Notes on the new culture white paper

The government has released a new white paper on culture and the arts – something that should be welcomed, since there hasn’t been anything on the subject for decades.

Not only are the arts and culture crucial for general wellbeing and a positive force in terms of education and development, they are hugely important for the economy of the UK – and not just in London.

But where the white paper could have been a positive force, even a quick reading illustrates that it’s full of empty promises, with words such as “support” and “encourage” rendered meaningless by lack of commitments on funding (even though it specifically quotes the Prime Minister as an enthusiast of “public-funded” arts and culture) and by the government’s own policies on, say, education, where it fully intends to remove all schools from having to teach the national curriculum that this paper says has importance to culture and arts.

The devil is always in the detail – or the lack thereof. So here goes, with an analysis of approximately half of the document in question.

On page 5, in the introduction by Ed Vaizey, the minister of state for culture, communications and creative industries, it states: “The increased appetite for culture was evident after Culture Secretary Chris Smith introduced free admission to museums in 2001.”

This is disingenuous, since 2001 saw a re-introduction of free admission.

The 1980s had seen attacks on cultural public spending, and pressures from the Conservative government of the day to introduce admission saw many museums and galleries do so.

Those that didn’t – including the British Museum, the Tate and the National Gallery – saw visitor numbers rise, while some that introduced charging saw substantial declines. The V&A introduced a £5 admission in 1997 and saw visitor numbers halved. (1)

And post-2001, the white paper says, that was repeated as, “in the next decade, visitor numbers soared” when admission fees were dropped.

The paper quotes Chancellor George Osborne in his last autumn statement as saying that our “creative industries are ... ‘one of the best investments we can make as a nation’.” So let's look for the investment.

It invokes the Bard, while Mr Vaizey himself also notes that it will “look at how culture can be used in place-making – and if ever a town was shaped by culture it is Stratford-on-Avon, where every year Shakespeare brings 4.9 million visitors to the town”. This is perhaps unfortunate, given what is happening in the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ – and not least Lancaster (2), where most museums are on the cusp of closure as a direct result of cuts to local government funding, even as the city tries to utilise its own extraordinary heritage to draw visitors in.

The introduction notes that: “When we look at new models for funding, we find that our experience with Shakespeare shows us the way. In Barking a community-focussed outdoor production of The Merchant of Venice is being crowdfunded to the tune of £80,000 and has raised £25,000 from a local property company”.

Yet only a few pages earlier, the first words in the white paper, after the contents, are:

“If you believe in publicly-funded arts and culture as I passionately do, then you must also believe in equality of access, attracting all, and welcoming all.

“Rt Hon David Cameron MP”

“Publicly-funded arts and culture” now appears to have a new definition – crowdfunding (which requires disposable income) and gifts from business.

On page 8, it states: “Everyone should enjoy the opportunities culture offers, no matter where they start in life.

“We will put in place measures to increase participation in culture, especially among those who are currently excluded from the opportunities that culture has to offer.

“In particular, we will ensure that children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are inspired by and have new meaningful relationships with culture.”

It’s difficult to imagine that anyone would disagree with this.

The document explains that the new apprenticeships levy will mean that “our larger cultural organisations” will be expected to “take on apprentices and promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace.” Expectation, though, does not mean anything to back it up.

Funded bodies will need to publish strategies for increased access (which will cost them resources, of course).

On page 9, it states that the government will work with various bodies to promote culture as good for wellbeing, while a “new £40 million Discover England fund will showcase” the new programmes, including UK City of Culture, the Great Exhibition of the North.

It’s simply unfortunate that, at the same time, Lancashire County Council (as just one example) is planning on axing “40 libraries, five museums and two adult education centres”.

These include the cuts impacting on Lancaster, plus many, many more, including Blackpool tram maintenance, which will presumably not be good for an area that is already seriously struggling. (3)

All the subsequent talk of “new cultural partnerships” and a “Great Place scheme” and “Heritage Action Zones in England” is meaningless in the face of such devastating cuts and losses.

“We will encourage councils and owners to make empty business premises available to cultural organisations on a temporary basis.”

Because “cultural organisations” can just spring up suddenly and take over such premises and put something on without any other resources that require financing. Oh, wait – that’s where the crowdfunding and business patronage come in (not the PM’s “publicly-funded” bit, you note).

