The row about the English curriculum for Scottish schools rumbles on.
Readers of The Herald will recall author James Robertson’s plea for generosity and latitude where consideration of the Scottish literary canon is concerned, specifically with regard to those novels which contain themes or elements considered problematic today.
His plea was not a reactionary one, rather it was inspired by a fear that literary craft, illuminating ideas and great storytelling may be lost in too strict an application of what we might call the ‘right to write’ principle.
There was more on this subject in letters from readers who took issue with the curriculum ‘refresh’ announced recently by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). In the eyes of some correspondents, this has downgraded and/or excised too many of the Holy Cows of Scottish Literature. In other words the stuff studied by your parents and your parents’ parents.
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Now comes Corey Gibson, a lecturer in 20th and 21st Century Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow’s School of Critical Studies who writes on the subject in The Herald’s Agenda section.
Mr Gibson was one of those consulted as part of the SQA refresh and is irked that most of the debate has been “refracted through the fever dream” of the ongoing culture wars. There’s more. He views criticisms of the refresh as a “smokescreen” being used by those who are “politically hostile to the principles of equality and diversity”.
He then lays out some of the deliberations made and factors considered in the refresh, sets them against “the difficult work of balancing complex and overlapping priorities”, and notes that there are now “more women, more minoritised writers, more queer and non-binary writers, more working-class and care-experienced writers” and “more variety in form and subject matter as a result”.
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Shorthand for the contentious equality, diversion and inclusion principles alluded to here is EDI, though the cultural warriors in the Trump/Badenoch camp prefer DIE, for obvious reasons. It, and they, are much in the news at the moment, and doubtless they will take issue with the value of descriptors like ‘minoritised’ and ‘non-binary’ as they apply to literature.
But is EDI a hill worth dying on, as the saying goes? In this case I’d say yes. Literature exists to challenge deep-seated orthodoxies and power imbalances. Curricula should too. That’s what education is for – and why it is constantly being fought over.
Cheer up
To lighten the mood, it’s only a month or so until the start of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival. This year’s line-up includes Susie McCabe, Russell Kane, Fern Brady, Jimeoin, Jenny Eclair and the inestimable Kate Butch – something for everyone, in other words – and tucked away in the programme you’ll also find gems like Walking Shadows, which required dogs to audition, and Gray Matters, which celebrates 850th anniversary through the prism of one of its greatest chronicles, novelist and artist Alasdair Gray. Ashley Storrie, Alan Bissett and Christopher Macarthur-Boyd come together for that one.
And following the death last year of Ms Storrie’s mother, Scottish comedy legend Janey Godley, there will be a commemorative event on March 23. The Glasgow International Comedy Festival runs from March 12 to 30.
But if you can’t wait that long for your comedy fix, Taiwanese-American comedian and podcaster Atsuko Okatsuka brings her stand-up show to Glasgow’s O2 Academy on February 20. Named in Variety’s Top 10 Comics To Watch list in 2022, she has followed that with The Intruder, a TV special on HBO.
And finally
Among the recent crop of write-ups from The Herald critics are reviews of a touring production of Chicago, Cyndi Lauper’s Glasgow show, and novels from Eimear McBride, Steven A McKay and Selali Fiamanya.
Theatre critic Neil Cooper was in his seat at the Playhouse in Edinburgh for Chicago, the much-loved Jazz Age musical currently celebrating its 50th year. Fun fact: the play on which it is based, written by Chicago Tribune reporter-turned-Hollywood scriptwriter Maurine Dallas Watkins, notches up its century next year.
Faye Brookes and Kevin Clifton, stars of Coronation Street and Strictly Come Dancing respectively, take the roles of wannabe stage star Roxie Hart and Billy Flynn, the lawyer who defends her after she shoots her boyfriend. “Non-stop erotic cabaret,” is Neil’s take.
At the OVO Hydro in Glasgow Teddy Jamieson was among those assembled for Cyndi Lauper’s “farewell gift” tour, and found the 71-year-old “funny and fierce, ditzy and determined” and she birled through hits such as True Colours, Girls Just Want To Have Fun and (not unassociated) She Bop, a hymn to female masturbation which did not please the moral guardians of 1980s America (hello Tipper Gore).
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From stage to page, Alastair Mabbott was gripped by King Of Wessex, the latest work from Scottish author Steven A McKay. “Whatever it is about medieval England that fired up a metalhead from Old Kilpatrick to start writing historical novels, it’s clearly potent stuff,” he says. Alastair was also full of praise for a very different sort of novel, Before We Hit The Ground by Glasgow-born author Selali Fiamanya. The story of a Scots-Ghanaian family afflicted by tragedy, it’s set across both countries.
Finally Rosemary Goring turns her attention to the latest from Irish writer Eimear McBride, author of 2013 hit A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing. New work The City Changes Its Face is set in London in the 1990s and pitches a young drama student into a relationship with a successful actor twice her age. What could possibly go wrong?