Authors of ‘And Tango Makes Three’ Sue Over Florida Law Driving Book Bans

A lawsuit targeted a school district and the State of Florida over restricting access to a book about a penguin family with two fathers.

The big idea: do we need to dismantle the literary canon?

The temptation to chuck out the old is strong, but can only be part of the answer

As someone who writes books, lectures on teacher training courses and spent 15 years teaching English literature, I’m often asked what I think should be included in the literary canon or what should replace the existing canon. It feels like a trick question.

First, a definition might be useful. When we say canon we’re referring to an established selection of works that have been dyed into the fabric of British education. It’s the familiar roll call of names that have featured on the curriculum seemingly for ever, and may well continue to do so. Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Orwell, Blake, Priestley, Owen, Larkin … the parade of (largely) dead white men whom successive generations of British students are invited to meet and grapple with on their academic journeys.

The Bible and Book of Mormon Challenged Under Utah Book Ban Law

Last month, a school district committee in Utah decided that the Bible should be removed from elementary and middle school libraries.

Winnie the Pooh ‘Run, Hide, Fight’ Book Draws Parents’ Ire

Cindy Campos reads the book "Stay Safe" to one of her sons in Dallas.

Amanda Gorman’s Inaugural Poem, “The Hill We Climb,” Restricted by Florida School

Amanda Gorman reciting a poem during the inauguration.

Asked to Delete References to Racism From Her Book, an Author Refused

Maggie Tokuda-Hall declined Scholastic’s offer to license her book, “Love in the Library,” on the condition that she edit her author’s note to remove a description of past and present instances of racism.

Florida Rejects Dozens of Social Studies Textbooks, and Forces Changes in Others

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has campaigned against what he has described as “woke indoctrination” in the classroom.

The big idea: how can England’s universities survive?

The government’s laissez-faire approach has imperilled the whole system. It’s time for a radical rethink

If you listened to ministers, you’d think that there’s a crisis of “wokeness” on campus. Every young person is apparently simultaneously an overvulnerable snowflake terrified of opinions and a yowling fighter in the culture wars. But although there might well be a problem with the diversity and range of ideas in the academy, choosing to focus on it amounts to pointing at a fire in a wastepaper bin while the buildings burn down. The real problems are the result of government abandoning all management of the university world.

There used to be a cap on individual universities’ student numbers. Each of them got a figure imposed from the centre, and each received an appropriate level of funding. So far, so good. Every institution had a certain number of places, and they worked out what A-level offers they could make, based on those numbers, combined with past experience of how students would fare compared to predicted grades. Those universities at the “top” asked for As, in the “middle” Bs, and so on.

Florida Will Review Social Studies Textbooks for ‘Prohibited Topics’

A current first grade history lesson in use in Florida.

How to Get Kids to Hate English

Brenda Almond obituary

My mother, Brenda Almond, who has died aged 85, was a philosopher, author and ethicist.

She was born into a poor, working-class family in Birkenhead, Merseyside. Her father, Edward, a painter and decorator, was called up during the second world war and died soon after; her mother, Margaret (nee Potter), died of a respiratory illness when Brenda, an only child, was five.

Kenneth Fowler obituary

My friend and teacher Kenneth Fowler, who has died aged 88, was an eminent historian of the hundred years war, and a leading light in the teaching of history over more than three decades at Edinburgh University.

Ken’s parents, Ronald and Ethel (nee McMahon), lived next door to the large grocer’s shop they kept at Clayton-le-Woods in Lancashire, and sent Ken and his older brother, David, later a successful businessman, to the local primary school, from where Ken went on to boarding school in Derbyshire.

Who’s going to be triggered by Northanger Abbey? It’s hardly Game of Thrones | Catherine Bennett

Greenwich University is warning students to prepare themselves for the ‘toxic friendships’ Jane Austen satirises in her novel

Spoilers – but does it matter? Now Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is identified by a British university as a vehicle for potentially disturbing “gender stereotypes” and “toxic relationships and friendships”, perhaps the safest way to approach the satire is, if at all, second hand.

The University of Greenwich’s trigger warning (TW) is for undergraduates, but since the original intention of such alerts was to prepare readers for some possible reminder of upsetting experiences, it’s older ones who should be most grateful for this vigilance. Who, after all, is likely to have squeezed in more toxic relationships or suffered more acutely from gender stereotyping? Can such a novel be considered remotely safe for mature women, even those of us too young to have been jilted by an army captain in a Georgian pump room? Plainly, since Greenwich has stuck a warning on it, not.