Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Hello, my name is Amber Allitt, and I'm a journalist specialising in education.
00:05Scottish students studying towards their Highers qualifications probably have some idea of
00:09what their course is going to look like by now.
00:12And for those that have opted to keep studying English, they're in for a bit of reading.
00:16Just like at National 5 level, teachers can choose which books their class will study,
00:20but they do have to pick at least one work by a Scottish writer from a set list.
00:26Here are three of the most unique texts on the Scottish Highers reading list this year.
00:32The Slab Boys is a play by John Byrne, and is actually part of a trilogy.
00:36This particular play is about a group of young men working in a carpet factory in Paisley,
00:41particularly one who dreams of leaving to go to art school.
00:44It centres around a single Friday before a staff party, and explores themes of youth,
00:49ambition and class divides.
00:52One Set Song is a novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon that also appears on the list, and
00:57interestingly is also the first part of a trilogy.
01:00It tells the story of a young girl from a farming family after her mother's suicide,
01:04as her elder brother flees the country and her father suffers a stroke.
01:09It explores her connection to the land and what women's lives were like in early 20th
01:14century rural Scotland, the good and the bad.
01:18Poets Whose Teachers Choose Scottish Poetry will focus on six works by a single poet.
01:23One of these is perhaps the country's most famous poet, Robert Burns.
01:27The poems studied will include a poet's welcome to his love-begotten daughter, to
01:32a mouse, to a louse, and a red-red rose, part of a body of works themed around the strength
01:37of human emotions, the importance of creatures both large and small, and the appreciation
01:43of nature.
01:48For more information visit www.scottishpoetry.org