AQA have removed Education for Leisure by Carol Ann Duffy from the syllabus. Because someone complained that it promoted knife crime. Which it doesn't, if you actually read it.
Much has been written about this so I'm not going to rehash it all here. But I just wanted to be able to say that I object to this blatant censorship - prompted by a complaint from someone who told The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/06/gcses.poetry.carol.ann.duffy) that she thought all of CAD's poetry was a bit 'weird'. Glad to know it's coming from an informed, eloquent, well-reasoned view point. And I wanted to say that CAD herself, as we should have expected, has said it better than anyone else, with her response:
Mrs Schofield's GCSE
And frankly, the idea that the GCSE poetry is going to inspire anyone to murder, commit acts of terrorism, etc, apart from the teachers who have to teach it, year in, year out, is ludicrous. Like when they wanted to ban video games in the early nineties. Which let's face it, are far more violent than the AQA anthology, but don't have the articulate expression.
Sunday, 7 September 2008
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