Call to remove Of Mice and Men from GCSE course

"I conscionable don't find Of Mice and Men due for schools and however that impacts young achromatic people, and young achromatic people."

Angel Mbondiya is sitting GCSE exams, including English literature, astatine a schoolhouse successful Belfast.

One of the novels she has to survey is Of Mice and Men, by Nobel-Prize winning writer John Steinbeck.

But arsenic the publication was written successful 1937 and portrays beingness successful the 1930s, it contains radical slurs including the N-word.

Angel told BBC News NI that due to the fact that of this, she thinks the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) should regenerate it connected the GCSE English lit course.

The cardinal characters successful Of Mice and Men are George Milton and Lennie Small, 2 migrant ranch workers looking for enactment successful 1930s California.

The caller besides has a quality called Crooks, who Steinbeck portrays arsenic facing favoritism due to the fact that helium is black.

According to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, Of Mice and Men was 1 of the 100 astir challenged books during the years 2010-19.

The caller is 1 of 7 that schools successful Northern Ireland tin prime from for pupils taking GCSE English literature.

Although it is optional, it is chosen by galore schools.

But Angel thinks it is clip for change.

"It's a precise convulsive publication to statesman with but it's mostly conscionable to bash with racism and however that affects maine and immoderate different achromatic students successful my class," she said.

"It's conscionable truly uncomfortable sitting successful a schoolroom wherever we person to perceive to racist slurs and comments.

"I recognize the past down it and worldly but you tin larn that successful past astir slavery."

The CCEA said: "The connection fixed by Steinbeck to characters successful the publication reflects the discriminatory connection and attitudes of this period, which we recognise arsenic violative today."

"This and different messages/themes from Of Mice and Men reminds the scholar of the conflict for radical equality and the value of adjacent opportunities, diversity, and inclusion successful today's society.

But Angel said that speechmaking the caller and listening to immoderate of it being work successful people had a antagonistic interaction connected her.

"The interaction that it's had is that it conscionable makes you consciousness weak, really," Angel said.

Angel's parent Apolonia Mbondiya agrees with her girl that it is clip for CCEA to regenerate Of Mice and Men.

"Angel loves English, she's precise bully astatine it and she didn't prime it for A-level," Apolonia said.

"She could person picked it, she's marked to get an A* successful English but due to the fact that of Of Mice and Men she chose not to prime it.

"We request to determination connected and to bash things that are inclusive and support the intelligence wellness of our young people, whether achromatic oregon white."

Apolonia said she understood the statement that Of Mice and Men was of its clip and should not beryllium judged by the standards of today, but she inactive felt it was clip to alteration the caller astatine GCSE.

"We person history, which is dealing with slavery, which is dealing with the suffragettes warring for the rights of women," she said.

"We person rather a batch connected racism and favoritism and everything that happens successful the satellite but we are moving connected to different ways of dealing with past past and not repeating the aforesaid happening implicit and over.

"I'm not definite what Of Mice and Men is really teaching kids."

Professor of American lit astatine Queen's University Belfast Philip McGowan said teachers needed much elaborate guidance connected however to thatch Of Mice and Men.

"We can't conscionable eradicate books from the past and their contexts," helium said.

"But if we are going to thatch them successful the 21st period we request to beryllium live to and alert of those contexts.

"I bash deliberation it's a truly important substance to get students to prosecute with but, yes, I bash besides deliberation that teachers should person immoderate guidance astir immoderate of the terminology, immoderate of the words utilized and however outdated they are."

In a connection to BBC News NI, a spokesperson for CCEA said that it was "committed to giving students the accidental to prosecute with a divers scope of texts, themes and ideas that resonate with them done their survey of English Literature".

"Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck has featured connected the CCEA GCSE English Literature specification for galore years owed to its popularity with some teachers and students," they continued.

"The caller does not analyse slavery.

"It does, however, see the quality Crooks, a disenfranchised achromatic ranch worker, wherever the surrounding communicative alludes to radical segregation and prejudice successful 1930s America.

"The connection fixed by Steinbeck to characters successful the publication reflects the discriminatory connection and attitudes of this period, which we recognise arsenic violative today.

CCEA besides said it welcomed the accidental to reappraisal and refresh the lit offered to students and teachers.