The last week has seen the student (and British) population, or at least their Facebook news feeds, in a furore over Michael Gove’s plans to change the GCSE syllabus. The mockingbird is killed, the Guardian laments. There will be no more mice and no more men, says Channel 4. And I cannot think of a witty pun about The Crucible - except perhaps that this whole episode seems to have been something of a modern day witch hunt.

Or at least this is what Gove has claimed in his recent self-defence: “That’s what happened over the weekend”, he tells us, with Twitter the 21st century Salem in which a host of “culture warriors” banded together to persecute the innocent. Whether #GetGoveReading is comparable to being burnt alive at the stake or not, clearly something has been a-stirring in the social media universe. A phenomenon, no doubt, reflected in the media-media universe where this whole, now seemingly strange drama has been played out from accusation to defence to what appears to be a dropping of charges.

But, with the issue seemingly resolved and put nicely to bed, it is difficult not to wonder what was behind the violence of the accusations in the first place. What was really the problem with the changes we all thought Gove was suggesting? And why did we all care so much that GCSE students might see fewer American novels?

Rose Lander, an MML student at Trinity College, spoke to us about what one of the novels supposedly being axed means to her. “The reason To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favourite novels is that when you read it it feels like a delight, not a chore”, she tells us. Adding that “before I read it I knew very little about racial prejudice of the Deep South in the 1930s and though I can’t claim to be an expert... the novel provides a valuable window into this unfamiliar time and unfamiliar place”. 

Windows into other worlds and accessibility: two of the key arguments any avid reader of the Guardian comments section will have picked up on as a reason why only British books would be bad for GCSEs. Susanna Worth, English fresher at St Catharine’s College, agreed. Defending Of Mice and Men, she believes “its accessibility and ability to engage even the least engaged of readers is not purely down to its satchel-sized compactness, but also its universally applicable themes which we can all identify with.” “George and Lennie are presented as dislocated, passing from place to place with only a pursuit of their own ‘American Dream’”, she goes on, “I think that, against our love affair with America, there is something particularly enticing about studying a novel that deals directly with the heart of American society.”

It seems that Cambridge students on the whole agree, then, American literature is good and shouldn’t be axed on account of where it was written. What is strange, however, is this really is what the media attention has centred on: see The 10 American writers that English children should study for GCSE (also see the fact that students don’t study 10 books at GCSE). It seems that this "love affair with America" entirely misses the point. 

“World literature can’t be excluded any more than Dickens or Hardy. Jean Rhys’s post-colonial Wide Sargasso Sea, is as significant and worthy as Brontë’s Jane Eyre that inspired it”, Thea Dunne, first year English student, told us. So what should we teach? “Good literature is good literature”, Thea goes on: “that is what should be remembered as regards the teaching of English in schools. The study of literature causes questioning – that is significant – the particular moral, social, political subjects of questioning are neither here nor there. We shouldn’t be reading world and postcolonial literature because we live in a multi-cultural society, we should be reading it because it's good.”

So what is the point of all this? Gove was supposedly going to ban American books; he now says that he won’t ban them, he just won’t insist upon them, and we are left with what? 

Well, I think we are left with a clear message than any nationalist infringements on children’s education are not going to be tolerated by the British public. In the same week that UKIP swept the board in the European elections (27.5 per cent for crying out loud), the Twitteratti and media world have come together and shown, witch-hunt style, that they decisively do not want a curriculum based only on Britain. 

This is exciting, and its certainly a witch I want to hunt. What is strange, however, is that in all the media hype there was a distinct lack of focus on world literature, words from outside of the trans-Atlantic bubble. There is limited space on the GCSE syllabus, we all know this. But, by producing the Top Ten American Authors, or the most accessible Shakespeare plays, I can’t help but think that all this media outrage has missed the point – killed the mouse, let the mockingbird free, crucified the witch?

Indeed, it is not just because “we live in a multi-cultural society” that we should be reading more widely, but because literature from other countries is *shock, horror* “good”. And this coming from a student who assures me she has read Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Crucible.