The following article was published in Quest, the journal of The Queen's English Society, No. 101, January 2009.

Petition against AQA

By Michele Ledda

At the beginning of 2007 I wrote a chapter on the teaching of English for The Corruption of the Curriculum, edited by Robert Whelan and published by the think-thank Civitas. I criticised the examination board Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) for selecting poems according to criteria that have little to do with literary merit and more with the ethnic origin and gender of their authors, or their perceived relevance to the lives of modern teenagers.

To show that most great poets (just like most great novelists) are, in practice, absent from the English curriculum, I wrote that a British pupil can go through the school system and get the top marks in English literature without knowing that Spenser, Milton and Pope ever existed, but having studied Carol Ann Duffy twice, both for the GCSE and the A Level exam. While Carol Ann Duffy is a respected and serious poet, I doubt whether she should have more space in the curriculum than any other author except Shakespeare. I singled out the poem Education for Leisure, a poem about a young psychopath that contemplates stabbing someone, as an example of a text that is on the syllabus because it is supposed to be ‘cool’ and more likely to interest disaffected learners than ‘traditional’ poetry.

Little did I know that a year and a half later I would launch a petition to reinstate Education for Leisure in the GCSE English Literature syllabus, when I realised that the examination board, at the beginning of September 2008, had removed it from its anthology and written to schools, advising them to destroy old copies containing the incriminated poem.

AQA removed the poem because an exam invigilator in Lutterworth, near Rugby, had objected to its ‘message’. Though Mrs Schofield had complained before, to no avail, this time she involved her MP and her action coincided with a local campaign against knife crime, not to mention the recent high profile given to the issue by the national media. We can imagine that this put more pressure than usual on AQA.

Yet any organisation with a minimum of interest in literature and education would have resisted the pressure. AQA’s unprecedented action is arbitrary, cowardly and absurd. It demeans literature and shows contempt for both teachers and students, plunging the management of the curriculum to new depths of ineptitude. No one should have the right to ban a public good such as literature, let alone an examination board which is supposed to promote the study of literature, not protect teachers and children from poems.

While the removal of one poem may seem to make little difference to children’s education, the principles at stake are very high indeed. The curriculum is perhaps the most important part of the education system. It should not be changed in response to the latest newspaper headlines or any individual’s whim. Since it embodies the principles of education, the curriculum is to the education system what the US constitution is to the American republic. If the British education system, unlike those of most modern nation states, has worked well without an official national curriculum until one was introduced by the Thatcher government at the end of the 1980s, this is perfectly in line with the British custom of not having a written constitution. It is debatable whether the present curriculum embodies any educational principles at all, but before this ban we could at least say that hypocrisy paid homage to virtue. Now AQA has shown that the works it selects are of very little importance.

Yet, what literature our children study in school actually matters, and the main criterion for selection can only be the literary and therefore educational value of the texts. The idea of the literary canon and the notion of aesthetic judgment have very much fallen into disrepute in the sophisticated world of academia, and are considered quaint, old-fashioned notions that only provincial and semi-educated people would entertain. However, they are both an important ideal and a practical necessity. Without them, both the practice of literary criticism and education are diminished, and it becomes difficult to take literature seriously.

By withdrawing a poem because of the way its ‘message’ might be interpreted, AQA’s ban sets a very dangerous precedent in yet another respect. If the principle that pupils can only read texts that send an unambiguous message takes hold, it will be impossible to study literature. All great literary texts present difficult moral dilemmas, rather than black-and-white situations where you only have to apply the correct rule from a little book provided by the state.

Literature is important in developing children’s moral judgment precisely because it imitates the complexity of real life, where moral decisions are a matter of individual conscience and must be applied to specific circumstances. Applying ready made behavioural rules almost without thinking is the exact opposite; it is the abdication of moral responsibility.

What I think illustrates the depth of the problem is the fact that even the various poets, teachers and critics who have written articles in defence of Education for Leisure, such as Michael Rosen, Francis Gilbert and Mark Lawson, have only been able to defend the poem for instrumental reasons, as a way to get children to discuss the issue of knife crime. Even Duffy’s literary agent was unable to state that the poem is a great literary achievement. He explained that the poem is ‘pro-education and anti-violence. It is not glorifying violence in any way.’ Yet poems should be studied for their literary merits, not because they carry the correct political message.

It is not surprising, then, that successive governments have been unable to devise a proper curriculum, one that unambiguously determines the content of education. They have instead shifted this important responsibility onto the examination boards. These bodies effectively decide what literary texts children will study, particularly so in today’s climate of public sector performance targets, when very few schools are prepared to devote time to any curricular content that is not on the syllabus, since so much is at stake in examination results. Examination boards have therefore been charged with a vital task. Until the government is prepared to take responsibility for children’s education, they should take this responsibility a lot more seriously.

Education for Leisure is a poem about a disaffected learner, but it seems to me that the real problem is disaffected educators. The ban of this poem may seem of little import in the big scheme of things, but it is the result of a long series of failures of judgment – aesthetic, moral and political. It is a very significant step towards the abandonment of the ideal of education. Many teachers, parents, students and citizens have expressed their opposition to this ridiculous ban and their love of literature and education by signing the Hands Off Poetry! petition.

You can sign the online petition at the following address: http://www.petitiononline.com/hdsoffp/petition.html