When Junior Cycle students sit their English exam this June, some of them will choose to write about the American novel To Kill a Mockingbird. They will be the last Irish students to do so, for now at least.
Last year the novel was quietly dropped from the prescribed reading list for 2nd and 3rd year students. It was among six novels rotated out.
This week the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) published two reports which give a small insight as to why.
"This report emerges from a particular context" its Report on the Role and Selection of Prescribed Text Lists states.
"In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020, the prescribed lists for Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate English came under increasing scrutiny for diversity and representation."
"Traditional texts such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men were widely questioned in the media for their representation of race," the report states, and it was largely this that prompted the NCCA to commission a wider study (also now published) as to just how and why certain texts are chosen.
In the summer of 2020 the Black Lives Matter movement had reached Ireland. In Dublin in June thousands of young people rallied under its banner and suddenly young Irish people of colour began speaking out about their negative experiences in schools and other settings.
In late June 2020 I wrote about racism in the classroom and it was impossible to ignore what these young students were saying about their experience of novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird. That experience was one of trauma.
"I used to dread going to English class when we were reading that book," one black student told me.
"Whenever the [N] word would come up, there would never be any warning. The guys [his classmates] would say it and then they would look at me...but being the only black student in the class I just had to let it go." The N word appears 48 times in the book.
"It's kind of weird to me that the book about racism on the English curriculum was written by a white woman," another young school student told me. "There’s other books, and better books, about race."
As that summer progressed, there was public debate as to whether or not To Kill a Mockingbird should be removed from school lists. The NCCA did not get involved in that debate, but it is clear now that they were paying attention.
To Kill a Mockingbird has been removed. Its culling was part of a refresh that takes place as a matter of course every three years. Other novels to bite the dust include George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
Among the six new entrants are novels by two black female writers, Elizabeth Acedevo and Esi Edugyan. But it is hardly a radical shake up; Ernest Hemmingway’s classic The Old Man and the Sea is another newbie, as is John le Carré’s Call for the Dead.
Literature in the classroom aims to teach language skills, but it also teaches culture. "This cultural introduction has been a central aspect of the prescribed lists in English but what that culture is, and how it is represented has changed over time," the report says.
The NCCA report gives the criteria for the selection of texts. Each list must contain both classic and modern literature, and contemporary texts including young adult literature, and there are six additional criteria.
The list has to include a "wide and varied range" of texts that are "stimulating and engaging". Texts will be of "general suitability" in terms of violence, sexual scenes and other sensitive issues including suicide. Lists have to show diversity, gender equity, and accessibility/inclusion.
"The lists endeavour to include representation from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and authors to enable students to 'see themselves in the texts'," the NCCA concludes.
As well as publishing its own report, the NCCA has also published the study it commissioned from Dr Bethan Marshall of King’s College in the UK.
She was tasked with exploring "to what extent issues such as diversity and post colonialism are considered" in other English-speaking jurisdictions when it comes to selecting texts for students to explore in school.
"Questions relating to how inclusive the school curriculum is are not new" she states, "nor are debates about the novels, plays and films students should read/experience in class".
"However, the Black Lives Matter movement heightened awareness of the need for post-colonial perspectives in schools, and broader so-called 'culture wars' have once again brought these questions to prominence," she writes.
I contacted one of the black students that I spoke to in 2020. She is now a first-year student at university.
"This is definitely an improvement" she tells me, referring to the fact that To Kill a Mockingbird is gone. "and I think it’s really good that they’ve added two new black authors".
"But I’ve changed my mind a bit," she adds.
"I don’t think the issue was with the book, it was how it was being taught and the use of the N word in the classroom. A teacher needs to stop, and explain the origins of the word, and why it should never be used."
This young woman longs for the day when people of her generation who look like her, take their place at the top of some Irish classrooms and enter staffrooms. But she says all teachers need training in racial awareness.
Looking back on her own school days and the constant microagressions - such as use of the N word - that came her way, she says: "It is just exhausting as a black student. You have to decide if you are going to let all that stuff slide or spend every day arguing against it, and being made fun of."
"Teachers don't have the same experience as their students so they don’t understand."
When it comes to the teachers she had, she vacillates between forgiveness and blame. "They don’t have the same experience as their students so they don’t understand," but then she adds "but if you are an adult you should know better".
The new Junior Cycle list now comprises eight female authors and 12 male. Three of the writers are Irish. Six out of 20 are non-white. While 12 are still alive, eight are dead.
It would seem that Junior Cycle students now have a far wider choice, but do they really?
It is their teacher who will choose which two novels from the list to study and the NCCA has expressed concern that teachers tend to choose the same "traditional texts" over and over again.
"Familiarity with, and the range of resources available for traditional texts on the lists, may to some degree account for [this]," it states.
There is little point in offering a wide range of texts to teachers, if that offering is not being passed on to students.
This is a problem elsewhere too. Writing about England, Dr Marshall states: "Despite the often wide range of texts offered...the majority of texts chosen are classic novels and plays by dead white men."
"Only 6% of pre-20th century texts chosen...are by women and only 1% are by writers published after 1914. Only 0.7% of texts chosen are by people of colour," she laments.
The NCCA makes a fleeting reference to one other thing in its report. It mentions that in 2021 "a different social media campaign questioned the morality and suitability of certain texts on the prescribed lists". But this is not an issue that is explored in either of these two reports.
