Get Gove Gone!

In the society of today, education is extremely important; and as a student I feel very passionately about it. Whether changes in the curriculum affect me or students in the future - I believe that as students, we should have a say in what happens. After all, we are the ones that are studying the syllabus ... no one else, especially not the ‘almighty’ Michael Gove.

Therefore, personally, I believe that it is so important that teenagers of today are taught an up-to-date curriculum. However, it is clear that they are being forced to learn one from the 1940s! Getting rid of spectacular American Literature; such as: Harper Lee’s: ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ and John Steinbeck’s:‘Of Mice and Men;’ is starving our younger generations of multiculturalism – something that nowadays, is a prominently precious aspect of everyday life in Britain.

It is incredibly important that in modern society, students are aware of differing cultures; so why isn’t Gove allowing this? Students adore American Literature; therefore, disallowing them the opportunity to study multicultural literature is famishing them of the aspects of the curriculum that they have actually learned to love. Studying tired, British literature will not improve grades –although, a modern, intriguing curriculum may well do so.

As students, we don’t have much say – but, I think that this is something that we should actually have a say in. We go to school for approximately 7 hours a day, 5 days a week – regularly learning irrelevant knowledge for a subject that we didn’t even want to do. In theory, we already have a limited syllabus – so why remove incredible American Literature... I mean, it’s actually bordering on racism.

Most of the time, school doesn’t teach you the knowledge that you require for the workplace, it teaches you how to pass an exam. No really... is that what we want? Do we really want to be able to pass an exam; well yes, but we also want to be able to achieve skills that will be needed in the future. Skills that will help us to get a job that we actually want, a job that we will enjoy and look forward to every morning. Not a tired, old job that we hate – a job that just about allows us to just about get by and pay for necessities.

Why should both students and teachers do so much work, for such little reward? Why? How can it possibly be fair... as members of the education system, we are clearly being exploited by authority – why do we put up with it? I say, you know what – it’s about time our opinions were heard, about time we had a say. After all, it’s our lives...

The curriculum is completely outdated... I mean, come on - this is not the 1940s, this is 2014.