SLIDE ONE

Teaching fat books again: the retreat from critical literacy in the Australian English

Curriculum

David Hastie St Paul’s Grammar school/ Macquarie University

Notice the following, from the NSW draft syllabus:

FOR YEAR 7-8 STUDENTS

4.22 spelling – understand how to use knowledge of the spelling system to spell unusual and

technical words accurately, for example those based on uncommon Greek and Latin roots

4.19 nominalisation – understand the effect of nominalisation in the writing of informative

and persuasive texts

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Well, arguing about Australian English curricula has been something of a national pastime, in

particular in NSW since the English Forms I-V syllabus was introduced in 1953. In this

discordant spirit, many responses have been offered so far to the new Australian English

Curriculum (hereafter AEC1). Probably the most comprehensive is the NSW ETA response

(ETA, 2010), which touches upon the whole breadth of what might be called an ‘English

education’.

This paper offers an assessment of the Australian English Curriculum, AND its recent

adaptation into the NSW Context. SLIDE 5 TRACKING LITERATURE We are going to

1 All references to AEC taken from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Home and its various pages. The AEC 7-10 is finalized, and the senior years AEC ‘Essentials English’ [Ess], ‘Literature’ [Lit] and ‘English’ [Eng] courses are still in draft.

do this by tracking one key area relatively untreated by last year’s brilliantly comprehensive

ETA response. It tracks ideas of ‘literature’ and canonicity from existing NSW syllabi into

the AEC, and the NSW draft. SLIDE 6 OLD & NEW

I argue that the AEC constitutes a significant shift away from the current 2 Critical Literacy/

what I am calling Emancipatory approaches, to what I ‘soft canonical’ approaches. Then we

will look at some resources for accommodating this shift.

Brief background to English curricula

Historically it can be seen that the number of syllabus ‘perspectives’ has been accumulating

since the early 20th century, roughly in NSW from two 1911-1971 (Golsby-Smith 2007: 18),

three 1971- 1999 (Golsby-Smith 2007: 18; Brock, 1985), to four with the current syllabi

(BOS, 1999; 2005).

SLIDE 7 HISTORY OF ENGLISH SYLLABI

Up until the 1960s the majority focus of Western English syllabi, gravitated around ‘bits’ of

“‘skills base’ and ‘Cultural Heritage’”. These ‘Cultural Heritage’ ideas clustered around

‘literature’, based on Matthew Arnold’s didactic approach and a Leavisite/ Richards/ New

Critic aesthetic approach (Eagleton, 1983; Golsby-Smith 2007: 25-26). This basically means

that the great texts represent the ‘best done and said’, and have a kind of civilizing effect on

us, although it didn’t seem to work with the NAZIS. Also, Leavisite or ‘new critical’

approaches to text have a reader submitting themselves to the devices and artistry of a text, to

become immersed in them.

2 Note: my references to current state syllabi constitutes a reference to the NSW Board of Studies [BOS] syllabi, taken for the purposes of this document as an adequate equivalent for other existing state syllabi around the country, notwithstanding some variations in course sequencing and credentialing conventions. All references from the BOS are from three syllabi, and so specified in the text: stage 1-3; stages 4-5; stage 6.

In NSW, this approach was supplemented (1971-1985) by ‘The New English’ years 7-10

(Brock 1985), out of Reader Response literary theory and Personal Growth theory (after

Dixon 1975; Moffett 1968). The 1999 stage 6 (11-12) NSW English syllabi, added a fourth

‘Emancipatory’ perspective, or in shorthand, ‘Critical Literacy’. SLIDE 8

CONTEMORARY MODELS

These single ‘four voiced’ syllabi documents, with some variation, now found across existing

(not the incoming) Australian English curricula. They can be seen as courageous attempts to

hold the wild horses of social and literary theory corralled together.

SLIDE 9 MUTUALLY CONTRADICTORY However such different ‘perspectives’ stem

from different, often mutually exclusive, knowledge approaches, a problem I argue lies at the

root of our profession’s ongoing confusion and argument. That the breadth of contradiction in

these quadrilateral English Syllabi is more of a self-destructive problem than a strength for

the subject English, is one of my key assertions.

