Having been forced to study postmodern clap-trap in English, I can point out the single main flaw in this idea that "many readings" will allow a person to "evaluate critically the relevance of culture to the world in which they live". If you want to translate the last quotation into normal prose, it would read "explain away everything as a relationship of power, thus encouraging cynicism of all power, and forwarding politically correct views of society from a strictly 'progressive' position, all the while destroying the real acheivement of literature".

The world is only a "postmodern world" because we are teaching children to ignore what is blatantly true and self-evident. The question is this: why should we be teaching children with theories derived from the philosophies of men who claimed that there was no truth, only the politically expedient? Simply put, giving in to postmodern degeneracy is repudiating the great acheivements of western civilisation.

Thank you Margaret for a useful account of the developments around the “label” debate. I might offer the cheeky suggestion of Bruno Latour’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour) that we have never been modern. The labelling game clearly upsets folk who “know” how the world “really” is. It has always been so. I for one am not persauded that teaching folk “truths” is a particularly clever thing to do in 2006 and beyond. We live in a dangerous and unpredictable world in which teaching students how to think and act in the world ought to be the name of the game. No easy task as any analysis, postmodern or otherwise ought to show.

DFXX, I found Maragaret's article a lot more meaningful than your post, even though I am not convinced of the virtues of postmodernism as a teaching device. What do you refer to as 'blatantly true and self-evident'? The mere posing of my question undermines your confident statement. Note: I am not dismissing you view, just asking you to elaborate so I can understand it.

Slightly off topic, but something on the ideas of post-modernism...

I'll never forget the story of an English professor who one day spent copious hours in the library. As the library was closing one night, he was forced to leave, but found himself outside in a rain storm.

He looked across the street and saw a sign "Recovered Umbrellas". 'At last!' he thought and walked over to see if he could purchase one, an 'umbrella for his recovery'. As he neared the store, he realised it was an umbrella repairs shop, not an umbrella sales shop. No matter how much he wanted the sign to mean a store which sold umbrellas, it could only mean what its writer actually intended it to mean- an umbrella repairs shop.

This guy had a post-grad degree in English but it took this simple sign to understand that the meaning of communication is defined by what the communicator intends to communicate, not what the interpreter wants to interpret.

I believe this is contrary to the ideas of post-modernism, however, it makes a lot more sense to me.

Ah yes, postmodernism. Something which came after something else in a linear, longitudinal progression of time and history. Curious, that a cultural paradigm promoting the irrational should define itself using old rational modernist concepts and words. So how are we to interpret this duality in lateral, non modernist terms? How are we to interpret something which can't explain itself without contradiction? How could we define, rename or reinvent postmodernism using its own principles? And then, what would that mean?

Perhaps we could rename it pre-next-thing. No, that's not correct, that's still on a timeline of sorts. What about omni-directional-timelessness-ism - something that defies rational positioning in both space and time? Yes. Now we're starting to get somewhere. But wait a minute. We're not supposed to get somewhere. That would define our position. We must remember that to be somewhere would be, by definition, contradictory to our post modernist ambitions.

We have to be very careful in postmodernism that we don't define ourselves. That would be compliance with that old nasty white man's authoritarian modernism that brought health, wealth and creativity to the world. We must ensure that we are unambiguously ambiguous. We must express ourselves in such terms and mediums that those who attempt to interpret our works are able to place any meaning upon them that they so fancy, because when we created the work, it doesn't matter what we really meant. Our work must be left open-ended to be interpreted by the whims of others in their post modernist spheres of influence and existence. To do anything else would be shockingly modernist.

Now, does this all sound like nonsense to you?

Well, of course it is. And so is this rubbish called postmodernism. Nothing but utter, unmitigated and total nonsense. There is no comprehension of postmodernism, because it is a nonsense. It's a non ism. And that which isn't, doesn't make any sense and cannot be understood. Postmodernism by its nature can be anything anyone wants it to be and so I am entitled by it's very own rules to declare it to be bullsh'!

Post modernism is a set of ideas that, by definition, cannot be defined. But actually I know foucault about post-modernism.