Poem banned by examination board

HANDS OFF POETRY

See also: Hands Off Poetry petition reaches 101 signatures and News coverage of the Hands Off Poetry! petition

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At the beginning of September, the examination board AQA announced its decision to remove Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Education for Leisure from its GCSE anthology, because it deals with knife-crime. AQA will provide new copies of the anthology and have asked schools to destroy their unexpurgated copies.

AQA took the ‘difficult decision’ following a complaint by Pat Schofield, an exam invigilator at Lutterworth Grammar School in Leicestershire. Schofield had complained before, but this time she went to her conservative MP, and her complaint coincided with a local campaign against knife-crime in nearby Rugby, organised by Rugby Police and St Andrew's church. According to Rugby Borough Council, the campaign was organised ‘despite figures which show a 50 percent reduction in violent crime compared to last year’. Unfortunately, because of hysteria over one fatal stabbing, the campaign went ahead anyway.

This irrational decision is based on a series of coincidences: an ignorant invigilator with nothing better to do with her life; a campaign by a police force and local church in search of a mission, despite the police themselves saying that Rugby is a peaceful town; and most of all AQA's lack of educational vision, their inability to defend their choices and their eagerness to conform to a coercive atmosphere in which you must show that you care: 'We pledged against knife crime - did you?’ says the article on the Rugby Council website.

What they don’t care about is of course the quality of education and of the literary works studied by British children, and the democratic principle of free speech. These things can be sacrificed for a token gesture to show that AQA are a ‘responsible’ organisation. No one in their right mind surely believes that censoring a poem does anything good for the victims of knife-crime? Not even AQA, as they motivated their decision with the need not to offend public sensitivities, i.e. Mrs Schofield’s and two more complaints, one of which was not about imaginary knife-crime at all but about imaginary animal cruelty, objecting as it did to the lines: ‘I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain / I see that it is good’. Perhaps we can add to these four or five people form the local church and the local police force in Rugby.

Many have pointed out that if AQA were consistent they would have to ban quite a few Shakespeare plays, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and many more works from their GCSE syllabus. But AQA do not need to be consistent, they only need to censor one poem to show that they care. They would not have either the authority or the nerve to censor Romeo and Juliet, a much more violent work with a few fatal stabbings between rival gangs.

Poets, critics and educationalists who defended the poem are often unable to oppose the ban because they share the same instrumentalist view of poetry and education as the censor. They only object to AQA's decision on the grounds that the message in the poem is actually the correct political message, arguing as it does in favour of education and against violence. But they are unable to defend the poem for its literary merits or to put forward a convincing argument against censorship.

Judging from posts and letters to the newspapers, teachers overwhelmingly condemned the ban. However, the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association were happy to be protected from the dangerous poem. Their deputy general secretary Jim Docherty, stated that the decision was ‘common sense,’ and was surprised that such a poem had been included in the first place.

Duffy herself has attacked Pat Schofield, the individual who complained, but has nothing to say against AQA. Yet Mrs Schofield has no power to ban anything. It is AQA who have used Schofield’s complaint for their own ends. Their arbitrary and cowardly action shows they are a philistine and bureaucratic organisation with no real interest in literature and education and they should not be entrusted with the important task of shaping the English curriculum. After all, anyone with a minimum of interest in literature would have been able to defend their choice of poems.

While many readers have posted comments to the newspapers defending a poem they love, many others have said that they are glad to see the back of it. I am no great fan of Education for Leisure and, even though I believe Duffy is an accomplished poet, have previously criticised AQA for giving her far too much space in the GCSE and A level syllabuses (she is also difficult to avoid at university level). But whether Education for Leisure is a great literary achievement or not, the point is that works of literature should be included in (or excluded from) the curriculum on the basis of their literary value (or lack of it), not because they serve some external purpose, such as a PR exercise driven by the latest headlines. AQA have used Duffy in their syllabuses because she ticks some of the right boxes (gender issues, disaffected learners, etc.) and because her poems often carry the ‘correct’ political message, and they are now using her again for similarly instrumental reasons. Their behaviour seriously demeans poetry and education and it teaches our children a very undemocratic citizenship lesson. We should oppose their brazen and cowardly act of censorship.

Sign our petition, Hands Off Poetry!

And if you are interested in doing something against AQA’s ban of Education for Leisure, email your ideas or comments to michele.ledda1 "at" tiscali.co.uk

Also see my article for the Institute of Ideas Education Forum blog