Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Just L'il Ole Me with the Power to Ban Books

I'm a bit late with this one, what with being stuck in the hills and that, but I can't resist it:

So on being presented by The Guardian with Carol Ann Duffy's poetic response to the banning of her poem Education for Leisure, Pat Schofield, the external examiner whose complaint led to the banning, had this to say:
"...a bit weird. But having read her other poems I found they were all a little bit weird. But that's me".
Correction: that's an external examiner whom we'd expect to be able to understand poems.

But then that's our education system, it seems.

2 comments:

David Belbin said...

I think you'll find that the woman was an hourly paid exam invigilator (rather than an external examiner, involved in assessment) ie a role rather less taxing than that of a lunchtime superviser - but the papers didn't publish this as it spoilt the story.

Great CAD poem in response though....

Elizabeth Baines said...

I should have known....

Now we just have to contend with the fact that a single complaint from a non-expert can get a book or a piece of work banned.

And yes, great poetic response from CAD.