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Why I've Stopped Teaching Of Mice And Men.
I made the decision this year not to teach OMAM any more. The book still flourishes in other schools at KS3, no doubt because book cupboards are still full of copies after its heyday of GCSE dominance.
Let me explain my reasons.
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I made the decision this year not to teach OMAM any more. The book still flourishes in other schools at KS3, no doubt because book cupboards are still full of copies after its heyday of GCSE dominance.
Let me explain my reasons.
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Disclaimer: if this seems all terribly woke, or you love OMAM and you think it's right for your students, more power to you. You do what's good for your school.
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There are elements in OMAM that work brilliantly 84 years after its publication. Its attack on "American dream" capitalism, on the myth of success through hard work, it still potent. And some of the language is divine: I wouldn't expect any less from Steinbeck.
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But to my mind there's too much about OMAM that is problematic or even harmful by the standard of 2021, when our awareness of, and the popular discourse around, vulnerable and minority groups has come a long way even in the last 20 years.
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The portrayal of Lennie as a disabled character is very challenging when you stop and think about it. This is a character with an unspecified, unexamined disability, repeatedly described (as we all know) as animalistic, whose childish lack of self-control leads him to murder.
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It takes a hard-hearted reader not to be moved by Lennie's fate or George's attempt to look after him, but that doesn't change the fact that as a portrayal of a disabled character Lennie is fairly horrifying.
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In the case of Curley's Wife and Crooks, the book repeats violent, abusive language without, in my opinion, developing those characters beyond being the victims of abuse.
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Curley's Wife is a character without agency. A victim of the shitty treatment meted out by others, her only acts of self-assertion are entering a joyless relationship with Curley, flirting with Slim and threatening to have Crooks lynched.
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As a GCSE examiner I marked dozens of essays in which students "slut-shamed" Curley's Wife: she flirted with Slim and comforted Lennie so basically she deserved to have her neck broken.
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Now, those students had missed the point of course, but really they were just *repeating what the book told them*. The ranchers treat Curley's Wife as an untrustworthy "tart". Their view isn't really challenged in the book.
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When Curley's Wife dies, we're encouraged to think of it as a kindness: "all the meanness" is "gone from her face" and she looks "very pretty and simple".
I understand what Steinbeck is going for, but the characterisation is thin and, I think, demeaning.
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I understand what Steinbeck is going for, but the characterisation is thin and, I think, demeaning.
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As for Crooks. Obviously there's a debate over whether teachers (white or otherwise) should repeat the N word in class. I have done in the past; I don't any more.
Once again, though, we get the harmful language directed at a character with little internal life or agency.
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Once again, though, we get the harmful language directed at a character with little internal life or agency.
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Crooks in OMAM was brought into focus for me when I read Colson Whitehead's (brilliant) novel Nickel Boys. In Nickel Boys there's a great deal more N-wording, and a great deal more systemic and physical violence. And yet, it never feels like a novel about victims,
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because another narrative of black empowerment, of music and literature and civil rights and MLK is ever-present in the background.
We have to do a lot of work as readers to locate an alternative story for Crooks, as much as we might analyse his glasses or his
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We have to do a lot of work as readers to locate an alternative story for Crooks, as much as we might analyse his glasses or his
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(say it with me) "mauled copy of the California Civil Code". Really all we know about Crooks is defined by his abuse at the hands of white characters.
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Of Mice And Men is not a children's book. It is not YA fiction. To teach it at KS3 it to mistake accessibility for appropriateness.
You, the English teacher, understand the meanings behind Steinbeck's artfully drawn sketches. You can rationalise outdated elements because
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You, the English teacher, understand the meanings behind Steinbeck's artfully drawn sketches. You can rationalise outdated elements because
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you have a wide view of issues of discrimination, changing attitudes and literary contexts.
The arching of Curley's Wife's back means something to you that it doesn't to a Year 8.
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The arching of Curley's Wife's back means something to you that it doesn't to a Year 8.
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I'm not suggesting for a second that OMAM is "bad" in the literary sense. There's a reason it has endured, and students have responded to it, and it can still grip and move readers. I'm not suggesting it's a poor work of fiction.
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And I realise that context is king, that the 1930s ranch world was racist and misogynistic, and Steinbeck is reflecting real-world attitudes.
But ideas change. Attitudes change. We're not obliged to bring Dustbowl racism into our classrooms.
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But ideas change. Attitudes change. We're not obliged to bring Dustbowl racism into our classrooms.
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There is more about race in one poem by Langston Hughes; there is more about gender in one poem by Adrienne Rich. There are poems and short stories and novels and lectures and music that give voice to vulnerable and minority groups.
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I have had good value out of teaching Of Mice and Men, but I'm finished with it now. I won't be teaching it again.
Thanks if you followed this far.
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Thanks if you followed this far.
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