Heat is in focus and the words are legible does not mean it’s of sufficiently high quality to serve as an English set text. Rather, than, say, Oliver Twist or Great Expectations. Ah well, Mr Pearce. It’s good enough for the oiks who go to comprehensives, isn’t it, even though any fee-paying school that encouraged pupils to read Heat in an English lesson would soon go out of business.
Perhaps I’m being a little too hasty in claiming that most comprehensives consider Dickens far too difficult for ordinary children. A report has just reached me from the parent of a child at a community school in west London whose daughter was recently shown a video of A Muppet Christmas Carol in her English class. Unfortunately, midway through the teacher decided it was too demanding and switched it off.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we will never dismantle our class system if we allow children from poor backgrounds to waste their time at school reading comics — sorry, ‘graphic novels’ — and watching reality shows while rich children are introduced to the best that has been thought and said. That’s not social justice. It’s social apartheid.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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