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English literature GCSE

What does the IET and the engineering community think of the English literature GCSE? Is it relevant or beneficial for engineering or is it (like food tech) something that hardly anybody cares about?

English literature is a near compulsory GCSE in England but is now optional in Wales where it has experienced quite a heavy decline in the number of secondary school students taking it.

0 Arran Cameron over 5 years ago

Mark Tickner:

English Literature ought to be used to encourage reading for pleasure and reading a varied range of genres... I suspect it doesn't.

A parent mentioned at a home education meeting that English literature is a subject that you either love or hate. English literature is one of the most popular A Levels, which is indicative that a lot a children enjoy the subject at GCSE, but for children who didn't enjoy English literature at GCSE, then after being hammered with all the Shakespeare et al then they will probably never want to read fiction for pleasure again.

Lisa Miles:

I did Pure English Literature at A level and I can confidently say that yes it has enriched my life. ? I absolutely loved studying Shakespeare and love watching his plays be they in a theatre or on TV. See 45 Everyday Phrases Coined by Shakespeare to understand his influence on the English language.

I consider Shakespeare's plays to be sophisticated in style and probably too complex for a sizeable fraction of secondary school students to properly appreciate and comprehend to be in a compulsory GCSE subject. There are many students who are struggling with English language at GCSE and most don't have a hope in hell of ever managing to understand Shakespeare to the level required to achieve a respectable grade in English literature. Therefore I think that Shakespeare is a subject for an optional GCSE or after school club.

Roy Bowdler:
I would therefore strongly recommend the study of “storytelling” as a something valuable for engineers looking towards leadership. As a purely personal feeling, I also think that it is easy to slip “over the line” into intellectual pretentiousness through the use of language intended to impress rather than inform, but that is in the eye of the beholder. Examples might include references to classics, Latin etc, which are primarily the realm of those privately educated or specialised academic language.

Stories are one thing but the classics of literature are another. There are times when I think that any work of fiction that cannot be understood by a 12 year old of average intellectual ability is specialised material. I'm from a faction of society who prefers cartoons and video games to literary classics. One of my favourite cartoons is the Mysterious Cities of Gold which has a very strong storyline behind it.
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0 Former Community Member over 5 years ago

How many engineers will read a book once a week? Once a month? Once a year? Think about it?.....:-)
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0 Mark Tickner over 5 years ago

Cheong Tsoi:

How many engineers will read a book once a week? Once a month? Once a year? Think about it?.....:-)

<Raises hand>

OK, I've only managed to pick up a couple so far this year because I've been busy on other things in my spare time.
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0 Alasdair Anderson over 5 years ago

I have only managed two or three this year so far, like Mark due to being too busy on other things.

How many books you read is nothing to do with your profession, though the type of book you read may be. I spent my time at school avoiding reading the set books as I couldn't get on with them, but read many others. We read through Shakespeare's plays in class so I couldn't avoid them, but have enjoyed seeing the plays in the theatre or on film since then. However reading is just one of my interests. Am I unusual in having a wide range of interests both within and outside engineering?

Alasdair
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0 Former Community Member over 5 years ago

I read on Sunday afternoon.

I finished my MBA in 2004.

Then, I started to read.

So far, I have read 96 books.
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0 Alex Barrett over 5 years ago

I hated my English literature studies, paid the subject no heed and was late for the exam, but if I recall correctly it was my only grade A at O level. All credit to an excellent teacher.

Today I very much enjoy reading, mostly via old fashioned paper and sourced from charity shops and stalls, and find factual history, largely military, to be fascinating.
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0 Arran Cameron over 5 years ago

Lisa Miles:

? I absolutely loved studying Shakespeare and love watching his plays be they in a theatre or on TV. See 45 Everyday Phrases Coined by Shakespeare to understand his influence on the English language.

I don't believe that William Shakespeare actually wrote his plays although he may have wrote his poems which are very different in style from his plays.

I think the real author of Shakespeare's plays was Elizabeth I as she was probably the only person at the time to possess the knowledge required to write them.
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0 Alasdair Anderson over 5 years ago

Arran Cameron:

I don't believe that William Shakespeare actually wrote his plays although he may have wrote his poems which are very different in style from his plays.

I think the real author of Shakespeare's plays was Elizabeth I as she was probably the only person at the time to possess the knowledge required to write them.

Of course she also managed to fake her own death in order to continue writing plays such as King Lear, Coriolanus and the Tempest which can definitely be dated to later than March 1603, the supposed death date of Elizabeth I......
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0 mapj1 over 5 years ago

Cheong Tsoi:

How many engineers will read a book once a week? Once a month? Once a year? Think about it?.....:-)

Personally I enjoy reading, being a 'book at bedtime' person, and I tend to have several on the go at once, but there is a strong history/ factual bias.

today.

The Black Swan (non fiction)

The rise of the Tudors (non fiction)

The tennis players balls (fiction, Stephen Fry)

Mortal Engines ( dystopian future)

These will all be over by next week, probably, depending on the work panic level.

Also I tend to take a book or two from the library on holiday, and these tend to be things like spy stories or science fiction.

One of the possible advantages of having children is that one gets a licence (*) to re-visit things that one half remembers from childhood, Jennings, Biggles, loads of Enid Blyton, and now as my childen age more edgy stuff. At their age I was reading things like the Dr Who stories, but they prefer TV.

(*) not a real licence of course, but you can always smile at the librarian and say ' for the kids' if they look down at you.

The same licence allows you to play with things on display in toy shops..

Personally I'd put RE as the least used school subject, at least the way I was taught it in 1980 or so.
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0 Legh Richardson over 5 years ago

Alasdair Anderson:

Arran Cameron:

I don't believe that William Shakespeare actually wrote his plays although he may have wrote his poems which are very different in style from his plays.

I think the real author of Shakespeare's plays was Elizabeth I as she was probably the only person at the time to possess the knowledge required to write them.

Of course she also managed to fake her own death in order to continue writing plays such as King Lear, Coriolanus and the Tempest which can definitely be dated to later than March 1603, the supposed death date of Elizabeth I......

Is there anything to say that these plays were written before her death and then published by her agent afterwards? There is also the other possible writer, the Earl of Oxford. !

Would you not agree that English Literature is basically the study of other peoples creative thought processes and really should be consigned to a subsection of an A level Psychology syllabus.?

Legh
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English literature GCSE

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