How do we feel about censorship? I ask because of a recent change to the English Literature syllabus in English schools which came about after some complaints about one of the poems included.

When I saw the film Donnie Darko, in which an English Literature teacher is hounded out of her job for teaching Graham Greene's "The Destructors" I thought, rather too smugly, "Well that couldn't happen here, this is England".

It seems that such smugness, as such smugness usually is, was misplaced. A work by poet Carol Ann Duffy has been removed from the syllabus because of its content and because of complaints by people who have so clearly missed the point that it seems remarkable that they can claim to have read it at all. The poem is called Education For Leisure and begins "Today I am going to kill something. Anything." Its detractors seem to be entirely unaware that far from a glorification of knife crime, it is a bleak polemic about the need for education as a kind of antidote to the narrator's utterly hopeless and nihilistic point of view.
The poet's response was to pen another poem, Mrs Schofield's GCSE, which points out, in the form of a series of exam questions, just how much knife crime there is in Shakespeare. Mrs Schofield was one of the people complaining about the poem and crowing triumphally when it was removed from the syllabus.

I sincerely hope that the response to the response isn't a call for Shakespeare to be removed from the syllabus on the same grounds.

(Incidentally my favourite Shakespeare play is one that sometimes has its authorship disputed: Titus Andronicus. It features rape, mutilation, insanity and murder. Not to mention cannibalism. Good wholesome stuff.)

Sometimes I don't know what has gotten into society. As we've all talked about here , nursery rhymes and fairy tales are often quite macabre. Here is an example from a link that Cat posted in that thread:

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witness the murder of Little Red Riding Hood in a setting of such breathtaking allure that we experience a double jolt—one administered by the girl's terrifying death and the other by the magnificent landscape in which she perishes.

So, you censors, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either also get rid of all Shakespeare, nursery rhymes and fairy tales that have violence, or allow the public to experience different kinds of literature and make their own judgments.

Looks like European censors "murdered" Red Riding Hood and other tales long before Disney put on his rose-colored glasses and jollied them up. To wit, the namby-pamby ending wherein the woodsman pops the wolf with his axe, only to have grandmother and RRH unzip his fur and jump out unscathed. According to wiki, the Grimms themselves chose that tamest version of a story which had been around for several centuries.

I found the Slate review "Fairy Tales in the Age of Terror" (posted by Cat in the earlier Wordcraft discussion) very interesting. The writer states that the tales "started out as adult entertainment—violent, bawdy, melodramatic improvisations that emerged in the evening hours, when ordinary chores engaged the labor of hands, leaving minds free to wander and wonder." That explains a lot of the 'watering-down'. I use fairy tales in teaching language to preschoolers, and have to select carefully to find versions which empower the children (or piglets, etc) through cunning, speed, agility, & allow for occasional laughter at the villain. Otherwise I have a roomful of bawling children!

I can't say that all this watering-down makes sense when it comes to choosing the syllabus for high-school students! Looks like a case of infantilization by committee.

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a case of infantilization by committee

I have always been amazed (aqnd dismayed) at how willing school committees and educators are to kow-tow to complainers about the books used in school curriculums. Often the protest is from only one person, out of the thousands in the district, and ALL TOO OFTEN based on a complaint about a book which the complainer HAS NOT READ but is only repeating opinions voiced by others, usually on religious grounds.

*edit* If this post is too close to violation of the rules against political discussion, feel free to delete it *edit*

I'm of two minds about this.

On the one hand, I think that the current climate (at least in the US) that bans from schools almost any speech or thing that is weapons-related is an extreme over-reaction to some isolated incidents. A recent local example here was a school which banned a senior from using, as his yearbook picture, a picture of himself in chainmail and sword (he was an avid re-creationist). The kid sued, and won, primarily because the school hadn't made the "zero tolerance" ban explicit enough.

On the other hand, this isn't censorship at all. No one is saying that the poem can't be read, or even shouldn't be. No one is accusing the poet of being a bad person, or a danger to the state.

