They're a triumph of trompe-l'oeil craftsmanship, accurate, down to their grooves, scratches, and crease marks — not to mention a great syllabus (Francis Steegmuller's biography of Jean Cocteau, Wittgenstein's "Remarks on Color," Kerouac's "On the Road" and playlist ("The Velvet Underground & Nico, Gertrude Steinn reading from "The Making of Americans").
On a practical, classroom level it means, to begin with, that American texts that were part of the core GCSE syllabus – John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Arthur Miller's The Crucible – will now only be taught if teachers have the time to stretch beyond what they must teach in order for their students to pass exams.
I'd included on the syllabus Julian Barnes's "The Sense of an Ending," a devastatingly beautiful novel, and Joseph Mitchell's two Profiles of Joe Gould.
But pre-20th century English culture should not dominate the syllabus: Gove's attempt to wind the clock back overlooks the myriad identities of the children now populating British schools.
He taught a class on realism last fall at Johns Hopkins University (where he is on the faculty in the film and media program), and the movies on his syllabus — Robert Flaherty's ethnographic landmark "Nanook of the North," the exalted parables of Robert Bresson, the raw-nerved dramas of John Cassavetes — add up to a fluid, expansive notion of cinematic realism.
It's good to see the union jack of culture fluttering from education central as Michael Gove proposes the omission from the GCSE syllabus of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird.
(Allprice's syllabus is devoted almost entirely to Melville's "Omoo". Worn down by the arrogant laziness of his pupils, he resigns and ships out to Patagonia).
His syllabus included Louis Gerstner's "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?," about I.B.M.; Jack Welch's "Winning"; and "Shift," by Carlos Ghosn, another Westerner (Brazilian) who is the chief executive of an iconic Japanese industrial firm (Nissan).
In Eduqas's new syllabus, also announced yesterday, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has been replaced by Meera Syal's Anita and Me, a tale of the relationship between a British Punjabi girl and her neighbour in a Midlands village.
