Schools ditching classic texts for woke writers no-one’s ever heard of

Schools ditch classic texts says Dr Andrew Cunningham (Image: Getty) One of the greatest achievements of the English-speaking world is its unbeatable literature. So it comes as no surprise that the woke classes are trying to undermine our heritage here – starting with school English syllabuses. The English department at a prestigious private school, Alleyn’s, in Dulwich, South London, alma mater to CS Forester of Hornblower fame, has decided to ditch the traditional English curriculum because it’s too ‘pale, male and stale’. Out go writers like William Golding, author of the classic Lord of the Flies and John Steinbeck, who wrote the mini-masterpiece, Of Mice and Men. In come a lot of writers no one’s heard of. The most important criterion? They’re allegedly more diverse. For example, A-level pupils at Alleyn’s will now be able to study the first exam text by a ‘non-binary’ author, Kae/Kate Tempest’s ‘Let Them Eat Chaos’. I checked it out: it’s not technically a book at all, but a ‘political hip hop’ album of performance poetry. LGBTQ+ authors like Radclyffe Hall, who wrote the lesbian classic, ‘The Well of Loneliness’, are also on the Year 9 reading list – that crucial time in a teenager’s life when they discover the joys of reading. Yes, Alleyn’s is right to include dynamic new writers with a proven track record, like Chimamanda Adichie. But she’s already been on the GCSE syllabus since 2016. Indeed I’ve enjoyed teaching her work at two different schools since then. School’s include new writers (Image: Getty) So perhaps there are wider ideological forces at work here? As Alex Smith, head of English at Alleyn’s explained the changes were made to challenge ‘white-centric, patriarchal and cisgender ideologies’. I must admit I had to look up what ‘cisgender’ meant and I’m still not quite sure. This sounds like the kind of gobbledygook you might expect from a left-leaning London council, not an English department at a leading school. Sadly where Alleyn’s leads, other schools are sure to follow. We can expect more schools to overhaul their ‘pale, male, stale’ English syllabuses, as this trend of undermining our literary heritage gathers pace, encouraged, I’m afraid, by the Exam boards. But why the need for such drastic change in the first place? The truth is that English Literature has always been diverse. Many of the greatest writers in the literary canon are not in fact English, but Irish. Think James Joyce, who wrote the modernist masterpiece Ulysses or Samuel Beckett, whose play Waiting for Godot famously shocked 1950s audiences. Then of course there is Oscar Wilde, author of The Importance of being Earnest, not to mention the wonderful work of Edna O’Brien. Why aren’t her books on more school syllabuses – or is Edna O’Brien also somehow pale, male and stale? Charlotte Brontë wrote Jane Eyre (Image: Getty) For my money English Literature’s finest hour was the 19th Century – a time when women writers dominated. Look no further than the Brontë sisters. Charlotte Brontë wrote the unputdownable all-time-classic Jane Eyre. If I had to recommend any one book to a teenager it would be this one: the story of an orphan girl growing up in a harsh world, with a happy ending. Then there’s Emily Brontë, who wrote the equally-famous Wuthering Heights, a staple of GCSE syllabuses in former times. Plus the lesser-known Anne Brontë, who wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Not only were the Brontë sisters clearly non-male, they were also poor. All three had to work as Victorian governesses: an occupation which Charlotte described as drudgery. Yet another 19th Century literary giantess was George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans), who wrote Middlemarch – often cited as the greatest novel of all time. And then of course there’s Jane Austen herself. Last time I went to see this magnificent writer’s monument in Winchester Cathedral there were flocks of foreign tourists paying homage to the Great Jane. We should be proud of such a legacy, surely. More recently, diversity in class, gender and race has been well-represented in the curriculum. Take Salman Rushdie, Booker Prize-winning writer of Midnight’s Children, his story of Indian independence. Or Chinua Achebe, whose excellent Nigerian novel Things Fall Apart, has been on A-level syllabuses for decades. Or Khaled Hosseini, writer of A Thousand Splendid Suns, set in 1990s Kabul. Or indeed Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane. All these have been A-level set texts for some time. Arguably the finest living English-speaking writer is a Canadian, Margaret Atwood, whose recently-televised classic The Handmaid’s Tale, I taught only last term. I defy anyone to suggest there’s a shortage of diversity here.  But instead of such proven ‘greats’ being encouraged, I see a future where schools feel under pressure to choose writers whose main qualification is that they tick woke boxes. What a pity for our teenagers, who will be robbed of such a rich treasury of great works. Just think what they’ll be missing. Dr Andrew Cunningham has taught English at North London Collegiate School, Radley College and Charterhouse and is a former English GCSE examiner. Twitter@TradTeacher1