JOHN Howard has charged into the eduction debate but may find himself in the witches’ cauldron.
The PM told ABC Radio in Brisbane that he feels “very, very strongly” about criticism that “we are dumbing down the English syllabus.” Howard believes many texts being taught in schools are “rubbish” and is considering tying funding to get “gobbledegook” out of the classroom.
It’s ironic the teaching of English in general and Shakespeare in particular has become a matter of concern to the Federal Government, given that the humanities have been starved of funds in tertiary institutions for years.
At the same time, theory based education faculties in universities around the nation — aided and abetted by education bureaucrats, in turn defended by State Education Ministers, have managed to get a stranglehold on literary studies in schools, through they way they teach teachers to teach.
Debate has been raging fiercely for months in The Australian about the teaching of literacy and literature, particularly in NSW, Queensland and WA. SCEGGS Darlinghurst, a private girls school in Sydney, has been singled out for an exam paper which asked Year 11 students for a Marxist interpretation of Shakespeare’s Othello. Poor old SCEGGS is not alone. The same clap-trap has been imposed on teachers/schools/students throughout the country.
Take Tasmania.
Take a typical example: the Tasmanian Certificate of Education English-Studies, Senior Secondary 5C, 2005 exam paper for external assessment (an exam for all Tasmanian students enrolled in the subject). Take Section B, Question 5: “Explain how a particular literary theory such as post-colonialism or feminism added to or detracted from your understanding of the conflict explored within a particular text.”
What? Since when were post-colonialism and feminism regarded as “literary” theory?
The exam is set around three criteria. Criterion 3: “Demonstrate understanding of how historical and cultural contexts influence, and are influenced by, text.” Clearly, Question 5 is a generic one, which complies with Criterion 3, and which can be imposed on any text. It is not related to the reading of a particular text. And worryingly, it means that students can learn some superficial facts about various socio-economic-political theories in readiness for exams which ask them to impose these on anything in the syllabus, be it Shakespeare or a movie poster.
In The Australian today (April 21), University of WA convenor of European Studies, Associate Professor Peter Morgon asks whether students have studied the various “isms” they are being asked to use.
Morgan says that if literary analysis is the aim “then surely students should be introduced to the literary text at a level which they can manage at their age and intellectual development?”
Morgon — who is not a member of an Educational faculty — goes on: “As teachers we should not encourage our students to pretend to know more than they do and to use jargon to hide what they don’t know.”
