Authors call on Scottish school to overturn ban of Black Watch play

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/09/ian-rankin-louise-welsh-overturn-black-watch-ban-angus-school-freedom-of-speech

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Scottish authors Ian Rankin and Louise Welsh have called on the headteacher of an Angus school to reconsider its decision to remove award-winning Scottish play Black Watch from its curriculum, describing the text as an “essential piece of Scottish culture”.

Gregory Burke’s play, which explores the Scottish regiment’s time in Iraq, based on interviews with soldiers, is approved by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). But according to the Sunday Herald, it has been taken off the curriculum at Webster’s high school in Kirriemuir, Angus, over concerns about its language and sexual content. The paper reported on 1 March that pupils had been studying the play, and had produced coursework about it when the ban was announced, prompting calls from students and parents to reverse the decision.

One parent told the paper that the school’s headteacher, Jane Esson, had informed pupils “she didn’t want them knowing about all this sexual stuff … she said she didn’t want them talking about it, studying it or even thinking about any of these sexual references”. The parent added: “There are other English texts that are just as bad, if not worse. What is her next step, I wonder? Is she going to ban all the drama and English textbooks with swear words?”

Now Rankin and Welsh have added their voices to the protests, in a letter to the Sunday Herald published and also signed by playwright and screenwriter Mike Cullen, Fiona Morrison-Graham, vice president of Scottish Pen, and the free-speech organisation’s executive committee.

Writing that they were “dismayed” to learn of the banning of Black Watch, the authors said that in the current environment, where freedom of speech is facing “renewed pressures”, it is “more important than ever for our educators to highlight the fundamental importance of free speech and expression to a healthy society.

“But it is hard to set a credible example if the school itself feels the need to prevent its students from studying a piece approved by the SQA due to concerns about its content,” they wrote.

Black Watch, they said, is a “fundamentally important piece of Scottish drama”, which “allows us to hear soldiers speak in their own voice about their lives and the effects of momentous political decisions.

“When we ignore those voices, we step away from an important dialogue about our society, and our understanding is worse for it,” wrote Rankin and Welsh, ending by asking the school’s head to allow her students “to continue their study of this essential piece of Scottish culture”.

Angus council told the Herald that “while the play has not been banned, it is not being used as a core text this year”, adding that “the play is not on the SQA’s prescribed reading list, and this year the class has chosen another text to study”.