In Michael Gove's world Jane Austen, Orwell and Dickens will die out

Michael Gove is Mr M'Choakumchild and Thomas Gradgrind personified: "What I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else." In Gove's schools, whatever might seize the imagination, give pleasure and stay in the heart and mind for a lifetime longer than rote-learned facts is being rooted out.
When he has done with cleansing the curriculum, it may be the case that fewer people know who Gradgrind and M'Choakumchild are. Dickens and much of literature will be a closed book to those not lucky enough to encounter them outside their exam-crammed education. English literature is to be stripped out of the core English GCSE exam, leaving nothing but grammatical correctness and straitjacket language reduced to right and wrong answers. Literature is to become an optional extra, and probably not a highly regarded one, for fear it might let the imagination roam dangerously free. English language, maths, three sciences, a foreign language and history or geography are the core English baccalaureate subjects. The rest is silence, more or less. (But soon few may recognise that reference.) In a world of harsh exams, with the screw tightened down to factual rigour, league table tyranny will increasingly sideline optional extras.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/05/gove-austen-orwell-dickens-die-out