THE John Steinbeck novella Of Mice and Men, and other American classics including Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible and the Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird, have been dropped from new English literature GCSEs after Michael Gove, the education secretary, insisted teenagers had to study works by British writers.
Three-quarters of the books on the governmentdirected GCSEs, which will be unveiled this week, are by British authors and most are pre-20th century.
“Of Mice and Men, which Michael Gove really dislikes, will not be included. It was studied by 90% of teenagers taking English literature GCSE in the past,” said OCR, one of Britain’s biggest exam boards. “Michael Gove said that was a really disappointing statistic.”
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