Immediate Education Reform or 'David Tries Being the Education Secretary'

Michael Gove is an idiot.

This is a fact. He's out of touch and quite frankly a dangerous influence to have so high up the pyramid of power.

This morning it has been revealed that his new curriculum for GCSE students omits To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Two of the best and most important novels ever written. They're novels that appear on scores of lists of favourite books, and communicate important messages to the reader. Yet the fact that Of Mice and Men being in the reading lists of 90% of GCSE students is seen as 'worrying' by Mr Gove.

I'm sorry, but why. A novel about two men who share a dream. It shows that life is difficult and sometimes you don't get what you want. It's a sad novel, but an important novel. It's a 20th Century novel.

Gove believes that anything post-1800 is unimportant. His curriculum is composed of Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens and romantic poets. I'm not saying that these aren't important. But the point is they're not more important than anything else. They're authors, not gods. They're highly acclaimed because people like Gove sit in their ivory towers and deem it so. If I had a lot of money, I could get myself into a position of power. I could buy myself a great deal of land, get myself into the circles of the high and mighty and forge myself a career in politics. And then I could say We're Going on a Bear Hunt is the finest novel in the English language. And it is one of them. What kid hasn't heard it? What child doesn't have 'we're not scared' as part of their personal identity? And if they don't then that's fine too because no one person should measure importance in literature. What if a Twilight fanatic became education secretary, or a 50 Shades desperado? We'd be taught that male-centric relationships and lack of consent bondage sessions are the most important things in literature.

But that's the point, anyone with power and money can say anything's great. And whatever Gove's reasoning, he's saying that a collection of authors who are a) all dead and b) all English, are the most important things our children should be reading.

But lets look at the children in the class for a second. How many people are 100% English these days. I'm not, I'm Irish/Scottish/Italian and I'm not seeing my nationality represented on the curriculum. That's just an example. What about middle eastern children? Wouldn't they benefit from seeing something like The Kite Runner on the curriculum? How about Noughts and Crosses? Malorie Blackman's groundbreaking novel that shows us that race and labels should not be an issue. Michael Gove's message is if you're not English then you're not important. Congratulations, you've just alienated the vast majority of English classrooms.

Diversity is so important in modern Great Britain. We are a multicultural nation and this should be celebrated, not locked in a cupboard and deemed 'unimportant' and 'worrying'. What's next? Only British artists in galleries? Only British musicians on the radio?

In my opinion, the curriculum of all subjects, not just English, should be decided by a council of teachers, authors, students, politicians, parents and whoever else has a say on the subject in question. Not by one man with the world's most elite view on literature believing that every child will relate to someone who's been dead 400 years.

Ask any teenager these days what literature they think is important and a lot of them won't say Shakespeare. They'll say The Perks of Being a Wallflower. They'll say The Fault in Our Stars. They'll say Divergent. Why do we disgregard these novels purely because a) the authors are alive and well, b) they sit in the Young Adult section not Classics, and c) if you're Michael Gove, they're American? I could write an essay each on these novels and a thousand others why they deserve just as much right on the syllabus as Hamlet.

All novels have equal importance because they can mean something to someone. I disgregarded Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey earlier in this blog. Just because I have a personal dislike for them doesn't mean they should be disregarded either. They mean something to a lot of people. No one person, myself included should have the final say on matters as important as literature.

I urge you, whatever party Michael Gove sits with in next year's general elections, vote the opposite. He's a dangerous man.

We need an immediate education reform. Basically, boot grandad out.

A Fancy Way of Saying Not Much or 'David Tries Being a Third Year'

Well internet, I'm annoyed.

And I'll tell you for why. I'd call him JJ, but that unfortunately makes him sound cool, and in my opinion, so far, he is not. I am talking about the so-called master wordsmith James Joyce.

I'll be honest, I'm 40 pages into the 900 page leviathan confuse-athon and so far I am just that. Confused isn't the word, I may be confuzzled to say the least. My lecturer said to me in a meeting with him, that it was his personal opinion that Modernism (and James Joyce is the main flag-bearer for that particular critical theory) was a fancy way of saying not much at all. And I'm inclined to agree.

