When an education minister starts dictating the reading lists for pupils in our schools, I worry that were evolving into an elective dictatorship. The role of a secretary of state is to set the direction for his department, and when he starts to interfere in the details, it brings party politics to the public service in an utterly unacceptable way. When I was doing O and A Level English Lit, I read Steinbeck and Hemingway alongside Hardy and Dickens. These great works of American literature led me to explore writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Auster and Philip Roth, but didnt deter me from reading William Golding, Robert Graves and George Orwell. Gove is making a big mistake in removing American literature from the school syllabus, but its just the most recent of many. Its time this misguided and unpleasant man was moved to another portfolio, like Administrative Affairs.
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 17:54:15 +0000
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