Slow Clarkson
Share
Slow Clarkson
https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/slow-clarkson
I understand the thinking. Anything that gets boys reading has to be good, doesn’t it? Well, maybe not. Jeremy Clarkson openly defends the destruction of speed cameras on Top Gear. Odd that. I thought it was a criminal offence. He is even more notorious for despising everything environmental.
Clarkson represents a lowest common denominator, a depressingly Cro-Magnon, petrol-headed image of masculinity that can only reinforce the worst aspects of laddishness. I am a much less well-known writer on the same list. Like many of my peers, I am trying to engage with boys at the same time as challenging aspects of their outlook. I have no problem with Clarkson being on the list, but permit me to be less sanguine about the benefits of reading him than are some school librarians.
Alan Gibbons, Children’s author, Liverpool.
You've reached your limit of free articles this month. Subscribe for £1 per month for three months and get: