I feel for Ian Mcewan, homework can be cruel
My heart goes out to Ian Mcewan. The novelist says he feels “a little dubious” about young people being made to study his books after his son, Greg, was asked to write an A-level essay on his father’s Enduring Love a few years ago. “I confess I did give him a tutorial and told him what he should consider. I didn’t read his essay, but it turned out his teacher disagreed fundamentally with what he said.” The luckless Greg ended up with a wounding C+.
The Liverpool poet Adrian Henri had a similar story: he took an exam on his own work, and failed because the examiner felt that he hadn’t understood the poet’s intention.
As an experiment, the former Royal Shakespeare Company director Trevor Nunn answered an A-level question about
Hamlet and got a B because he failed to make a good enough argument. These days, knowledge of the text can certainly be a hindrance, let alone any unwanted insight into plays beyond the set book.
I must admit that parental humiliation of the Mcewan variety is not unknown at Pearson Towers. One of the children, I forget which, was having a complete meltdown over a piece of English homework they were late handing in. Himself set about the ragged prose with a practised eye, crafting an essay which was “rather brilliant if I say so myself ”.
One week later. “What d’you mean, we got a B? How the hell did I get a B?”
“You didn’t put enough key words in, Dad. The teacher said it was really well written though.”
Was there possibly some mild teasing of the Top English First in His Year at Cambridge over his abject failure to get an A* in a GCSE essay?
You know me. I wouldn’t be that mean, would I?