“Technology offers many opportunities to bring our culture to many more people in many different ways. We will work with our cultural institutions to make the UK one of the world’s leading countries for digitised public collections and use of technology to enhance the online experience of users.”

You won’t be able to look at anything in the flesh, but we’re going to digitise Lancaster’s collections so that you can look at them online after the museums are closed (it won’t help the city itself – unless you have to pay to view – and it’ll create and sustain bugger all in the way of jobs, but whoopy-do! It’s digital!

If this isn’t (an extreme but entirely logical interpretation of) the case, then it’s just more meaningless twaddle. Is there any evidence that people don’t go to museums and galleries because the ‘online digital experience’ isn’t what it could be?

Personally, I never use audio guides or anything other than brief notes when visiting an exhibition etc – because it gets in the way, in my opinion: as do those concentrating on such things rather than the exhibits.

Page 10 sees talk of the UK’s global “soft power” (not the bombs that gave us our “mojo” back) and of building on the “GREAT Britain campaign”, which has “increased investment” (it doesn’t say from where, but this will apparently attract “world-class events to the UK”).

This year, “we will support Shakespeare Lives”, although at no point does it elucidate on what concrete form that government “support” will take.

Page 11 notes that: “We have a successful model of cultural investment in which public funding works alongside earned income, private sector finance and philanthropy. This mixture of income streams provides the basis for a thriving and resilient cultural sector.”

Well, except where the public funding is withdrawn (see Lancashire etc), while it’s difficult to see how the ad hoc nature of the proposal that councils and businesses should loan out empty properties will in any way promote stability and, therefore, quality.

“We will continue to support growth through investment and incentives”. Interesting that it does not mention the public funding that it quotes the Prime Minister stressing.

Of course, there are forms of VAT refunds to help, while a new tax relief for museums and galleries is to be introduced next year (someone tell Lancashire to hang on!)

“We will establish a new Commercial Academy for Culture to improve and spread commercial expertise in the cultural sectors,” because making money is what culture is all about or should be – see, Lancashire: that’s been your problem.

There’ll be a new Private Investment Survey and “tailored reviews” and a “wide-ranging review of the museums sector” ...

The paper makes clear that investment in culture has “enormous economic value” (p13) – “in 2014, the economic contribution of museums, galleries, libraries and the arts was £5.4 billion,” while “heritage tourism accounts for 2% of GDP, contributing £26 billion per year” (p16) and “research by the British Council shows that cultural attractions are the most commonly mentioned factor in terms of what makes the UK an attractive place to visit while the arts was the third most commonly mentioned reason”.

On page 13: “it [the white paper] explains how the government will help to secure the role of culture in our society”.

As a whole, the paper makes much of saying that the arts and culture are important for all and should be available to all. You’ll find absolutely no disagreement here.

It says that all “state-funded schools” must provide a broad and balanced curriculum, nurturing the “spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils”. Again, no disagreement.

Apparently the national curriculum “sets the expectation” that pupils will study cultural subjects. “New, gold-standard GCSEs and A levels have been introduced in these subjects”. (p23)

Unfortunately, since academies and free schools do not have to teach the national curriculum, and all schools are set to be academised ...

In fact, let’s be even clearer. While academies and free schools are subject to that “broad and balanced curriculum”, the funding agreement simply means that “they are required to ensure their curriculum:

“includes English, maths and science;

“includes Religious Education, although the nature of this will depend on whether the school has a faith designation;

“secures access to independent, impartial careers advice for pupils in years 9-11; and

“includes sex and relationship education (SRE).” (4)

On page 22, it says: “The majority of the organisations supported by Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund are committed to working with children and young people, while schemes such as the Family Arts Festival and the Summer Reading Challenge are crucial in introducing young families to their local cultural organisations, especially libraries”.

Excellent. Except where those libraries have closed or are slated to close. See Lancashire – and beyond. As of August 2015, 337 libraries have closed in the UK since 2009-10. (5)

On page 23, we learn that there’s going to be a new “cultural citizens programme” [sic – I don’t know what happened to the possessive apostrophe]. The government will “encourage schools” to use the pupil premium for cultural education, while the Pupil Premium Awards will “highlight the benefits of cultural education”.

This is a close look at just under half the white paper. You can find it all here.

But it should be clear from this that, while the general tone is entirely agreeable, it is nothing to get excited about, for the reasons made very clear above. It’s all sleight of hand; appearing to give (a little) with one hand while removing a lot with the other.

