In the interests of saving On Line Opinion readers the time and effort of having to compose their objections to this piece, I will lay them out here, in advance:

1. You idiot! Shakespeare's plays aren't just the same as rocks! What kind of a fool could think such a thing? No surprise there; it's a humanities academic.

2. Could somebody translate this for me please? It's full of pretentious jargon and weasel words like "post-structuralist" and "context" and "sonnets" and "rocks". The sooner these pseudo-intellectual poseurs and their egos are made redundant the better.

3. Parents should have the right to choose where they send their kids to school and not be forced to subsidide the public education of other kids while having to pay for the private education of their own.

4. You can play your little games as much as you like. But what about the real world implications of moral relativism and the postmodernist attack on Western ideals? And what about the suppression of women in Afghanistan -- where's your feminist ideals now, you terrorist sympathiser?!

5. How can cultural studies be a science when we all know (from tabloid newspaper reports, rumours, etc.) that it believes there's no such thing as truth? Just one of the many contradications that make up the hogwash that comes out of universities today.

6. I tried to read through this, but gave up halfway through. Why so many words? Couldn't you have made your point in 50 words or less? honestly, if you want to convince us that you're right, you need to give it to us in a 30 second soundbite. I'm not going to waste my time wading through all that rubbish just to understand where you're coming from.

7. Brian Moon? Aren't you on the WA Curriculum Council? Well, of course you'd say all that, wouldn't you? Dont bite the hand that feeds...

8. I've read what you've said and what Luke Slattery has written, and I think Slattery's right -- he writes a much finer prose and he hasn't been brainswashed by all that critical literacy mallarky (as evidenced by the fact that he denounces it), whereas you're defending it. So, obviously you're wrong.

9. This joker here and his different games is all very funny, but what do we do when the kiddies finish school and can't spell? How can our society go on functioning?

Captain Oats would sumarise the responses of Online Opinion readers better if he used the words 'academic' and 'ivory tower' rather more, and included some irrelevant biblical quotes and some tendentious opinions drawn from them.

Dear Capitan where exactly IS this "truth" that you are referring to?

And who is really in a position to define what this "truth" is?

Exactly what are the ideals (as compared to the two faced double speak) of the "west"? The "west" which is responsible for over 50% of the worlds armaments trade. The "culture" of death literally rules! See for instance
1. www.dabase.org/popdisgu.htm

All the old "authorities" (especially of the Middle Eastern semitic religions) are effectively bankrupt and the old "moral order" is well and truly dead.

We have a government lead by someone who is widely acknowledged as a lying rodent and as shifty as tomorrow mornings focus group findings--or an outhouse rat. And full of hypocritical bully boys who have collected destroyed even the possibilty of civil discourse in this country. Aided and abetted by the one dimensional ideological hacks that infest the Murdoch propaganda machine.

And even he is a paragon of virtue compared to the culturally and morally bankrupt psychopaths in power in the USA. See for instance:
2. www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com

Plus 2 related references on the nature of Truth
3. www.dabase.org/truthfrl.htm
4. www.aboutadidam.org/nature_of_reality/subjective.html

To save OLO readers the time, I will reply to Captain Oats. I’ll do it in 350 words, so he doesn’t lose focus:

1.Moon didn’t say that. Wilfully misrepresenting somebody's argument demonstrates that you have no effective counter-argument.

2.Make the effort to understand it yourself. What sort of lazy education did you get that led you to believe the meaning should be handed to you on a plate?

3.If you say so. Please send me a refund cheque for my tax dollars that were wasted on your education.

4.Oh, I geddit. Postmodernism is responsible for the suppression of women in Afghanistan. And here I was thinking it was US military support in the 1980s and the patronage of Osama bin Laden in the 1990s that enriched and emboldened the Taliban.

5.What you think is "cultural studies" is what the tabloid newspaper reports have told you it is. Too bad you didn't bother to find out for yourself, but I guess your education system never got around to the part where you have to make an effort to find out facts.

6.A fine attitude that will serve you well if you ever actually do study any Shakespeare.

7.Heaven forbid that somebody who works in curriculum development should express a view about it. Everybody knows that in these relativist times, the opinion of a shock-jock or any kook with a chip on their shoulder is worth as much as a person who actually has expertise in the field.

8.You think Luke Slattery's right because he writes "finer prose". How relativist can you get? Joseph Goebbels also had a fine way with words – I suppose that makes Goebbels right too?

9.Our society will go on functioning the same way it always has, with about 20-30% of the population as poor spellers. There has always been a large minority of our population that are borderline functional illiterate; including my fine grandmother and members of her generation that lived through the Great Depression and WWII and saw off the Soviet Empire. And the Soviets were good spellers.
----

Where's the next barrel of fish?

"5. How can cultural studies be a science when we all know (from tabloid newspaper reports, rumours, etc.) that it believes there's no such thing as truth?"

I suspect the good Captain might be having a little chuckle to him/herself right now. Tabloid and rumours, indeed.