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Let them eat Shakespeare: prescribed authors and the National Curriculum

Connolly, Roy (2008) Let them eat Shakespeare: prescribed authors and the National Curriculum. Curriculum Journal, 19 (4). pp. 293-307. ISSN 0958-5176

Item Type: Article

Abstract

In this article, we examine the debate that surrounds prescribed reading lists in the English National Curriculum. In particular, we attempt to locate the role which ideas about heritage and social and moral values have played in constructing this debate. We begin by examining the English National Curriculum's origin in the 1980s as a conservative exercise in stemming cultural crisis, and the discourse about literature's role in the curriculum which this helped construct. We then examine how this discourse has influenced, and continues to influence, the educational policy of prescribing a list of authors and consider the assumptions that are embedded in this policy. Finally, we reflect upon how the material conditions of the classroom provide a site of resistance, or difficulty, for the officially sanctioned discourse concerning literature's role in the curriculum.

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Depositing User: Roy Connolly

Identifiers

Item ID: 1154
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1080/09585170802509880
ISSN: 0958-5176
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/1154
Official URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0958517...

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Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 14 Nov 2011 10:54
Last Modified: 02 Jul 2019 09:04

Contributors

Author: Roy Connolly

University Divisions

Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries > School of Art and Design

Subjects

Performing Arts > Drama

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