Another load of by Kev.
It's well know that Will was not given rave reviews when he was first started and his popularity has waxed and waned. More to the point of this piece is cultural snobbery. Kev is of the opinion if you don't go to the opera and ballet then you haven't got any real culture. Popular culture is a vulgar thing for Kev. Get real Kev and get off your high horse, teaching ideas in a modern setting is a good thing rather then letting the kids switch off like most kids in my class did.
The reality is more people watched the Idol finial then have gone to a Shakespearian play in the last ten years

Thank you Kevin for articulating so well what so many of us feel. Critical Literacy is cultural vandalism of the highest order. As for the the comments made in the previous post, well, it speaks for itself. The author knows the popularity of everything and the value of nothing. In 100 years time, how many peple will know that Australian Idol ever existed? But they will all know about Shakespeare. The former is vacuous popular entertainment (Enjoyable but fleeting), the latter is literature of the highest order.

Well said, Jeremy.
The vacuous in society, the quasi-analytical, strive to scrutinise text for examples of influence inferred by OTHERS.
What about one's OWN feeling and emotional response, engendered by beautifully-written and constucted literature.
It is what I feel that counts, not what others tell me to feel!

who cares, the classics are classics, but you should not bore the bright students with it, especially males suffer.

Methinks Kevin has a point.

Well said Kevin Donnelly - but we need also to ask why the people entrusted with the English curriculum seem to be so incompetent in their use of English - the language they use is dense, inappropraie gobbledygook. To an educated person, text is merely print on a page - give me novels, plays, biographies, letters, diaries, advertisements, all sorts of written works but not a 'text'. Even primary school students in NSW are taught various 'text types', including a ghastly constuct, the 'recount' (an account of an event). I have met several teachers who are unable to discern the poor quality of writing in The Da Vinci Code. The trouble these days seems to be that not only is excellence is decried in everything bar sport, but we are losing the ability to recognise qualiy literature.

I cannot see how any aspect of television program such as Australian Idol could possibly be included in an English curriculum, although it would be well placed in a study of popular culture.

Adele Horin's recent article in the SMH on how hard NSW HSC English is, makes interesting reading.