If Michael Gove thinks that the home-grown classics of English Literature offer much, if any, support to his own political position, then he cannot have read any of them.
Yet he has a degree in English from Oxford, so, as a purely physical act, he must have read at least some of them.
Alongside the many Flashmen and the smattering of the kind of lower-middle-class people who would burn down a neighbour's house if they suspected it to contain a book, Gove's intellect has been absurdly over-praised.
Being the best-read man in the present Cabinet, even if he is (that is probably Vince Cable), is a very low achievement indeed.
It has nothing to do with his political position-he simply wants English classics taught to English children instead of foreign ones.
ReplyDeleteShocking eh?
It is coming from him, yes.
ReplyDeleteOr surprising, anyway.
I don't know why. That's exactly what his critics expect of him.
ReplyDeleteThat's why Twitter is again full of NUT types saying this is "jingoistic".
As they said when he last tried to make our history curriculum include some British history.
At the time, one prominent critic of Gove-a certain Regius Professor of History at Cambridge-wrote in the FT to accuse Michael Gove of "rote learning of the patriotic stocking-fillers so beloved of traditionalists....a Little England version of our national past, linked to an isolationist view of our national future".
Calm down, dear.
I know which side I'm on, Mr Lindsay.
And it's not the side of Cambridge's embarassing "Regius Professor of anti-British history"
What about you?
Silly little boy.
ReplyDeleteAs are you.