LONDON (AP) β Britain’s education minister says he has not killed a mockingbird, but many literature-lovers don’t believe him.
Michael Gove has outraged some readers and academics with his campaign to put the basics β and Britishness β back into schools.
American favorites including John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” are off the syllabus under changes to a major high school English qualification.
Gove insists he has not banned any books, merely set out a minimum core curriculum that includes modern authors from the British Isles.
But the booklists unveiled by exam boards β the most recent on Friday β are almost exclusively British.
Oxford University professor John Carey said “the idea of cutting out American books because they are not British is crazy.”
