the poem education for leisure by carol ann duffy has been banned from UK schools.
soon their be burning books too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI1vWc9LusA
a youtube video based on the poem that was on the BBC News report

You guys are lucky. We have to sit through soooooooooooooo much poetry edumacation in the U.S.

Capt_Jack_Doicy:
soon their be burning books too.

Here's hoping they do! I can't tell you how many of my English lessons have been me reading and the rest of the class 5 chapters behind being read to like 3 year olds!

revolverwolf:

Capt_Jack_Doicy:
soon their be burning books too.

Here's hoping they do! I can't tell you how many of my English lessons have been me reading and the rest of the class 5 chapters behind being read to like 3 year olds!

The worst thing is when the teacher asks you to read aloud to the class and you don't know where in the book they are then the teacher acts like a prick for you being smart enough to be able to read on your own.

Oh, England. You amuse me so. Seriously, I laughed when I read this. This goes back to my eternal "people are idiots" argument. Oh, what, the poem got to "rebellious" or "satanic" for your taste. I swear I'm gonna write a book about this kind of shit.

Zio666:

revolverwolf:

Capt_Jack_Doicy:
soon their be burning books too.

Here's hoping they do! I can't tell you how many of my English lessons have been me reading and the rest of the class 5 chapters behind being read to like 3 year olds!

The worst thing is when the teacher asks you to read aloud to the class and you don't know where in the book they are then the teacher acts like a prick for you being smart enough to be able to read on your own.

Yer, I think most of my GCSE english class are illiterate. They can't read, can't spell, can't write anything coherent.... yet most of them got C. :P There is something seriously wrong with our education system.

There is a good thing about that though. You can be lazy and still get a B. Oh shit I should do my english coursework now :S

In science I once heard a girl complain about the teachers english.

"Now be carefull of the bare wires"

"There aren't bare wires theres only 3. 3 isn't bare!"

They think BARE means LOTS!...Weird eh? Stupid fucking chavs.

Why are they banning it? Do they think that censoring a poem will stop it being read? It's on YouTube for Christ's sake. If they want to censor it then they'll have to do a little better than that.

And also, I agree. People are unbearably slow at reading in class. I'm in the top srt, and people still stumble over words like "their". In a spelling test, someone actually spelt Jack wrong!

GCSEs aren't easy, but they aren't particularly hard. Some of my school's internal exams are far harder.

For example, in the recent mocks, I didn't even look at a book at all up to and through the entire set of exams. I didn't fail a single one. I even got an 'A' for one of my English essays.

Now, for the internals, I'd need to revise for at least a month before the set of exams if I wanted to pass well.

As for the reading thing, I read incredibly fast (I can read a page in the time it takes some to read a paragraph). But I also talk very fast, too. I think that might help me a little bit.

I can see why some people would have troubles when reading aloud. I had problems with that for a long time, for no reason at all.

It's quite ridiculous though, how the system is being turned into a huge joke. I mean, I do VWO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vwo), the highest form of secondary education over here. However, most of the people on it are total morons, who somehow manage to do well enough to get passing grades...

I hope you're joking! No, really.

My English teachers taught me nothing. (Apart from the one I had last year, he was awesome.)

I actually learned how to write by reading books, I doubt they'd do that.

Education for Leisure is a great poem; I know it inside out, back to front and upside down because I had to analyse it in my GCSE's.

But it is about someone going into the streets with a knife... They'll probably make up some lame excuse, "It sets a bad example for kids."

Yeah, I'll walk around with a knife and blame a poem, haha.

How the fuck is this poem an issue? I've read it many a time, and it makes no direct reference to murder or anything of the sort. Besides, what's more disturbing:
'Today I am going to kill something', or, 'A young boy has been stabbed to death outside his home in East Yorkshire'

Oh, and by the way:

Milkatron:
Oh, England. You amuse me so. Seriously, I laughed when I read this. This goes back to my eternal "people are idiots" argument. Oh, what, the poem got to "rebellious" or "satanic" for your taste. I swear I'm gonna write a book about this kind of shit.

Yes, for you see, ALL of us are responsible for the decision of a few -_-
At least the biggest school news is a poem being banned and not another screwball shooting all his friends and himself. QED, we are far from the backwards ones.

nilcypher:

I don't agree with it, largely because I don't think school children are quite as impressionable as they think, but it's a far cry from the book burning that the rather alarmist/sensationalist OP posited.

That. We're not stupid. The age of kids who'll be reading this will have already made up their minds. If they're into knives and that, then this doesn't make a difference. If they're not, then they've gone through far more persuading ordeals than reading/watching a poem.

I can see why they banned it, it's a terrible poem, by that I mean it's kinda um... emo... I dunno really, it's not a good idea to ban things but I don't think it's that big of a deal.

Milkatron:
Oh, England. You amuse me so. Seriously, I laughed when I read this. This goes back to my eternal "people are idiots" argument. Oh, what, the poem got to "rebellious" or "satanic" for your taste. I swear I'm gonna write a book about this kind of shit.