Or perhaps the Bard might have suggested that it was full of a sort of “sound and fury, Signifying nothing”.

Sources

(1)        http://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/free-admission-and-the-lottery

(2)        http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/mar/27/lancaster-city-culture-museum-closures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

(3)        http://www.garstangcourier.co.uk/news/local/revealed-40-libraries-five-museums-and-two-adult-education-centres-among-massive-cuts-announced-by-lancashire-county-council-1-7574160

(4)        https://montrose42.wordpress.com/tag/academies-dont-have-to-teach-the-national-curriculum/

(5) http://schoolsweek.co.uk/nicky-morgan-library-campaign-branded-a-hollow-gesture-after-closures/

Sinister warnings, infantilised debate and British 'values'

In the last few weeks, as the phrase has floated back and forth, like a cloud over the post-election horizon, I have found myself mulling precisely what “British values” are.

If there are values that are specifically “British” then they must be unique to this nation and different from values anywhere else.

Otherwise, why keep insisting that they are “British” values? And let’s face it, there has been little meat on the bones of that soundbite.

I suspect that most Britons like to think that we’re a fairly tolerant lot, so is tolerance a ‘British value’? In which case, does no other nation share it or, if they do, have they nicked the idea from us because we created it – hence it being a particularly ‘British value’?

Freedom of speech, perhaps? Exactly the same questions apply.

Freedom from illegal imprisonment? I suppose we can go back to Magna Carta on this one – fitting, in the year of its 800th anniversary. Of course, in that document, it was not about the plebs being protected from illegal imprisonment, but rebellious barons having a right to be tried by their peers.

However, let’s not get too pedantic about these things.

This, though, might give you an idea of my problem: I’m looking for a value that is quintessentially British and I can think of not a one – well, certainly not without resorting to sarcasm.

There’s going to be no suggestion here that there are ‘universal’ values, because a glance around the world would show that to be far from the case.

Values have to be developed, and while the West shares many of the same values – not least as a result of western Europe in particular having experienced the Enlightenment at the same time – other parts of the world do not. They may at some point in the future, but they do not now.

And values are not set in stone, they evolve over time: see the changing attitudes toward LGBT people in the UK – and the West in general – over the last 50 years. Which, of course, illustrates that, if tolerance is a value we rate particularly in the UK, why are we only in recent years become tolerant toward such people, both in terms of most of the populace and the country’s institutions?

But David Cameron’s post-election statement that our society has been ‘passively tolerant’ for too long, allowing things if they were within the law, is perhaps the most sinister uttering from a UK politician in a very long time.

Nobody will be in doubt as to which group are the main targets of this pumped-up rhetoric. This is about Muslims, radicalisation and extremism, and how to avoid the second and third in that list. And few people would object to that aim or fail to understand how important it is.

Last November, the then government released advice to maintained schools on Promoting fundamental British values as part of SMSC in schools.

‘SMSC’ stands for ‘spiritual, moral, cultural and mental’.

The document is quite clear that the main issue it was addressing was situations where teaching of religious law might conflict with law in this UK.

It also states that “fundamental British values” are “democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs”.

Which is all well and good, but brings us right back to the question of what about any of these is so fundamentally ‘British’?

Interestingly, that doesn’t mention ‘free speech’, although one could probably suggest that that would fall within “individual liberty”.

The next question after that, though, is why, if they’re so fundamental, do all schools not have to promote these values and only maintained ones? This actively excludes any religious school, for instance, that is operating in a realm without state funding.

Perhaps one could avoid some issues by having a strictly secular education system where every child, no matter their religious background, has access to thought and debate that can show them a world beyond the strictures of the faith that their parents have decided they belong to?

At present, we have a situation where religious schools, for instance, can opt out of sex education to some degree or other.

Should it not be a fundamental value that all young people, irrespective of the religious beliefs (or lack thereof) of their parents, has the right to a clear and informed education about something like sex?

Ours is the same system where, at present, one particular religious sect can say that it will ban any child from its schools if they are driven to school bytheir mother, because women should not drive – but it’s okay because none of the women want to drive.

Indeed, only yesterday, the school’s leaders have claimed that such a ban is essential to maintaining “religious principles and strong traditional values” and noting that, “as private schools we have the freedom to set our own high standards by which we seek to live and bring up our children.”

Ah yes, “high standards” that include telling girls that it’s ‘immodest’ for a woman to drive a vehicle. And see that bit about being a private school allowing such things.

