Hooray Sohie,
Having read Eagleton’s “After Theory” I agree with every word. I have a child who has just completed a B.A in English and I have been surprised at how little she was required to read. I too regret the influence of the French theorists who are taken much more seriously here than in France where they are rather old fashioned. There are so many things wrong with the way we teach English lit, the equalitarian push where a thesis on pubic hair is equated with one on Proust, the banality of “gender studies”, the insistence of a political reading of every text and the obliteration of profound texts in the thickets of theory. What we get from all of this is the notion that nothing really means anything, all is cultural dross, novels do not tell us anything about what it means to be a human being, they are simply patriarchy, gender roles, grand narratives that need to be deconstructed and exposed for what they are. We are losing the deep wisdom that we once got from reading Austin, Elliot, Dickens, James, Dostoyevsky and all of the other paragons of the Western canon. These writers have been a window into the human soul which we have firmly closed. Add to this the destruction of education under the rubric of “outcomes” in education and we have students reading under the bed covers in order to educate themselves. The managerial straighteners treat education like a production line with students going in not knowing certain things and coming out knowing certain things. This may do for car production lines but is totally inadequate when we are nurturing young souls into human adulthood. Education should be more like diving for treasure in at times deep and dangerous waters than inculcating certain prescribed skills and ideas. At the moment it is more like corrupting the young! We need a prophetic voice, Sophie, are you up to it?

I finished high school in 98, from a well funded private boys school in Sydney. I have loved reading my entire life. My university degree was in Arts (History and Political Science). I found the english curriculum was a complete waste of time, better only than the computer studies curriculum (memorise the glossary!!). Writing was not taught well (fortunately it was taught quite well in history) and the books, although initially engaging became tedious and pointless through over analysis. I considered it a disgrace that the subject was compulsory as it offered next to nothing.

Abso-bloody-lutely Sophie. Studied lit and taught it and they both bored me stupid. So happy to have gotten out of the stifled English classroom where you need to tell the kids what to think about a book (I always thought the point of reading was to think for yourself!) so that they can fill in the blanks for the end of year exam. Happy now to be encouraging students to 'read for pleasure' and openly discuss what they liked about a book, who they empathised with etc - much of the same, but they don't have to quote key passages, try to guess what the author was intending (probably exactly what it looks like) or what literary classic he/she was alluding to (if it's pretty vague, then it's probably coincidental or parenthetical and not worthy of too much worry anyway).

Kids/people (me!) are reading less quality fiction in favour of tv, video games etc. anyway without abusing the captive audiences we should be inspiring to read and to write.

More power to imagination and boo to academic bulltwang!

I learned to read in the late 60s and early 70s. I don't know what theory I learnt by but, the occasional typo aside, I think my reading and writing was well taught. I now love reading a variety of works from classics by the likes of Maupassant through to history and politics.

My beef is the teaching of grammar. I received precious little instruction in grammar until I did French in year 11 and 12 (1981-82). I hadn't heard of the terms conditional tense or pluperfect tense - even though I used them all the time in speech and writing. And if you are learning a foreign language, knowledge of tenses in your own language is essential.

What is the situation with grammar in schools now? Obviously it is not enough to know how words are pronounced and to associate a construction of letters with particular sounds. Grammar is also a necessary component in learning any language - starting with one's own.

Hello, this is Sophie Masson here. Thank you all for your comments. It confirms very much my experience, and my deep frustration at the wasted opportunity that English has become. I'm furious that all this stupid, dull and irrelevant theory means that kids will only be introduced to one or two books if they're lucky, in Year 12--that poetry is grouped into 'themes'--that everything is, as you say, made into dross. What's more, not only do they blast and wither literature for kids, their vaunted 'egalitarianism' goes out the window, as most people hate this kind of theory and find it as arcane as Maths, though not a quarter as useful. It narrows things for everybody.

I came to Australia as a non-English speaking child(my first language is French) and my experience of English at school--the much more open and wide curriculum we had--plus a couple of brilliant, committed teachers--opened up my mind to all the beauties and wonders of English-language literature. It gave me a freedom to explore and to understand and to be inspired by that I certainly would not have got from this rotten curriculum. It gave me untold opportunities. I cannot bear the fact that children now simply aren't getting those opportunities (and teachers feel stifled and bored as well), just so some dull and narrow pedant can impose their ideological straitjacket on captive audiences. It's an absolute disgrace..

Incidentally, sells, you're quite right, in France the po-mo and deconstructionist types are considered old-fashioned now., But their influence on French literature has been baleful--and it's the reason why most French people, till fairly recently, have been reading, for preference, history and biography: at least you get a damn story and engaging characters, and you feel the stakes are high! The French novel is slowly recovering from the dead hand of theory, principally because non-French writers like the Russian expatriate author Andrei Makine, are now writing in French, novels that people actually want to read, written in the beautiful, elegant, limpid clarity of the old French style

I hope that everyone involved in setting English curriculum in this country reads this article. Perhaps it will remind them of what attracted them to the language and literature in the first place. The problem of course is politics. It's soulless, humourless filaments stealthily exert influence on all aspects of our lives and will take any opportunity and use any medium to do so.

A couple of years ago my young niece complained to me about one of the most beautiful stories every written, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. To her it was rubbish and "irrelevant" (whatever that means) because there were no female characters. The beauty of the words, and the profound messages one could take from the story meant nothing. She seems to have major grievances with much literature. I get some solace from the fact that despite all her complaining she still reads voraciously. Something of the beauty and passion must touch her somewhere.