How dare they ‘decolonise’ Of Mice and Men?
Steinbeck’s Depression-era novel may grate with woke puritans, but it still speaks to working-class struggles.

Want to read spiked ad-free? Become a spiked supporter.
It was announced last month that Welsh schools will no longer be teaching John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men as part of the state curriculum. WJEC, the Welsh exam board, has justified the decision on the grounds that the novel, which has been studied for GCSE exams for decades, features racial slurs.
Of Mice and Men follows the plight of two white migrant workers in 1930s America. George and his friend, Lennie (a physically powerful man with severe learning difficulties), search for work among the farms and ranches at the peak of the Great Depression. Given that the novel takes place almost a hundred years ago, the ‘n-word’ is often used by white characters towards black characters. As offensive as this may be, it doesn’t take away from the beautifully written prose or the message in the narrative. In fact, these displays of prejudice only underscore Steinbeck’s depiction of desperation and oppression in Depression-era America.
That the Welsh government is removing Of Mice and Men from the curriculum is sadly unsurprising. For at least a decade, there have been calls from different areas within the education sector for the book to be withdrawn. Last September, Nottingham Girls’ High School – a very posh, £8,000-plus-a-term private school – announced that it would be ‘decolonising’ its curriculum. That meant removing supposedly controversial books, such as Of Mice and Men and John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which is about the Holocaust. In a TEDx talk, one of the school’s teachers announced that the aim of this was a more ‘representative approach to the literature studied’. This feels like a futile attempt to revise history in line with present sensitivities.
I admit to taking some delight in these posh parents paying such a high price for an increasingly impoverished education. But to take Steinbeck’s book off the state curriculum grates with me.
I grew up in a mining community in the 1970s and 1980s, a time of great political and social turmoil, in a working-class family of coal miners and factory workers. I mean no disrespect to my family when I say that none of them had read Steinbeck – or, in fact, any book. The only books in my house belonged to the local library. I read Of Mice and Men for the GCSE English exam I took in 1984, while my dad was on strike. Because I had already started working in a factory, I had to take half a day of unpaid leave to sit the English Literature exam. It was one of only two exams I thought worth taking the time off for.
Reading Of Mice and Men at the age of 14 inspired me to read Steinbeck’s other work. At 15, I read The Grapes of Wrath, a book that won him the Pulitzer Prize. At age 16, I read Tortilla Flat. Steinbeck’s powerful words in those stories about the absolute exploitation of the poor boomed out at me. They cut through the propaganda of a Thatcherite government during the 1980s. The stories took me to places I didn’t know and introduced me to people I could only imagine. Yet I understood the relationship I had, as a young working-class girl in Nottinghamshire, with migrant workers in California and with trade-union organisers in the 1930s Dust Bowl. I understood the cruelty and harm that words could do when spoken in hate, as Steinbeck showed in relation to African American workers. I understood the ways they were mistreated and exploited by those with power and authority – as well as by those who had no power and authority, but were so damaged by their poverty they kicked down. I learned from Steinbeck that this cruel system created incredible acts of resilience, solidarity and kindness, but also lent its hand to violence, cruelty and discrimination.
This message is just as compelling now as it was in the 1980s and 1930s. Children and young people in Welsh schools will surely be able to see themselves – as I did – in Steinbeck’s characters written nearly a hundred years ago. Young people should not be denied access to this literary inheritance, just because it makes the gatekeepers of our education and culture feel uncomfortable.
Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic.
Correction: An earlier version of this article referred to Nottingham High School instead of Nottingham Girls’ High School.
Picture by: Getty.
Comments
Want to join the conversation?
Only spiked supporters and patrons, who donate regularly to us, can comment on our articles.