Let’s be clear: this is no more in tune with ‘British’ values than brainwashing children with any other religious, fundamentalist bigotry and idiocy.

A properly secular education system is far from being the be all and end of dealing with fundamentalist religion, as the situation in France illustrates, but it could help to break down the ghettoising effect of religion in general.

By all means have your places of worship and your religious traditions in the home, but education should be a free space for pupils.

We need to be encouraging young people to be able to think more philosophically – and not to run scared of ideas that may challenge their beliefs.

We need to promote the idea that nobody has a right to be not offended or have their beliefs challenged. We do not need anything that drives us down the same infantilising path as in the US, where students increasingly object when anyone voices a view that challenges their own – and run away to ‘safe rooms’ full of videos of playful puppies and Play Doh.

What can never work, though, is destroying precisely the things we claim to be defending – in the name of defending them.

The censorship and the increased snooping that are being proposed; the replacement of human rights legislation with a bill of rights – with the degree of rights one is afforded dependent on where one is from; the suggestion that simply living within the law will no longer be good enough for some to avoid government intervention … all these are absolutely the opposite of what most people would consider to be ‘our’ values.

In particular, that statement on ‘passive tolerance’ is pernicious. Few people would be actively supportive of terrorists of any ilk, but such vague statements can only give rise to a feeling that we are moving into the realms of an assault on free speech; of thought crime, even.

If someone says, for instance, that ‘the Charlie Hebdo murderers had a point’, will that now be a cue for state intervention?

And if so, how long before saying that the government’s heads should be on spikes for all to see be put on the same level?

Who gets to choose, once the rationale has ceased to be breaking the law? Start down such a route and you’re on a very slippery slope.

And saying that only one group has its capacity for free speech impinged upon is really not a way to defeat the substantial issues of the radicalisation of the young.

Frankly, it’s like handing the extremist groomers an additional recruitment tool, never mind doing one of the sort of things that the very same people would like to do to us, in attacking our way of life.

Double standards and bad laws win no hearts and minds.

And it would be hoped that they were most certainly not what anyone views as ‘British values’.

  

Literature and an outburst of modern hysteria

I'm faint with the shock of it all

In the middle of all the news, analysis and hand-wringing surrounding the European and local elections emerged a little story that came almost as light relief.

Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird are to be barred from school reading lists by secretary of state for education Michael Gove, it was reported late last week.

I don’t know about the reaction of any mockingbirds, but Twitter was alive with the sound of indignant tweeting.

One could quite easily have reached the conclusion that, deprived of the opportunity to read these works by John Steinbeck and Harper Lee, The Young People will fail in their studies, be put off reading for life and probably start injecting H.

Okay: I invented the last one.

The BBC reported “a Labour spokesperson” as howling that Gove’s “vision is backward-looking and preventing the rich, broad and balanced curriculum we need in our schools if our children are to succeed in the future economy.

Now it’s a lovely idea that what every child studies for a GCSE in English literature will have a direct impact on the national economy, but I’m going to call that one out as bollocks.

Actually, the reports were illustrative of the parlous state of substantial chunks of the UK media, as various organs picked up the story and ran with it uncritically.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, irrespective of Gove’s involvement in anything, some of the attitudes that have been revealed are hysterical – in more ways than one.

There is not a shred of evidence that any book has been banned.

One exam board has chosen to drop the novels from its preliminary syllabus (plus Arthur Miller’s The Crucible), with one anonymous individual from that board reportedly claiming that Gove’s personal dislike of Lee’s book is behind it – a claim that seems, at best, to be of dubious merit, although Gove has form on complaining that he thought ‘too many’ pupils were studying it. But that is not a synonym for hating the book himself.

The new English literature GCSE subject content was published last December and includes at least one play by Bill the Bard, something by the Romantic poets, a 19th Century novel, poetry since 1850 and a 20th Century novel or drama.

So pupils will still be able to study modern British works – the BBC reported that Meera Syal’s 1996 story of a British Punjabi girl in the Midlands, Anita and Me, and Dennis Kelly’s 2007 play about bullying, DNA, are among recent works that have been included in the same exam board’s draft syllabus.

Yet the Sunday Times reported Bethan Marshall, “a senior lecturer in English at King’s College, London”, as saying that it was a syllabus “straight out of the 1940s”, which would make schools “incredibly depressed” when they see it.

