Is this a justified response to public concern or censorship?

Last updated 11:32, Tuesday, 23 September 2008

I for one will be eagerly looking out for the job adverts from our public examination bodies which will allow me to make my own small contribution to what is taught and tested in our schools.

Just to give you an idea of what it might look like, I offer the following:

“Applications are invited for the post of Curriculum Monitor (formerly Chief Interfering Busybody) to oversee the selection of texts and curriculum materials for study at GCSE and A-level. Candidates should have strong views which are unencumbered by subject knowledge, educational expertise or awareness of current developments in teaching and learning and preferably own their own soap-box.

“A belief that nothing good has happened in the world since they were at school, a conviction that most modern culture is a bit weird and a complete lack of empathy for issues concerning young people, would all be an advantage. “Academics and experienced classroom practitioners are excluded. Preference will be given to those who have amassed a personal fortune, or who are members of a reactionary Think Tank but ordinary members of the public are equally welcome to apply. Please send a rant of no more than 2,000 words to the Human Resources Department.”

Well, in case you missed it, Mrs Pat Schofield, an external examiner for Lutterworth College, Leicestershire, objected to a poem by award-winning poet Carol Ann Duffy in the AQA anthology for GCSE English.

Written in the 1980s it expresses inarticulate rage (containing a passing reference to King Lear) and questions the nature of the ground from which violence grows.

What provoked Mrs Schofield was the knife imagery in the poem and the illustration on the page which was clearly nothing to do with the poet.

Subsequently AQA have withdrawn the poem, asking schools to destroy their copies of the anthology.

A vision of piles of burning texts is brought to mind, especially potent if you have read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. An expunged version is in the printing presses as I write.

What is so shameful about the whole fiasco is not that there was an objection – it is a healthy sign that there is a forum for people’s views although we might question the weight given to someone who finds Ms Duffy’s poems “…all a bit weird to me” – but that a major examination body has seen fit to capitulate and act as it has done reportedly out of sensitivity to “public concern”.

I am also surprised that Ed Balls has not stepped in to support its inclusion in the anthology.

It has always been a strength of English teaching that contemporary issues such as violence, knife crime and so on are able to be part of classroom debate along with more innocuous topics such as daffodils waving in the breeze.

That Ms Duffy understands young people and what engages, concerns and motivates them is without question as she has an enviable track record in workshops and residencies. I witnessed this some years ago during her residency at Beacon Hill School, Aspatria.

Of course there is a wider issue here. How much credence do we give to individuals and interest groups that seek to influence the school curriculum? Anything that limits and contracts what is possible must in the end be unhealthy. Influences that would constrain young people into convergent views and experiences are to be avoided.

I don’t think it over-dramatic to point to the Nazi inspired exhibitions in Munich of Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) in Germany in 1937, where three million Germans saw art works that were considered as corrupting the national spirit.

The 650 works on show were by artists that are now considered to be major figures. Inevitably some of them are encountered by our own students studying GCSE art.

What price censorship?