‘Canonical’ approaches of Cultural Heritage and Aesthetics

The idea of ‘Cultural Heritage’ is obviously primal across all education. However, it is

particularly sharpened in Arnoldean didacticism: ‘literary masterpieces to teach the best said

and done’ (captured in ‘great literature’) has been variously present in criticism in Britain

since [1531] through the 20th century figures such as Leavis and Richards and contemporary

critics such as Frye (1988) Bloom (1994) and Said (2004). Literary ‘Aesthetics’ is also an

ancient educational device, yet took a particular textually-reifying significance under the New

Critics (Eliot, 1920; Leavis 1952; Eagleton, 1983; Golsby-Smith 2007), whose critical DNA

now indwells all Western English teachers, including us. SLIDE 10 CULTURAL

HERITAGE

Such approaches require beliefs about the objective nature of truth and beauty (Leavis 1952;

Gunn 1971; Steiner 1989, 2001; Ryken 1985), and I choose to muster these Cultural Heritage

and Aesthetic approaches under the shorthand term ‘canonical’. Why? They share the habit of

‘storing’ ideas in authorized repositories, valorised educations and, recently, valorised

literature. Hence the term ‘canonical’ has a particular symmetry for my purposes today: a

unifying metaphor to encapsulate these ancient notions of hierarchical idealism contested in

schooling, teaching, literary studies and English curriculum ‘wars’.

SLIDE 11 PERSONAL GROWTH

Personal Growth/ Emancipatory approaches

‘Personal Growth’ models of English Education are a newer addition to curriculum,

specifically emerging out of the Dartmoor Anglo- American conference of English in 1967

(Dixon 1975; Michaels 2001). However I would argue they have since been largely eaten up

by ‘Emancipatory’ approaches, particularly in secondary English.

‘Emancipatory’ ideas in English teaching are new in curriculum, including neo-marxisms,

feminist, queer, postcolonial, discourse, New Historicist and psychoanalytical theories,

emerging in strength through late 1990s curricula. Today I also cluster such theories together,

as the BOS does in its loose term ‘Critical Literacy’, on the basis of their sceptical approach

to knowledge hierarchy, ie: interrogating and revolutionizing knowledge power claims,

including received ‘canons’. Secondly, they want a radically democratic/ libertarian state

(Marginson 1993), and English education is seen as central in civic formation towards that

kind of society.

SLIDE 12 VOCATIONALISM Vocationalism

Neo-liberal Vocationalism is based on altogether different ideas, originating in Human

Capital Theory. The mid 1980s Regan and Thatcher dispensations saw a revival of human

capital theory as central to education, particularly under the OECD, the Metherall ministry in

NSW [ahh happy days] (Keating, at CSA 2010) and the Federal Dawkins ministry in

Australia (Dawkins 1987). Such thinking has progressively seeped into English curriculum

since, via ‘basic skills’ debates, compulsory federal literacy tests (NAPLAN) for every

second year of schooling, which by the way the Honourable Christopher Pyne wants to ramp

up to every year of schooling, and we all know Mr Pyne is an honourable man. ‘Leaning for

earning’ is now ‘commonsense’ in Australian Education, and inhabits all of the rationales of

Australian curricula and master statements such as 2008 Melbourne Declaration.

SLIDE 13 ON EQUAL TERMS

Hence, I argue, ‘perspectives’ in current English syllabi cluster into three groups of more or

less mutually incompatible theory. Canonical, Emancipatory, and Vocational. I would also

characterize the current syllabi in NSW as dominated by Emancipatory approaches, not

owing to the volume of its presence in the documents, but rather the catastrophic nature of its

project: a negative critique ‘canonical’ approaches and Vocationalism. Ie. It’s like the US

marines: fundamentally designed to invade something.

SLIDE 14 CHANGE AND CONTINUITY

The Australian English Curriculum

The new AEC is, in part, a response to growing alarm in the last decade about the drift

towards the scepticism of these ‘Emancipatory’ approaches. It does this in three ways.

First canonical conceptions have been re-enshrined in one of three distinct strands, K-12,

called ‘Literature’: “Literature is... valued for their form and style and are recognised as

having enduring or artistic value.” (AEC) This is a significant shift away from critical

literacy.

SLIDE 15 CRITICAL LITERACY

In contrast, the existing BOS K-6 English syllabus, contains no reference to ‘literature’ as a

repository of valued texts. The BOS 7-10 has a very tentative notion of ‘literature’ subsumed

under ‘Cultural Heritages’, which are to be seen as equal to ‘popular cultures and youth

cultures’. Instead, Emancipatory approaches to text prevail. For example:

“[Year three students are] to discuss how people from different socio-cultural or

minority groups or people in particular roles are represented in texts and whether these

representations are accurate, fair, stereotypical..”

