The Welsh exam board, WJEC, have removed the classic American novel, Of Mice and Men, from their set text list amid concerns regarding racial slurs in the book. Of Mice and Men will no longer be studied at GCSE level in Wales from September due to concerns regarding the harm that could potentially be caused by its inclusion on the syllabus for English Language and Literature. Instead, the WJEC exam board said it had chosen “a wide range” of “appropriate and inclusive texts”.
John Steinbeck’s 1930s novel set in California during the Great Depression is currently only one of five options offered to schools as part of a unit in the WJEC’s English Literature GCSE. The novel has already been dropped by a major exam board in England from 2014 following the then Education Secretary Michael Gove’s call for more British works to be studied in schools.
Wales’ Children’s Commissioner, Rocio Cifuentes, welcomed the move explaining that many Black children had “specifically mentioned this text and the harm that it caused them” when questioned as part of research on racism in secondary schools.
Cifuentes added: “It’s not censorship. This is safeguarding the wellbeing of children who have told us how awful those discussions have made them feel in those classrooms. They’ve very often been the only black child in that classroom when discussions all around them are focusing on very derogatory, negative depictions of Black people.”