I understand modernism, I understand the movement to create new ways to tell stories. Without modernism we wouldn't have Catcher in the Rye, or Dracula, two stories told in ways which were previously unheard of. Catcher in the Rye, like Ulysses, the book I am struggling through, written in a stream of consciousness way, Dracula written as a series of letters and diary entries. A style which I found gripping and interesting, and it's why these are two of my favourite books.

Ulysses though. It makes me angry! Joyce makes so many claims as though they're gospel truth. And I understand why he writes, as in to get people to think about things, namely irish home rule and British imperialism at its time of writing, but this is hidden amongst so many other subplots and asides it's almost impossible to keep up with. In the first page alone I was confronted with three different ideals and preachy statements concerning religion, a quest for paternity and something else which my brain can't even start to remember. The only way these themes were brought to my attention was by consulting the notes.

'Stately, plumb Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: - Introibo ad altare Dei'

Would anyone like to guess what you're supposed to get from those opening lines to this book? Just a man having a leisurely stroll down the stairs to have a shave. Why he's so lazy he hasn't even done up his dressing gown? That crazy mo-fo.

While this is happening in the story, I am suppose to ignore this point, i.e. what is actually happening. Instead I'm supposed to remark on the crossed mirror and razor which makes a mockery of the Catholic church and the catholic mass as he creates a mock worship in his shaving routine. Therefore there's a distinct anti-religion theme. I'm supposed to take his ungirdled dressing down as to meaning that he's walking down the stairs naked, as in, displaying his penis. His ease with which he displays his penis is mean to represent his affinity with Neitzsche's Superman, the übermensch. The ideal representation of how a man should be. This is meant to lead me to the two main character's quest for their paternity, though Stephen Dedalus has not even been introduced to us yet. Then there's something else of importance about the fact that he used Latin frivilously. I can't remember because I can't fit anything else in my head.

That was six lines!

And sure, you can say 'but David, you're an English student, you're supposed to do this to any book.' And I'd agree, and I love doing it, but not to every single line, to a series of completely unrelated preachy points. I disagree with preachiness on all levels. My dissertation is centred mainly around this point. I dislike being told what to believe and what is good literature. I don't think this is good literature. I don't think good literature should include a vital notes section without which you miss the point of the book. And the notes are extensive. As in about 300 pages worth. 300 pages explaining the incomprehensible words in this stupid book!

I like finding the meaning in things, and I think it's impressive that so much can be put into a book. But is any of it necessary? Did I need to have all of this shoved down my throat by James Joyce? I don't think so. I think you get much much more from books written by John Green. I mention John Green a lot in my blogs and in life in general and there's a reason for that. His skill is to create a fantastic story with gripping characters which you can read in a day because you literally can't put his books down. You feel like any moment you're not reading his book is a moment wasted. When I pick up Ulysses, with a veritable groan I feel my heart sinking as I know that in about half an hour's time I'm going to have a headache and then find that I've only progressed 3 pages.

Interesting characters are vitally important to literature. I personally find it interesting to see the author through his characters. And what I see through the high and mighty, douchebag that is Buck Mulligan, and the reserved 'perfect man' that is Stephen Dedalus is the two sides of James Joyce, neither of which I like. Both of them preaching in their own ways.

It's an interesting story that books used to be sealed, and you had to break each new page as you progressed through the book. The vast majority of copies of Ulysses which have been found from it's time of publication were not broken in beyond page 50. As in no one could get through it. Did they miss out? I don't think so. They probably went and read Dracula, had a thumping good read, and then if  they wanted they learnt some really interesting and vital points about feminism and other things contained importantly within pages, which, insultingly at the time was seen as 'Tesco's Top Ten' literature. The 50 Shades of Grey of its day. And yes, times change, but really, 50 Shades of Grey is a steaming pile of horse manure. Dracula is a really good book. And yes that's my opinion. However I wouldn't be high and mighty enough to say without doubt that every person in the world must read Dracula. I highly recommend you give it a try but I don't think anything is vital literature. Least of all Ulysses.

So now I struggle on, because I must read about why James Joyce believes that boys playing sports and learning Classics in England led to World War One.

I shit you not. Page 41, here I come. *waves flag of sarcasm*