The Schalter

In the same month as the OCR examining board announces its plans to use books from Richard & Judy’s Book Club (yes, that Richard & Judy) as the basis for part of their A-Level English syllabus, the Government’s exam regulator reports that English is more challenging at A-Level than Media Studies.

The deep irony of the situation aside, this sort of news inevitably ruffles feathers: on the one hand, there are those who believe that anything with ‘Studies’ in the title can only be a soft option (a sort of reverse version of the old BT ad with Maureen Lipman declaiming: “You got an ology!” at high volume down the phone); on the other, there are the people who believe that an A-Level is an A-Level and that’s an end of it. But it’s only just the beginning.

Ever since the General Studies A-Level was introduced, there have been rumours that it simply doesn’t cut it as an admissible result for the elite universities in the UK, raising questions as to the equality of those glittering A grades. These rumours gained credence when both LSE and Cambridge (and others) banished the General Studies topic from their admissions process altogether and those two particular institutions went on to publish lists of what they deemed to be ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ subjects. While neither went as far as refusing to recognise the ‘soft’ A-Level courses (Media Studies being amongst them) they made it clear that a combination weighted 2:1 in favour of ‘hard’ topics would be more…. shall we say, appropriate, in the eyes of their admissions tutors.

Based on this most recent report into the state of the so-called ‘Gold Standard’, it would seem that the powers-that-be within the examining system agree. Or, at least it could appear that way until you take this whole Richard and Judy whizzbangery into account. After all, isn’t a TV chat show presenter’s weekly book pick more like something you’d expect to find under the mantle of Media Studies?

Question 2: Give one simile for the word ‘influence’. Briefly explain your choice. (20 marks)

Ah. Easy: you want influence, you want Amanda Ross, creator of the Richard & Judy Book Club, and the person responsible for making the book selections. Consistently mentioned as one of the five most powerful people in publishing (frequently the most powerful), her nearest competitor is the chief book-buyer for Tesco. Her say-so has the power to launch a book’s otherwise respectable sales into the stratosphere; in a 2007 interview, The Telegraph calculated that her involvement had made at least 10 authors into millionaires. And she’s not even ‘in’ publishing.

If numbers aren’t your thing, look at it this way - in the world of bookselling, with hundreds (if not thousands) of titles in any one store, appearance is a vital weapon in the battle for the idle browser’s heart and wallet. Ross, a woman outside the world of the publishing houses’ art departments, was able to get the cover of one of her featured books changed - purely because she didn’t feel Richard Madeley should be seen on TV with a pink book. Publishers (notably Jonathan Cape) have even altered their publication timetables to fit in with the Book Club schedule. That, I think you’ll find, is some pretty solid influence.

Which brings us rather neatly on to the crux of the matter.

Question 3: “I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.” (Groucho Marx). Discuss the role of television - if any - in modern education. (25 marks)

So the OCR want to use Book Club picks as set texts for A-Level students, you say. So what? Anything that gets kids to read is surely a good thing, right? Well, yes. And no.

Let’s think about the purpose of the Richard & Judy Book Club for a second. Actually, let’s not. Let’s ask Amanda (if we can call her that. Ms Ross seems so formal, don’t you think?) to fill us in. In a profile run by The Guardian in March 2006, she described the only agenda behind her choices as being that “the books must all make for great TV”. A year later, The Telegraph ran an article in which she was quoted as saying “a book has to be vivid. Some books can be beautifully written but not a lot happens. They need strong themes and plots. In the end I’m picking something which has to sustain 12 minutes of television discussion”. And that’s fair enough; after all, it’s only entertainment, a slot on a daytime TV show.

Bearing this in mind, what on earth is OCR doing? Do we seriously believe that books picked because they’re enjoyable and can sustain discussion for a whole twelve minutes (a time allocated to fit in with the demands of live television rather than the merits of a novel), automatically deserve a place on the A-Level syllabus? It’s not often I wish myself back into my teens, I can tell you, but given the choice I’d much rather take the braces, the acne and the hormones than study Paradise Lost at A-Level again (oh, the joys of a religious English teacher). Not forgetting, of course, that Ross surely has a book’s appeal to the general public somewhere in mind when making her choices. This would be the same public who sent Katie (Jordan) Price’s efforts into the bestseller list - and let’s not even mention The Da Vinci Code, a novel so breathtakingly poorly written that it has the power to make university lecturers weep in despair. When it comes to picking the literary heavies, we’re not exactly champing at the bit - and maybe that’s why the A-Level syllabus should stick with the dull and dusty oldies.

Give the kids Milton, make them analyse a bit of Joyce. Torture them with Tennyson - god knows, they’re not going to read them out of choice - and by missing out on the heavies, the Big Swinging Dicks of literature, they’re missing a chance to really push themselves, to learn something they can’t necessarily get from the Bestsellers shelf at Waterstones. A-Levels aren’t meant to be fun. Half the time, they’re not even interesting - just ask the people who took Mr Porter’s chemistry class at my school.