This is hyperbolic rubbish.

Frankenstein's monster. 19th Century. Still iconic

My secondary education came more than a generation later than the end of the 1940s and that’s pretty much what we studied for English literature – for our exam at 16.

Indeed, this is another point that seems to have passed over the heads of some.

This is about what pupils study for a particular GSCE – not for every English literature class for the duration of their secondary education up to and including taking that exam.

If Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird are so influential and important to the development of young people, then perhaps they should be taught in the first three years, as preparation for the eventual list of texts that are available to be studied for examination?

To go back to my own experience, in the five years up to O’ level, we studied a huge number of books – and at least two plays a year by Shakespeare (plus the odd one by Sheridan and Shaw).

Now, much as I like to highlight my own uniqueness, I rather doubt that I’m alone in observing, some decades later, that none of that old stuff wrecked my exam chances or put me off reading.

In some cases, I fell in love instantly with the works – in particular, all but one of the Shakespeare that we studied (I only disliked Romeo and Juliet) and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

At the time, I disliked Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Brönte and most certainly bloody, sodding Keats.

But then I also disliked William Golding’s Lord of the Flies – every bit a 20th Century novel – while I enjoyed Orwell’s Animal Farm.

As it happens, I have returned to most of these in the years since walking out of school for the last time. In most cases, I have enjoyed what I didn’t at the time and have explored further.

And my more recent literary peregrinations did not begin in isolation, but started as a result of my return to the literature I first encountered in class.

Ode to Autumn aside, however, Keats remains “bloody, sodding Keats”. Thankfully, our teacher also introduced us to a spot of Ted Hughes. And yes, I still read poetry too.

For clarity, I came from a home that was filled with books (mostly theology, non-fiction and light fiction), but have no memories of ever being read to or, once I’d passed beyond reading obviously children’s stories, being encouraged to read anything more demanding than Mary Stewart or Agatha Christie.

Vampires are still popular

So it was a case of mixed messages on the home front, leaving my introduction to literature entirely down to school (as was my introduction to art and music).

My first secondary school, which I attended until after taking my O’ levels, had a very mixed intake in terms of social background. It was a girls’ grammar school (we still had the 11 plus), but it was most certainly not ‘posh’.

My sister, who went to a local secondary school, was introduced to those dreadful ‘old’ books too – and has never ceased to be a reader or to love many older classics.

One of the problems with this sort of debate is that it is inherently patronising to children and young people.

It assumes that they need ‘easy’ texts and that ‘difficult’ – for which, often read ‘old’ – ones will be too hard and will turn them off their studies and even off reading in general.

Such things as computers, television and gaming are cited as being among the reasons that pupils will struggle to concentrate on anything that isn’t obviously ‘accessible’.

As I said: patronising.

Some complaints seem to think that not studying two particular classic 20th Century US texts for an exam will mean that pupils will be deprived – in other words, that they will never read them.

That is an assumption. There is nothing to stop anyone reading those – and other – books, either in their childhood or later. As I suggested earlier, there is nothing to stop a school using those books in earlier literature classes, before GCSE course work begins.

It also falls into the trap of assuming that the prime role of teaching literature to children is to create a life-long love of reading.

Now while hardly unpleasant, that’s far too simplistic an idea.

Few would apply the same idea to, say, the teaching of maths or of geography, so why treat reading differently?

Mind, much of this comes from the same camps that denounce ‘grammar nazis’ and proclaim that children should not be expected to learn to write correctly.

What they do in this – quite apart from revealing an utter lack of understanding of what a ‘nazi’ really was/is – is to reveal, among other things, that they do not comprehend the connection between a solid grammatical grounding in one’s own language properly and the ability to learn another language.

Let’s make it harder for children, shall we?

Every child – not just the ones whose parents can afford to send them to private schools – every child should have the right to the very best possible language education, in order that they have the very best chance to learn to make the most of the English language.

The clash between science and nature is no longer topical

That will not just help them in their future lives, but can be claimed to make a difference to the economic life of the nation as a whole.

And every child – not just the ones whose parents can afford to send them to private schools – every child should have the right to be introduced to the literary heritage of this country (and even Classical culture) and not just the ‘easy’ bits.

It’s the same, incidentally, with music and art – every child should have the right to be introduced to the very best that has been reached in those realms and not just what might be considered ‘easy’.

