Conceptualised revision for GCSE English Lit

"The dream is over but the baby is real." Why A Taste of Honey is my favourite modern drama

I know that when it comes to choosing a modern drama when teaching the AQA syllabus, the common and most popular choice is Priestley's socialist manifesto 'An Inspector Calls.' There is no doubt that it is a great play; it's rich in opportunities for analysis and has a surprising resonance with events in modern Britain - particularly when it comes to class. However, as a gritty Northern lass the allure of Delaney's 'A Taste of Honey' has always called to me. Indeed, I have long been a super fan of the play. Even having Helen and Jo tattooed onto me and going on a pilgrimage of the filming locations of Tony Richardson's 1961 adaptation of the play. Much of the movie was filmed in Stockport (including the famous church yard shot, where Jo smashes the baby doll's brains out), rather than in Salford where the play was set. 

When I went on my pilgramage, a photographer friend, Helen Hughes, who is a fellow Delaney fan took some pictures of me in the style of Richardson and this was my favourite one. It's hard to imagine that this is in 2017 and not the 1950s. My outfit was quite similar to Jo's and I had it made for the ocassion, while wearing the grim look of strength and determination that Jo wore for so much of the play. Like me, Helen is a huge fan of Salford band, The Smiths. While we were there, we also got some shots at The iconic Salford Lad's Club...well it would have been rude not to! Morrissey once said: "I've never made any secret of the fact that at least 50 per cent of my reason for writing can be blamed on Shelagh Delaney." He was so greatly influenced by her writing that her face is printed on some of their single covers and there are several references to her plays in their songs.

What I love about 'A Taste of Honey' the most is its realness. I come from a similar background to Helen and Jo and although me never did a moonlight flit, I remember my young teenage mother making us hide behind the sofa when people came to the door who we had to pay bills to. This was in the early 80s and my mother wasn't quite the louche drinker and party girl that Helen was, although I do remember different boyfriends and the strained relationship we had as I grew up. I can relate to Jo so much and as I have grown older and become a mother myself, I have softened towards Helen. With hindsight and the wisdom of age I have much more sympathy for her plight and admire her resilience and ability to just get on with it!

A few years ago, I had quite a challenging class and I just didn't think they would enjoy 'An Inspector Calls.' Some of them had low levels of cultural literacy and to quote The Smiths again, I just didn't feel like AIC would say something to them about their life. So I persuaded the Head of Department to let me study 'A Taste of Honey' with them and she agreed - as long as I was happy to create my own resources and scheme. So I went for it and the results were brilliant; the whole class passed Literature, with some of the Grade 4/5 borderline class achieving Grade 6 and 7. Even more importantly, they loved the play and when I bumped into one of them about three months ago, they were still talking about it. Having a movie adaptation is also always helpful and although the film is a little different from the play script, it is still very enjoyable and a great insight into a mid-century Manchester. 

Finally, after extolling the virtues of the play for several years, I managed to persuade them to give it a place in our Key Stage 3 curriculum, for year 9. We were completely re-writing and restructuring our KS3 curriculum and wanted to include texts that were important and built up cultural literacy for our students. In ATOH, we are building on the contextual knowledge of the historical events of the twentieth century - from the Great Depression and racial tensions in 'Of Mice and Men' to the post-war issues of class in 'An Inspector Calls,'  Delaney's kitchen sink drama sits perfectly alongside this. When we were choosing texts we had something that Kat Howard said in mind: 

"Our duty to our subject extends beyond our love for the subject and wanting to experience that as much as possible; to feel connected with the subject is also to expose students to the magic and power of the subject itself. We must ensure that the many we provide maintains to balance the tension between our perception of the subject and what it may evolve to once placed in the hands of the student, who are future ambassadors for it. We must adequately prepare students that exposure to the debates and combative threads of knowledge of our subject are not new or shocking to them when they encounter them. Above all, we must ensure that the curriculum menu that we deliver is something that we feel has a sense of conviction, a version of truth that it makes us comfortable, and excited to impart it." 

We all felt that 'A Taste of Honey' did this perfectly and was an excellent stepping stone to GCSE. Little were we to know that the issues of poverty depicted in the play and the ideas of the North/South divide that Delaney no doubt wanted to expose when she went against the genre of Drawing Room Drama so favoured by the establishment in the 1940s and 50s, would become so prevalent again in 2020, when Greater Manchester was plunged into Tier 3 restrictions and free school meals assistance during the half term holidays was voted down by MPs. 

To celebrate how amazing the play is, I have designed a scheme for it complete with around 30 PowerPoint presentations and resources, a knowledge organiser, assessment and mark scheme and a homework booklet of unseen poems and lyrics to analyse, which are linked to the play. It has a whole week on becoming an English scholar and learning how to critically evaluate texts, as well as use thesis statements, seeing the text as a conscious construct and using critical theory to analyse the text and produce conceptual responses. I have borrowed lots of resource ideas and templates from amazing practitioners such as Stuart Pryke, TES and Becky Wood
so thank you to you all! There's a cheeky dig at the DfE and their anti-capitalist text agenda in the lesson, but I've always been a bit of an anarchist so...nolite te bastardes carborundorum baby! I have also embedded the film clips into the PowerPoints and they are strategically placed for you to watch along with activities that link. You can find the scheme here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1sHfqFJ_tMh1Z4XzTjr3tiW9jGh0HkMLy?usp=sharing

I want to finish with this quote from the paper 

'This One Is Different Because It's Ours: The Ordinary, The Extraordinary, and The Working-Class Artist in A Taste of Honey' by Laura K Wallace, 2017, as it sums up why I love the play and its message so much and believe it's of so much value for today's students:

"A belief in one's own extraordinariness can function as a survival strategy for the marginal and misunderstood. A Taste of Honey provides a model for self‐care that nurtures hope. This hope may not entail a revolutionary politics. Rather, the kind of hope this film offers is a sense of individual value outside of markets and marriage plots, the belief that an individual is “bloody marvelous” even if she does not live up to her potential."