As an English teacher, one of my favourite poems to teach, to pupils of almost all ages, is Chinua Achebe’s ‘Vultures’. In the poem, the speaker describes various images that uncomfortably combine love and violence: a vulture picking apart a corpse before nestling up to its mate; a Commandant at Belsen buying chocolate for his children whilst the ‘fumes of human roast… cling rebelliously to his nostrils’. I choose to teach it not because Achebe is black, or because I am trying to decolonise my teaching, but because it asks fundamental questions about human nature and the universal duality of good and evil, something which transcends race, sex or class.
Curriculums should be about imparting knowledge, not advancing social justice
And this is why I am so concerned about Labour’s determination to ‘refresh’ the curriculum by ‘diversifying’ subjects that have been branded too ‘mono-cultural’. Curriculums should be about imparting knowledge, not advancing social justice. English literature has long been an epicentre of this culture war, and has now effectively become a subset of sociology. Writers are chosen because they offer us insights into current social and political issues, rather than because of their artistic merits, or because they express something meaningful about the human experience that transcends particular contexts.
OCR, one of the largest exam boards in England, has already removed Seamus Heaney and Philip Larkin from their GCSE poetry anthology (14 out of the 15 new writers added to their new syllabus will be non-white). The idea that these poets belong to a bygone era that is irrelevant in a multicultural classroom is hopelessly reductive. Heaney’s ‘Death of a Naturalist’ is one of the most vivid imaginings of the whiplash of adolescence, and I have never met a student who wasn’t moved by his description of grief in ‘Mid-Term Break’.
Whilst we should not overlook the artistic work of ethnic minorities, removing writers simply for being ‘pale, male and stale’ is only justifiable if we make some dangerous assumptions. First, that race (and sex) is the only thing that defines the life and experiences of a person. Second, that students, in particular those from minority backgrounds, can only enjoy and appreciate texts that reflect their own personal characteristics. Third, that what matters most when choosing texts to study is the identity of the authors, not their mastery over language.
Prioritising diversity inevitably results in exclusion rather than inclusion. If we include more writers from Black British backgrounds, should we not also include more Asian British writers? If we include a gay writer, do we also need to include a lesbian one? Should we remove a female author to make way for a disabled one? What about working-class authors – after all, we desperately need to improve the outcomes for white working class boys, who are already the least academically successful in schools.
What is even more frustrating about this ideological fixation on ‘relatability’ and ‘accessibility’ is it is not even needed. Bridget Phillipson underestimates how diverse the curriculum already is. Take AQA English Literature GCSE: for the modern prose module, there is a choice of six texts, half of which are written by writers who are ethnic minorities (Kazuo Ishiguro, Meera Syal and Kit de Waal). For the modern drama module, Alan Bennett’s The History Boys is already being replaced with Chinonyerem Odimba’s Princess and the Hustler, whilst Simon Stephen’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (surely a ‘diverse’ text given it is about an autistic child) is being replaced by Winsome Pinnock’s Leave Taking.
It is the same with AQA History GCSE. Teachers can already choose modules on the Gulf and Afghanistan (1990-2009), conflict and tension in Asia (1950-1975), and conflict and tension between the East and West (1945-1972). OCR A-level History already has a compulsory non-British period module; students can already learn about the rise of Islam, African kingdoms, the rise and decline of the Mughal Empire in India, Japan 1853-1937, apartheid in South Africa, or the Middle East from 1908-2011.
Shrewd teenagers can also spot tokenism a mile away. Ask any student studying AQA GCSE English Literature what they think of ‘Singh Song’ by Daljit Nagra, a poem that contains the lines, ‘vee share in di chutney / after vee hav made luv / like vee rowing through Putney.’ It’s not that we shouldn’t study Nagra – his poem ‘Look we have coming to Dover!’ is a clever, complicated portrayal of the immigrant experience, and in clear conversation with Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’. But including this particular poem feels like more of a shallow symbolic gesture; one I fear will be replicated throughout the curriculum if we focus on relatability rather than aspiration.
In short, Labour are trying to solve a problem that simply isn’t there. Instead, they should be focusing on the real issues facing schools – poor attendance, challenging behaviour, crumbling buildings, falling teacher recruitment and retention – as this is ultimately what impacts students’ lives.