It’s not the role of education to make things comfortably easy, but to challenge the mind in order for that to develop.  Literature isn’t just about sitting down for a nice bit of a read, but about helping to develop critical skills.

To go down the route of education being ‘easy’ in such a way is not far from seeing education as essentially utilitarian – as merely a preparation for the workplace, which is what you get when the likes of the CBI bleats that school leavers lack “business and customer awareness” skills.

The idea has also been doing the rounds that pre-20th Century literature is also inherently reactionary – ‘misogynist’, was how one Twitter user characterised most of it.

First, as with reading history, it’s a cardinal error to attempt to impose modern mores on the past. You should not, as the Open University beautifully explains it, try to understand the Roman Colosseum through the prism of 21st Century Western attitudes to crime and punishment, religion or even animal rights (as though there’s only one Western attitude to any of those subjects anyway).

Similarly, you don’t try to understand any cultural ‘artifact’ by doing the same thing.

But none of this means that you have to introduce children to classic literature in a way that’s turgid.

Stop being terrified of the bawdiness of Chaucer.

And Shakespeare is full of power and politics, sex and violence.

Examine The Merchant of Venice in terms of anti-semitism and racism – and a proper examination, including the context in which it was written, does not produce the tired argument that is an inherently bigoted play, but rather, subtly the opposite.

Modern enough?

Look at Dickens for insights into 19th Century social issues. Austen was, first and foremost, a satirist – not a writer of rom-coms.

Read Mrs Gaskell’s Mary Barton if you want to see a representation of women and of class in the 19th Century industrial north.

Just want a damned good yarn? Try Conan Doyle or HG Wells – and with the latter, consider his ideas in terms of 21st Century scientific developments such as GM or cloning.

Now there’s a thought: man tampering with nature. What about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein? Or Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

The fear of female sexuality and modernity? Try Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Indeed, many of the above remain iconic figures on both the printed page and in film. With the latter, there comes the suggested opportunity to discuss changing attitudes toward women – and if you wanted, you could explore that by comparing Stoker’s tale with modern incarnations of vampires, including Selene in the Underworld film series.

19th Century English literature should not be seen as some sort of holy canon, but neither should it be damned and ignored, any more than anything from later – or earlier – or treated as though it were somehow so utterly out of date that is has no connection to human lives and experience in the 21st century.

Personally, I have no problem whatsoever with children reading To Kill a Mockingbird or Of Mice and Men, (I loved being introduced to Arthur Miller at A’ level), but I have no problem with them being introduced to older texts either.

The idea that seems to be floating around that somehow they’ll be damaged if they cannot study for examination the former novels, and damaged if they have to study for examination anything from before 1900, is patronising nonsense that does absolutely nothing to promote the best possible educational opportunities for every child.

And in protestations about ‘old’ literature and ‘accessibility’, the argument perversely turns out to be similar to Rupert Murdoch’s avowed anti-elitism. Do we need to detail how that has been used as an excuse to dumb down media – including but not limited to news media – and its impact on the UK’s public discourse?

If you need a reminder, then consider current attempts by the Times – once the paper of record – to smear Labour leader Ed Miliband because he looks a bit “weird”.

Another point: the clue is in the title – English literature. If you want to create a different course that covers global literature, then do so.

Literature in translation doesn’t count – although students of foreign languages will likely read relevant literature during their courses – so why should literature from the US?

After all, does anyone whine about a perceived lack of opportunity for pupils studying English literature to read, say, works by the rather excellent Australian author, Peter Carey?

And for brooding romance, Jane Eyre

Setting all that aside, is social mobility helped or increased by making education ‘easy’.

Ask yourself where the political leaders from the traditional working class are these days.

Is their absence down, in part, to the demise of the grammar schools that provided opportunities to gain the tools that enabled social mobility – including those that would and will always be available to those who have the fortune to be born to wealthy families.

Now this is not an argument that grammar schools are, per se, the ‘answer’. But the current situation is quite clearly not working – see that question about our politicians, and plenty of research that reveals social mobility to be reducing.

There are myriad reasons to criticise and damn Gove – his obsessive love of free schools and his actual record of trying to micromanage the curriculum (including some of his pronouncements on the teaching of history) are just two – but this non-issue really has the hallmarks of a dose of 19th century hysteria.

And caught in the middle, as always, are young people, being used – yet again – as a convenient political and ideological football.

So go on – won’t somebody actually think of the children for a change?