I wonder, because people have always talked about differences in cultures. What's the effect of being forbidden to describe and celebrate differences in culture? Its deadening, i suppose. I don't know, when it is completely different from the real world. And you know, this argument, twitter won't stop young people relating to each other and remaking english and relatingto changing the world. Got nothing to do with that, really. That's what a multicultural class on can be. The most positive version of multiculturalism we could hope for.
Freddie Sayers meets Kate Clanchy.
Kate Clanchy is a writer, teacher, and editor. She has been a qualified and practicing teacher since she was 22. Her writing includes three prize-winning collections of poetry, the Costa First Novel Prize-shortlisted Meeting the English, and the Orwell Prize-winning memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me.
Last summer her work came under sustained criticism for its purportedly insensitive depictions of her students. Picador, her publisher until last week, did not come to her defence. Instead her students, who feature in her memoir, and in collections of their wiring like England Poem from A School, that Clanchy edited, supported her alone.
Last September, at least 20 of them wrote an open letter to The Bookseller defending her. They said their personal experiences of Clanchy were of “unequivocal care and support for us… as poets and as people”. They said they wanted to push back against suggestions that they “may be victims in some capacity.” They said Clanchy’s support gave them confidence as poets.
The furore around Clanchy made headlines across the UK last summer. She came to the UnHerd studio to discuss her experiences — of teaching, writing, and cancel culture — for the first time with Freddie Sayers.
For more read The Post from UnHerd.
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