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.

It's a pity that Kevin is so blinded by the ideological compulsion to bag his opponents that he can't see the answer embedded in his own post. He quotes with scorn a prescription for analysing a text: "Who is in the text? Who is missing? Whose voices are represented? Whose voices are marginalised or discounted? What are the intentions of the author/speaker? What does the author/speaker want the audience to think? What would an alternative text say? How can the audience use this information to promote equity?"
Without actually doing this but with a fair bit of confidence about the outcome, I would think that if I applied it to, say, Hamlet, I would come to the conclusion that Hamlet represents a fantastic resource to perceive the human condidtion. If I applied it to Australian Idol I would conclude that Australian Idol is a TV show designed to provide a bit of escapist entertainment.
See, the method works!

You didn’t read my post I like Willies plays and it does have a valued place in drama class.
But in English it does not, well maybe should be mentioned for historical reasons. You see not many people talk in middle English anymore, and if your not into that kind of thing it is boring.
I ask you what lessons can’t be taught using popular culture. If you can drill passed all the boring bits even big brother of all things is a window into modern youth adult culture. That can be used as a vehicle. The irony of Kevin’s whinging is that old Will was derided for bringing popular culture to the stage. His little plays were not liked by the elitist Kevin’s of the day. Now we have Kevin telling us that nothing produced today will go on to become a classic today.
The real problem is Kevin is fixated on method rather then outcomes.

Does Kev have an "OFF" button? Could someone PLEASE show me where it is?!?! I suspect much of this public comment he insists upon spinning is to generate more business for "Education Strategies".

What a ridiculous comment about "Othello". How one could NOT read it with a racial perspective is beyond me. Most of the whole damn play is devoted to the issue!! When I studied it in Year 12 it barely made sense until I reminded myself that Othello is black.

Kev's a genius.

If we took a critical approach to his article we might conclude that he's a chauvenistic, property-worshipping absolutist proffering his opinion with highly selective evidence in a popular electronic forum - the here today, gone tomorrow kind. Pretty shabby really.

On the other hand we could take his work at face value and conclude that he's a really caring, sharing kind of guy who understands current youth. Ah, now I understand his problem with critical literacy.

Kevin Donnelly makes the valid point that regarding Shakespeare with Australian Idol as equally valuable 'texts' is absurd. But I would remind him that there is more to great literature than the Western Canon. Of course, the best way to appreciate the likes of Tolstoy or Balzac is in the language they wrote in. Nonetheless, I believe we should be thinking beyond the Western Canon and embracing a greater understanding of literature the world over.

Also, while I'm not a fan of post-modernism, I do think the emphasis in teaching literature should be around critical thinking. After all, learning is about getting students to think for themselves - not repeat dogma (of whatever shade) uncritically.

I wish Kevin Donnelly would clarify what exactly he thinks is so scary about critical literacy as a teaching method? What's wrong with thinking about how a text - or a play, or a novel or a poem - has been constructed to present a particular world view, usually a white, middle-class male one - like Shakespeare must have been, and I presume, like Kevin himself?
Just why are there so many experts on the teaching of English anyway?

Why place so much focus on analysing literature at all? How about making sure students can actually read and write properly first - grammar, etc., coupled with self-learning techniques, so that they might actually want to read and learn more instead of watching Australian Idol? And if they do prefer to watch Australian Idol, why not encourage them to analyse it instead of passively absorbing the crap?

The purpose of school is to help prepare children and teenagers for their adult life. The skills they need most are self-learning techniques. When I was very young I used to love reading and using my imagination to get the most out of literature. By the end of High School, I found the prescribed 'analysis' of literature intolerable.

The following is an amazingly concise summary of the correct use of the English language: 'How to Speak and Write Correctly'. Although written in 1910, I honestly believe it would have been better to make me memorise this book back to front at school, then leave me to read and enjoy whatever I goddamn liked:

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/hwswc10h.htm

Developing advanced vocabulary, grammar and foreign language skills is infinitely more important that dissecting 'texts', seeking possible interpretations.

Teach the kids the language skills, then leave them to it. If Shakespeare and Keats are really so awesome, then those writers will maintain a strong readership without much assistance.

Realist, as boy put through the NSW English syllabus recently, I can assure you that the biggest demotivation for boys is not the classics, but is rather having to ignore what is obvious and meaningful to criticise small, insignificant bits of the novel or play in order to prove inequality, rather than looking for the deep and profound insights that this book offers. Critical Theory tells you what the answer will be: that a minority is not equal to a majority. When facing an author who is saying some that is actually challenging, you're encouraged to launched speculative character-assassinations just to proved that they are biased and therefore not "promoting equality", rather than deal with their argument or ideas objectively. There's nothing to bore a boy like feminist (bashing men), post-colonialist (bashing white men), queer (bashing heterosexuals), eco (bashing white men who work), and psychological (bashing all confident men as "repressed") readings.

