The Times reports today that
teenagers could soon be able to pass an English exam at GCSE level without having to read a single novel poem or play.
Read article HERE in Times Online
How does making kids plough through novel-length set texts when they don’t read, of their own volition, anything other than comics, leave them with anything other than a deeper abhorrence of reading?
Rather than just pull the plug, why don’t they try a few years of English GCSE based on set short stories?
You could argue that, in many novels, the prose is not as good as in a well-written short. So why…..
Discuss.
Essays to be handed in by next Friday.
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1 comment:
That's a very good idea. We had something like that in Ireland at that stage. I think that may have been when I first got my great love of short stories. We had on our syllabus, O Henry (Green Dolphin Street?), Saki (The Lumber Room), Sean O'Flaherty (Three Lambs), Frank O'Connor (My First Communion). The text book also had excerpts from Dickens (Pickwick Papers) and Joyce (I think from Portrait of the Artist, the opening.) Lots more besides, including my favourite story of all time: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce.
Yes, yes, yes (as they say on Points of View). A great idea.
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