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.

Cranky,

Having arrived at the halfway mark of reading “Who Stole Feminism”, I can tell you that the reason your niece was more concerned about the lack of women in Hemingway’s story is because there exists a group of “Feminazis” who most fervently believe that gender feminism is vastly more important than any basic education, let alone appreciation of fine literature. Reading your words, I could comfortably visualise your niece’s teacher going on at length about “discrimination against women” and ‘sexism” when presented with such a literary opportunity as Hemingway.

While “Who Stole Feminism” addresses the ‘feminist revolution’ (in truth a brutal, unconscionable, and facist take-no-prisoners coup) at university level, it is obvious that, ten years later, the some idiotic ideology is well entrenched in primary and high schools.

The frightening truth is that—as is well illustrated by Sophie Masson’s work—too many of our kids are (generally speaking) at the mercy of—to use Sophie’s word—‘stupid’ teachers who have delusions of being intellectual and academic.

Sophie,

I always say a quiet ‘thank you God’ when I read uncommon sense by someone like you. It gives me hope, probably because the loudest and most prolific voices typically seem to come from people who are completely disassociated with reality.

We need to more regularly express ourselves as bluntly as you do when you say….
“As a writer as much as a reader I was outraged by this stupid, insulting and utterly irrelevant………”

I believe we owe it to our children to say it like it is and no longer ‘tolerate’ the many ideological idiocies in education with ‘political correctness’. Perhaps we need to even be marching in the streets to ensure that our demand for ‘old-fashioned’ but effective education is heard loud and clear.

Great essay, Sophie. How embarassing for our so-called ‘educational experts’ that someone whose birth language was not even English should be the one to inject realism and intelligence into the debate.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

When I read Jane Austen as a child, I thought this was an amusing statement, but did not take it seriously, and I would bet neither did DavidJS. When we studied Julius Caesar we were encouraged to think about "politics" because this play is about the art of politics. "Creative writing" was not in the curriculum, this was for our own time. In our exams, we were obliged to think critically, not only about the poetry and rhythms, but also about the actual content, the message, the point of the work. We were deconstructionists long before the French gave us the word because we were being educated to read beyond the text. What we see today in our schools is not much more than fancy new theory voicing old and venerable practices.

I applaud Sophie Masson's endeavours in visiting schools and encouraging kids to write and read creatively, and in "making literature attractive". But there is only so much time in a day to teach kids everything they need to know, so that they can go forth and do it for themselves. I am not defending the current curriculum, as there might well be too much emphasis on "deconstructing" texts, but attacking the good intentions of our educators with such ferocity smacks of a political agenda. I don't hear anyone suggesting that we should pay our teachers more, which might go some way to improving the alleged lack of quality in their profession.

Like David JS, my major concern about English teaching is that grammar disappeared from the curriculum somewhere back in the seventies, which has made it much harder to teach foreign languages, not to mention the impoverishment of our written expression. I am surprised that conservative commentators do not make more of this, but then perhaps most of them are too young to know what I am talking about. Grammatically that last sentence was not too hot, but who would know or care these days?

I just completed the HSC last year, and I have to say - I agree with every damn word you say. I loved English before then, I still love to read and to write, but that syllabus took every good thing out of reading and writing and replaced it with hideous farces where we were repeatedly asked to do the ridiculous, and for no true valuable purpose. We were asked to do the same things again and again in slightly altered formats, with slightly different examples, and it was demanded that we have a "fresh, original" approach each time. English became a trial, hideous beyond belief, where nonsensical values and requirements were thrust upon us, which we were told we had to embrace in order to succeed. It was, in short, a nightmare. The only times when I ever enjoyed it was when I shucked the ridiculousness we were expected to embrace and read the novel for itself, took on my own theories and used original thought to dissect them. I had to follow their ridiculous doctrine for exams, but cursed if I'd let their narrowminded idiot approach be the only thing I took away from my senior years of English.

And as for your comments on Extension II English - been there, done that. The further problem there is that it's all the same teachers who teach the boring advanced and standard syllabus who mark them, and while some are undoubtedly talented, others have no clue. I achieved quite a high mark in the class, not as high as I'd hoped, and on my telling this to a family friend who was also a teacher, his automatic assumption was that my writing had gone over the heads of the people marking. These people give our senior students what is for many their last taste of literature in education. I find that terrifying

Sophie & others,

My comment was '698 words too long', so I uploaded it instead.
Please read it here: http://anotherhour.net/english.html .

Sophie, you are wonderful and my friends want you to come and teach us.

-Amelia

Meeli,

I read your document and am both impressed and saddened.

The sadness comes from the fact that we (the older Australian generations) have---by neglect, ignorance and false, untested ideologies---betrayed the younger generations.

I am actually planning to do something about it and certainly want to get the attention of as many young people of your calibre as possible.

Check out http://www.decency.org.au and also http://www.oz-aware.com. The style and grammar are perhaps not nearly as excellent as yours, but hopefully you'll get the fundamental message. You and any other likeminded young people should feel free to be in touch via the decency website.

Oh come on Grace! I was analysing the historical context of Austen's work as a primary school child :-)

But seriously folks, I do think literature cannot possibly be fun if it is dissected in the way it appears to be now. I say "appears" because I am childless and haven't been to school since 1982 so I'm not totally informed regarding this debate. I will, however, relate my own experience with French literature.

I started recently getting into the works of Maupassant and Balzac through my love of French history. Don't ask how I came to enjoy French history. It maybe because it wasn't taught at my school (a sad reflection on my education). However, by learning myself through reading history books I moved towards the literature of the period I am most fascinated in (France from 1789 to 1914) and now find I really enjoy it - some Maupassant stories and books are really hard to put down. If on the other hand, I was given instruction in reading this material I'd probably hate it. But I'm not talking about 2005. I'm talking about the late 70s and early 80s.

My personal experience tells me that a) a love of literature may be acquired more successfully if students are given more autonomy regarding the experience of reading and the interpretation of that experience and b) perhaps the teaching of literature in days gone by wasn't that good either.

DavidJS, my post might have been unclear, because I had to edit back to fit the word limit.

My primary schooling was a bit before yours, but my point was that we were both capable of reading the text of that Austen quotation as fundamentally irrelevant to who we were, you as gay (making some assumptions here), and me as a young girl. That quotation was addressed neither of us, it is addressed to a wealthy man who is supposed to want a "wife". Marriage is set out as a social imperative in Austen's works, but not all girls and boys saw their lives ahead in those limited terms.

That is, as children we were both capable of enjoying Austen as literature, at the same time as thinking critically about the political, historical and social context of the quotation, and in that sense I am saying that we were "deconstructionists", before the French gave us the theory. I would hope that children are still making up their own minds about the meaning of the literature they read, at school and in their own time.

Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in favour of deconstruction in our schools, I am not close enough to know these days, but I hope we don't throw it all out in meeting some other ideological agenda. The political attacks on our teachers in schools, universities and museums, are becoming increasingly rancorous in recent years, as part of the so-called "culture war", which is essentially ideological and not neccesarily in the best interests of our children.