Here's fresh confirmation from the land of Shakespeare and Dickens that English-speaking civilization's collapse is proceeding apace. Are we doing better in the U.S.? Maybe.
Standards have slipped so low that it is possible to get a top grade GCSE in English literature without having read a book, according to a report by a university professor and a secondary school head of English.The teaching of literature by extracts has replaced reading for pleasure, understanding and appreciation to such an extent that some pupils believe Romeo and Juliet, the Shakespeare tragedy, has a happy ending, they say.
Pupils can get through the whole of their compulsory secondary education without reading any book from cover to cover, they claim.
Exam boards and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the Government's curriculum advisers, are blamed for encouraging teachers to concentrate on bite-sized chunks of text instead of the full novel, play or poem.
English literature has turned into a comprehension exercise with self-contained chunks of texts reproduced in exam papers on which pupils can answer questions without the need to show an understanding of the whole work or its genre, they say.
Related:
• Wikipedia - General Certificate of Secondary Education