Hey, we can still pray in schools and say "Hell" on TV, not so in the U.S. of A.

I know that my school started teaching us proper poetry when we were in 4th year with ages 14,15 and 16, I know about the knife crime in Britain has reached stupid levels and the government has to be really careful with what they put out there, but this poem is hardly showing how glorious murder is.

I agree with nilcypher. I'm 15, I've read this poem and it doesn't show murder in the least bit as being glamorous. If you are a bit troubled then something like a poem wouldn't push you to go over the edge, that would happen most likely anyway.

I don't like it when things get banned because we're all entitled to our own opinion,views and thoughts no matter how extreme, and this poem is not extreme.

I can see why they've banned it. t shouldn't be banned, but the current state the UK has got itself into is so bad someone would probably get stabbed and the poem would somehow get blamed.

How many knife-weilding people do you think read a lot of poetry?

Souplex:
You guys are lucky. We have to sit through soooooooooooooo much poetry edumacation in the U.S.

Wow, just wow.

Education for Leisure is actually (unlike most poems on the GCSE syllabus) quite good.

Wow, I was hoping they'd banned the poem because it's dull, like most of Duffy's stuff.

EmileeElectro:

But it is about someone going into the streets with a knife... They'll probably make up some lame excuse, "It sets a bad example for kids."

Yeah, I'll walk around with a knife and blame a poem, haha.

Knives don't kill people... poetry kills people.

When I was studying GCSE English, I would have actively looked for a poem I knew to be banned and then referenced (if it was even remotely relevant) it in the exam anyway. I've been thinking our education system is going downhill for a while now, and I suspect it's because people are afraid of being blamed when things go wrong, which at some point they inevitably will, partly because no child is perfect, but mostly because we're doing ridiculous things like banning poems!

Ok, as a poet, I feel like I do need to say something on this particular topic. I will agree about the whole censoring thing, it's just retarded. And besides, I've read a lot worse poetry in our text books (US). So what, it's on a touchy subject, big deal. But it's things like this that allow others to try to understand how another is feeling and their thoughts. I personally really do appreciate the overall point of the poem and censoring something like this should be illegal.

Danny Ocean:
GCSEs aren't easy, but they aren't particularly hard. Some of my school's internal exams are far harder.

For example, in the recent mocks, I didn't even look at a book at all up to and through the entire set of exams. I didn't fail a single one. I even got an 'A' for one of my English essays.

Now, for the internals, I'd need to revise for at least a month before the set of exams if I wanted to pass well.

As for the reading thing, I read incredibly fast (I can read a page in the time it takes some to read a paragraph). But I also talk very fast, too. I think that might help me a little bit.

GCSE's are piss easy, trust me you don't need to revise I didn't and I got A's and B's
Meh, isen't Tom Soya banned in some American Schools?

Education for Leisure? Been a few years since I last read that.
But 16 year old kids aren't going to read this and think "oh.. that's what I can do in my spare time, kill animals and then run around the streets of London with a knife". Seriously, what does the government take us for?

Phoenix Arrow:
Education for Leisure? Been a few years since I last read that.
But 16 year old kids aren't going to read this and think "oh.. that's what I can do in my spare time, kill animals and then run around the streets of London with a knife". Seriously, what does the government take us for?

i loved that poem, i could resight it of the top of my head

HuntingWolf_01:

Phoenix Arrow:
Education for Leisure? Been a few years since I last read that.
But 16 year old kids aren't going to read this and think "oh.. that's what I can do in my spare time, kill animals and then run around the streets of London with a knife". Seriously, what does the government take us for?

i loved that poem, i could resight it of the top of my head

Hmm it was Duffys best one I think. My favourite was 'Hitcher' by err.. that guy. Simon Armitage.

Phoenix Arrow:

HuntingWolf_01:

Phoenix Arrow:
Education for Leisure? Been a few years since I last read that.
But 16 year old kids aren't going to read this and think "oh.. that's what I can do in my spare time, kill animals and then run around the streets of London with a knife". Seriously, what does the government take us for?

i loved that poem, i could resight it of the top of my head

Hmm it was Duffys best one I think. My favourite was 'Hitcher' by err.. that guy. Simon Armitage.

yeah liked them both, i saw them live at some poerty concert the school took us on, Simon Armitage was amazing and so was John Agard

Souplex:
You guys are lucky. We have to sit through soooooooooooooo much poetry edumacation in the U.S.

And what's odd is that they give us nothing but out of touch, dated, classical poetry that (at the age) made no godamn sense to me. It was unrelatable and difficult to grasp beyond the literal level of expression.

And then you get some dimwitted teacher who tells you that "...people who curse, do so because they do not know how to speak their mind in a creative manner." Have you read Bukowski bitch? Hell, have you read anything written in the last century?

Hang on is it just this poem or what?
If it's all of Duffys stuff I would laugh so much. Then there would be millions of kids having to read the poems by that Irish guy.
6 poems all about potatoes. Seriously.