The decision, if I am understanding it correctly, means that a group of students will not be required to read the poem. That's not censorship at all. It is deciding that, all things considered, those students, as a group (and in the longer view, society) would be better served if the students were not required to read it.

I can see two reasons why this is a justifiable position. 1) It is highly likely that not all of the students will agree with BobHale's assessment that the poem

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it is a bleak polemic about the need for education as a kind of antidote to the narrator's utterly hopeless and nihilistic point of view.

I'd guess that there is a very real risk that a few students will take the poem as inspiration, or at least re-inforcement, with potentially bloody results. 2) Kids have only limited time (and inclination) for forced education. Is this poem a good use of that limited time, or might perhaps something else - or even nothing - be better?

Arguing that Shakespeare is (or logically should be) next is a slippery-slope argument that can't be taken seriously.

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Originally posted by Valentine:

Arguing that Shakespeare is (or logically should be) next is a slippery-slope argument that can't be taken seriously.

That's something I disagree on. I think you should always take slippery slope arguments seriously. If you don't you can end up with a metaphorical broken neck.
You are right of course that this isn't actually "a ban" but I don't think the argument that "some people might read it the wrong way" holds water. It is the very same argument that people use about anything they find objectionable on television or film.

And yes, it's another slippery slope argument, but the logical way for it to end up is with a kind of bland controversy free media that is suitable for everyone to watch, as that is the only way that you can possibly be sure that no one "will take it the wrong way".

I thought, rather too smugly, "Well that couldn't happen here, this is England"

It can happen anywhere, Bob. My first thoughts were of Dr Thomas Bowdler, who invented censorship (another English first!) in the early 19th century with his witty and oft-maligned Family Shakespeare. (An example of the bowdlerised Bard? Lady Macbeth's "Out, damned spot!" was changed to "Out, crimson spot!") But a quick journey to Wikipedia and looking at its article on censorship lead me to the wonderful scandal surrounding the play The Happy Land by Gilbert Arthur à Beckett and W S Gilbert (link). It seems that a long standing law forbade the representation of public figures in plays, and The Happy Land mocked William Gladstone, Robert Lowe, and Acton Smee Ayrton.

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The village of Box, about the end of the last century, was the home of the BOWDLER family. Thomas Bowdler, the father, was the editor of a work now out of print, but one that ought to be reprinted, "The Family Shakespeare," in which the vulgar rubbish stuffed in by the players or even by the author himself, to please "the ears of the groundlings," is cut out, and the work rendered more capable of being read out aloud in families. (link)

(Tut, tut, and tsk, tsk, I know that it was Dr Bowdler who invented censorship. It was rather the Lord Chamberlain in or about 1737.)

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I think you should always take slippery slope arguments seriously.

And I have to disagree with that. Some slopes aren't very steep, and others aren't very slippery. In other words, some steps can be taken without inevitably breaking one's neck.

Removing this poem from a required reading list will not, in any reasonably conceivable setting, inevitably result in the banning of the reading of Shakespeare.

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*edit* If this post is too close to violation of the rules against political discussion, feel free to delete it *edit*

Oh, we've had a few "slippery slopes" here, indeed, but if we can't have an intelligent argument about censorship, we might as well close this place down. No worries, Valentine.

And you bring up a good point. Technically it isn't a ban. However, would it be a ban if they removed Shakespeare from the curriculum because of some of his vulgar language or sexual implications? Probably so. Since this piece isn't as well thought of as Shakepeare, does that make it not censorship? Perhaps. However, by implication it would make removing Duffy's poem a "slippery slope," in my most humble opinion.

I would also disagree with you, Valentine, that teens are so vulnerable that this poem would cause "bloody results." If "bloody results" occurred after the student read the poem, those results would have happened after listening to some rap song or watching some movie or even reading Shakespeare.

Now I find this your best point:

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Kids have only limited time (and inclination) for forced education. Is this poem a good use of that limited time, or might perhaps something else - or even nothing - be better?

Is this poem good enough for a syllabus? That is another question for another day (I'd probably favor removing it out of academic reasons, but I am no poetry expert). It wasn't removed for "academic" reasons, but was removed out of misplaced fear.

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