There's enough pop culture in the world, so much so that there's no point having more in English class rooms. To say English should deal with pop culture is like saying that the ABC should try to compete with the commercial networks to produce programs like Big Brother, rather than providing that which the market does not sustain, like regional and diverse programming, and highest quality news reporting.
So in English, all students are exposed to pop culture and deal with it instinctively, so teach them the best Australian poems, the best English literature, and give them something new, and therefore challenging in itself.

It's true that context is important, that was dealt with in traditional courses in English. In any student version of Shakespeare's plays there are explanitory notes in the left-hand margin to explain the quirks of the era. It didn't, however, say that because there were difined roles for the sexes that everything the Bard says is just biased towards men and women need to be given a greater voice in Shakespeare, and Shakespeare's works should be performed not in order to allow the profound words to be heard, but rather to highlight women's inequality.

Dear Kev - you really don't think hard enough about what you write. Your implication is that reading literature is the same for everyone, that different people will gather the same meanings from the same texts. This further implies that there really is only one right way of reading a text.
This is just ignorant, and makes it obvious that you are just on a soap box and toeing the same line as anyone who would like to have a go at educationalists who would like to see teaching and learning go beyond the traditional and increasingly old-fashioned and move into being understood as socially and culturally influenced. Indeed there is no better example of that than your own and others' rantings about what should be considered important to the curriculum.
Imagine an old-fashioned book club comprising people from all walks of life. Imagine the book of the week is Tim Winton's Couldstreet. Imagine if they all had the same opinion and the same way of anlaysing the text. What a boring and useless book club this would be! I know my analysis of the book would be different from other people's. I like to hear their opinions, and I like to imagine what others might make of the same text - I can learn from it. Is there really something wrong with asking school students to consider textual understanding in this way?? Or is there more danger in asking them to all have the same analytical understanding of Hamlet and requiring no more than that from them?

If human nature is so constant, we need never read 'Medea' or 'Oedipus', because 'Big Brother' and 'Desperate Housewives' would tell us everything we need to know.

Or failing that, at least some kind of 'True Crime' documentary about mothers who drive their sons crazy with lust before killing their kids in a bizarre revenge plot.

One of the values of literature is to teach us more about a time that we are not so familiar with, and contrasting the values of our current society with other societies as a means of better understanding our own values.

I'm sorry to say it, but reading IS ideological: we just can't help ourselves. That's why one person reads The Bible and uses it to form the basis of their belief system and another person can dismiss it as a "riveting roller-coaster ride full of war, betrayal and revenge".

Whether or not this forms part of the education system's attitude to teaching literature is largely (excuse the pun) academic: these semantic and semiotic debates rage around political cartoons, Letters to the Editor and indeed, Online Opinion pieces, every day.

It IS important to understand that Shakespeare lived in a society where attitudes were very different to today's (not least in regard to women and Judaism). It's also important to understand that Harper Lee writes with a perspective on segregation in the South of the United States.

By considering how others might construe a work, surely we have our own theories and beliefs tested in a way that either validates, strengthens or dismisses them? I'd like to think that considering some one else's point of view or reading of a text contributes to how I view things, for better or worse.

Seether, I agree with you entirely. I so wish Kev would respond to postings in this forum ... Perhaps he

Having read the article, it seems to be rather pointless.

As understood, the complaint regards the current teaching method - text/literature/culture being taught in a way that analyses the work from different perspectives.

If so, then what is the goal of this style of teaching? To invest an ability in students to think outside the norm? To realise that text/literature/culture have different meanings to different people perhaps?

If so, fine. What is wrong with teaching students to think?

On the other hand the author states “the fact that most of us read for more mundane reasons” and “...that people will go on valuing those writings that they judge best help them to realise what the world is and what people are...”.

If so, what is the problem? People choose what they like and what they want to read. All in all, the best of text/literature/culture will survive as a ‘classic’ and the rest will find itself slowly disappearing from the social conscience.

Nowhere is there any allegation that Shakespeare is more or less than ‘Idol’ – or BB for that matter. Nowhere does the author highlight a claim that the modern cultural icons are in any way superior to or equal to classics from Keats, Tolstoy, Homer or their luminaries.

Perhaps it is the simple fact that there is study of these modern icons is all that irks the author?

What does all this mean? Well, it seems nothing.

So the author doesn’t like the way teaching currently teaches. Well, put up some valid reasons why analysis over rote learning is bad. Convince us that our children are worse off for not learning a ‘correct’ answer rather than being asked to provide an answer and reasons for their claim.

As with most things on this planet, there are very few right ways to do things. What is best for some is not always best for others - unless of course you have a particular dogma, whether religious, economic or political to push…. hhhmmmmmm?

