Michael Gove is odious and his plans for education nothing short of disastrous. I never trusted the man ever since his too frequent appearances on Newsnight Review, when he would be beastly to the other panellists and rude to the presenter. That said, I think some of the commentators on his recent pronouncement at the Tory conference, demanding that 'Dryden, Pope, Swift, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Austen, Dickens and Hardy – should be at the heart of school life', have missed the point. Catherine Bennet writes in the Observer that 'only a sadist would inflict Dryden on our schoolchildren'. Now I doubt that Gove is that familar with the writers he cites, but let that pass. I read, and enjoyed, Dryden at school. He isn't an easy read, but neither are Shakespeare, Chaucer, Virgil or Homer. To understand much of his work requires a knowledge of Restoration politics, no bad thing. And his contemporary and collaborator, Henry Purcell, is known to every child through Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
I came to Dryden through pastiche. An older boy write some verse in the school magazine based on the section from Absalom and Achitophel that satirise Zimri (that is George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham): But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon This was cleverly adapted to describe a master at the school, revolving moon becoming an afternoon, the butt being a teacher compelled to teach a variety of subjects he did not understand. Having enjoyed the pastiche, I sought out the real thing, and enjoyed it. Later I studied Dryden in class. I realise that not every school child will enjoy him, but I did not enjoy trigonometry a great deal, but it was still useful to learn. I worry that Catherine Bennett and those who consider it sadism to teach children poetry lower horizons so much that, at the one time in their life when they have time to read, pupils will be kept within the confines of a narrow syllabus that excludes anything complicated and difficult. And there will be no chance to go and discover Dryden for themselves in the school library, as I did; Gove will have closed it.
