This sucks if you’re a book nerd who lives in the U.K.
According to USA Today, the list of books U.K. students read for national exams will begin to focus more on titles from British authors, meaning classics like The Crucible, Of Mice and Men, and To Kill A Mockingbird will no longer be required reading in British schools.
Education Secretary Michael Gove led the charge on this decision.
The Sunday Times put it this way:
Three-quarters of the books on the government-directed GCSEs, which will be unveiled this week, are by British authors and most are pre-20th century.
“Of Mice and Men, which Michael Gove really dislikes, will not be included. It was studied by 90% of teenagers taking English literature GCSE in the past,” said OCR, one of Britain’s biggest exam boards. “Michael Gove said that was a really disappointing statistic.”
This reminds me a lot of the Common Core reading requirements here in the U.S. that we discussed on this blog a while back—and, by the way, I still don’t fully understand Common Core.
Anyway, would love some input from those of you who live in England. Are you cool with this decision? Is there another side to this story?