As an English teacher in Queensland, I deal with critical literacy every day. And I read the newspapers that use sensationalist tactics to bag what we are doing without really understanding it at all.

True, it has gone into overdrive and needs to be kept in balance. But critical literacy has a valuable place in our curriculum and is by no means cultural vandalism. I have never asked a student to take a marxist (or any other ideological) reading of a text, and doubt I ever will. But I do teach children to ask a few basic questions:
1) What does the author of the text want me to believe?
2) Is there another side to this story?
3) How has the author constructed the text to make me accept his point of view and reject others?
This is critical literacy. It applies to the news (how is a pre-emptive strike different from an unprovoked attack?), to Shakespeare (why is Romeo [a killer] better than Macbeth [a killer]?) and to pop culture 'texts' like Reality TV shows. In fact, at present, I am teaching students to examine the construction of reality in Reality TV and the ways this influences our perceptions of reality.
When we argue about an article (like some people are doing now) we are practicing critical literacy by refusing to accept information at face value.
You can't tell me that this isn't valuable in our society. And, in a time when kids have to 'earn or learn' until they are 18, we might as well be teaching kids skills they will use to enrich their lives, rather than teaching them to recite Shakespearean or Chaucerian extracts.
I make no apologies for what I am doing.

And another thing (I bet you can't tell that I'm passionate about this topic) . . .

One of the English-affiliated subjects I teach deals with texts in the contexts of the societies in which they are created. For example, when we are reading Shakespeare, we look at the world in which Shakespeare wrote. We look at the values of the society, we look at the social structures and we look at the customs and beliefs. We then look at the ways in which this society is reflected in his works. Far from sterilising the texts, I have found that this subject actually accentuates students' enjoyment. For once, they can actually understand the text. They can make sense of the bizarre twists and turns, and refrain from judging characters by today's standards.

This is critical literacy. It is an exploration of the way a text is constructed by the beliefs and ideologies of its socio-cultural context. It is also an exploration of the way a text influences its readers to accept or reject aspects of this socio-cultural context. While Shakespeare seemed content to uphold the social order of his time, other authors called for change. What is the harm in allowing students to see where a text comes from and what purpose it serves?

Otokonoko,
Well said my educationalist! Your fist post was spot on (not to say the second was not!). It’s not about filling a mind with a particular view but giving the mind the ability to think. Bravo.

From my reading, the author of the article has a particular barrow to push. Sad that politics, ego and economics gets in the way of improving the minds of our world...

Keep at it and I hope that there are many more teachers like you in our community. If only the resources were there (well, they are but in the wrong hands)!

Otokonoko

I would love to attend your classes. A bit too old unfortunately.

But on the positive side I can attend the latest Bell Shakespeare interpretation of Romeo and Juliet opening in Melbourne Friday. I love their performances of Shakespeare's works.

I also enjoy less 'literary' subjects such as 'Thank God you're here' on the Teev or Harry Potter books - all have a place and I don't really get what the author of this article is on about.

Concur with Reason - all about politics and ego.

Big Brother is not equal to Shakespeare or Tim Winton. It is also not equal to any text of merit by a member of an historically oppressed group, such as Virginia Woolfe. How do you define a text of merit? While I do not propose to give a definitive answer, there are certain 'texts' which have very little comparitive merit in a high school English class room, such as text messages and Big Brother. Discussing such texts would be much more appropriate in undergraduate sociology, pyschology, and culture studies classes.

I completed the HSC in 2003, and I studied Gwen Harwood's poems, Brave New World, the Fiftieth Gate and King Lear. These are all fantastic, engaging texts, as were all the texts I encountered through my high school years. I must admit, when we studied a related movie i was a little suprised, but eventually could see the merit in it. If i had been presented with Big Brother, text messages, etc, to study, I would not have stood for it. No-one should.

If students are not engaging with these more substantial texts, perhaps it is because they do not have advanced enough English skills to cope. It is hard to dissect a play when you have difficulty reading it, or your grammar is so poor that your essay about it will be equally poor. Students may like these popular texts, but is it becasue they are engaging or because they are less challenging? As Ed said, students should be given basic skills before they are expected to dissect texts.

The answer to excellence in English teaching is to make sure that students have a satisfactory grasp of the English language. Then they will be more likely to enjoy everything that Shakespeare etc has to offer, without worrying that the text will be too hard for them.

Excellence should always be strived for.

Accepting that Big Brother is a satisfactory text is setting the bar too low. Students deserve more.

In india students are taught western canons like Shakespeare and Milton with extensive notes and bar notes that the students dread these texts. They are not able to accept shakespeare wrote for people to enjoy themselves originally. PG classes use postcolonialism to politicise literature. It makes students hate all forms of knowledge ultimately. Literature classrooms have to redefine their purpose.