To understand the nineteenth century texts that we throw at our unprepared teenagers, they must have more background knowledge than we probably expect.  Some background is taught in school, and some is assessed in the GCSE mark schemes.  But, the truth is, there are students who are at an immediate disadvantage, and, as the world changes even from how we experienced it in our youth, young people get further and further away from the shared culture and societal expectations which are required to properly understand a text.

As we treat the next generation to the delights of A Christmas Carol – taught in my area in the run up to Christmas – teachers throughout Britain spend precious lesson time talking about the ‘invention’ of the Victorian Christmas, Christmas trees, Christmas cards, lights and carols. There will be some explanation of ‘pagan Christmas’ and ‘Christian Christmas’ and possibly Dickens’ view of what it meant. I have taught students who have hopelessly mixed up ideas of Yule and Christianity and traditions in the scramble to get some ideas into the heads of twenty-first century teenagers. Some understanding of The Poor Law, workhouses and other aspects of nineteenth century society that Dickens was aiming to criticise, is also rapidly shoved into half a lesson. Despite this albeit hasty preparation to read the novella, context is not assessed in Edexcel’s GCSE English Literature when it comes to A Christmas Carol.  (Though it is considered worthy to be assessed in other topics such as poetry.)

Assessed or not, schools do not have time to teach nineteenth century politics, law or social history as part of the English curriculum. Inevitably, students have to fall back on their own cultural knowledge.  This will disadvantage certain types of student.

Understanding Greek mythology will help you understand Byron’s poetry; knowing the Bible will help you understand Hardy’s novels; knowing what the gothic genre entails will help you read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It is not to say that you can’t enjoy these works without that knowledge, but it is much, much more difficult. Those whose parents do not come from Britain and so have other traditions and histories to tell their children, those who have not spent a life time watching Dickensian carolling on the television, those who have not read Anthony Horowitz or Rick Riordan explaining the Greek myths, these are just a few of the people who will struggle to get the same out of the texts they study as others.

As we travel further and further away in time from Victor Frankenstein, from Little Nell, from Tess Durbeyfield, the less they will be understood.  It is not surprising that Chaucer is rarely studied outside of university these days.  Very few have read Piers Plowman, John Webster’s plays are staged less frequently, Aphra Behn is a name that even students of literature may well be unfamiliar with. The world they wrote about, the understanding they shared with their readers or audiences, these have disappeared into the mists of time.  It takes deliberate study and determined application to appreciate not only the contexts of these authors, but also their language. The same is happening to our nineteenth century favourites. 

For old ladies such as myself, the world of mid to late twentieth century is close and familiar.  It links back much more easily to a time when most of the (educated) people in the country knew about Noah and the Arc, Icarus, Neptune. Even the Latinate language of the nineteenth century novel was still heard in hymns and in speeches. Wandering sentences were not so uncommon. The world is very different now. The writing style of choice, even in formal prose, offers shorter, less complex sentence structures and more Anglo-Saxon words rather than Latinate ones. We’re used to sound-bites, tiny extracts, pithy stories.  We have Twitter’s brevity, three minute YouTube clips and the five minutes the news devotes to the latest issue.  Dickens’ audiences were content to read volumes of his prose, winding their way through the intricacies of his labyrinthine sentences. Our minds are not accustomed to this discipline.

My point is that Michael Gove, harking back to the halcyon days of his childhood in the middle of the twentieth century, was happy to encourage (or impose) the study of texts he will have probably appreciated.  But the difference between him, his cultural knowledge, and the students now and theirs, grows ever wider.  This is even before we start talking about privilege and middle class cultural capital.

I don’t advocate stopping studying texts such as A Christmas Carol.  I love them!  Students learn more than a bunch of language and structure techniques from reading such a wonderful tale. I just want to acknowledge yet another barrier to success that students face, particularly students from working class backgrounds and ethnic minorities. But the biggest barrier is the speed of change our world is seeing. The change from Dickens to my classroom in 1980s Northern England was huge.  But subsequent change makes that leap seem miniscule. Next time we are trying valiantly to cram cultural, societal and political history into the starter of a literature lesson, we might give ourselves and the students a break if the knowledge gap is not immediately bridged.