Should Novels With Racial Slurs Be Dropped From School Syllabus?
17 September 2020 - 11 mins
Podcast Series
The Last Word with Matt Cooper
The Department of Education has been urged to drop novels with 'racial slurs' from the Junior and Leaving Cert syllabuses in the wake of this year's Black Lives Matter protests.
There have been a number of complaints in recent months about certain novels on the school curriculum, including Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, both of which contain use of the n-word.
One parent of a black student stated that their child had found it "very uncomfortable" to listen to their classmates reading such material out loud.
Aoife Barry, assistant news editor at TheJournal.ie, and journalist Larissa Nolan joined us to debate the issue.
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