The approach from there compounds sequentially through the syllabus stages. By the BOS 7-

10, students:

“identify bias and attitudes such as sexism and racism in texts...identify cultural

assumptions in texts including those about gender, ethnicity, religion, youth, age,

sexuality, disability, cultural diversity, social class and work.”

The entire structuring of the BOS Area of Study common unit in Advanced and Standard

English in BOS HSC is ‘Emancipatory’, although we began the decade with change, then

journeys, and now nestle on the more certain hearth of belonging.

I would assert that as an ultimate goal, Emancipatory ‘Critical Literacy’ has been entirely

subordinated in the Australian curriculum, mostly restricted to a few descriptors in yrs 7-8.

The draft senior AEC Lit and AEC Eng courses do contain elements of Critical Literacy,

although they are subsumed under the more dominant approaches of Cultural Heritage.

Critical Literacy elements have been more or less excised from the draft senior AECEss

course. SLIDE 16 THE 1 AUGUST

So what has the 1 August NSW BOS draft response done with this shift?

Note the following: Every year, k-10, ie. Not just every stage, students must experience

“texts which are widely regarded as quality literature”. This is taken to apply to the various

mandatory text forms that are set out in the document. Added to this, is the mandatory

Shakespearean text in stage 5.

And again “a widely defined Australian literature, including texts written from the

perspective of and about Aboriginal experiences in Australia.... a wide range of literary texts

from other countries and times, including poetry, drama scripts, prose fiction and picture

books.

students to explore and appreciate the rich tradition of texts from and about the people and

countries of Asia

In the sub outcomes, the concept is much less visible in the early years, thank goodness.

SLIDE 17 WHTA IS LEFT

And what of ‘critical literacy’/ emancipatory approaches. Well, it is a whole lot more visible

than in the Federal documents. In stages 4-5, (although not stages 1-3) students must

experience:

a wide range of cultural, social and gender perspectives, popular and youth cultures. The

basic idea of Crit lit has been kind of retained in outcome 7.

Personal growth is much more present throughout the outcomes, k-10, so there seems to be

retro shift back from the emancipatory to the ‘personal growth’ focus, and by far the mass of

outcomes apply to technical language engagement, or, in other words, a focus on the

mechanics of text, much of which is coming out of a what might be tautologically termed a

neo new critical approach to language. SLIDE 18 TECHNIFICATION

Indeed this federal AEC K-10, habit of isolating ‘language’ into a distinct strand, implies a

repository of ‘correct’ language knowledge, needing to be learnt before students can

participate in language acts, an activity which seems to be implied by the third and last of the

‘strands’, literacy. Language includes “standard grammatical terminology within a contextual

framework” and “structure (syntax) and meaning (semantics) at the level of the word, the

sentence and the text.” (AEC K-10) Such reversion to pre-structuralism (and, hence pre-

functional, pre-deconstructionist, pre-critical linguistics etc) denotes a significant -and many

would say anachronistic (ETA 2010)- reversion to ‘hierarchy’ in language. SLIDE 19 THE

TECHNIFICATION OF ENGLISH

The BOS draft has done away with such silly meta grammatical terms, but the massive

technical approach that by far dominates the content of the draft, suggests that this approach

to ‘authoritative’, rather than critical, language, has been absorbed throughout. We began this

session by looking at some of this material, grammatical curios that have not been taught

since before the inception of ‘the New English’ in NSW in 1971, when I was but a pre-

literate pup, rolling about in the dirt of Billy McMahon’s Australia.

SHOW DAVID MITCHELL CLIP

The New Australian curriculum, then, can be seen to be moving away from the three current

theoretical foci, back to two (‘canonical’/ Vocationalism), with Emancipatory and Personal

Growth theories subordinated. Professor Barry McGaw, chair of the ACARA stated in forum

that he ‘agreed with [my] depiction of the change in the new Curriculum’ (CSA, 2010).

TELL BARRY JOKES HERE.

The NSW Draft Adaptation of the Australian English Curriculum, on the other hand,

subordinates emancipatory approaches, but keeps Personal Growth approaches quite central,

while elevating Canonical approaches, both in its handling of ‘Literature’ and its approach to

technical language.

Neither the Australian English Curriculum, nor the BOS draft, however, represent a

simplistic reversion back to the bad good old days. ‘Emancipatory’ elements such as context

and multi-focalization are retained in sub-presence, but as an influence, rather than a

curriculum master-outcome. The result is what I am terming ‘soft canonical’. SLIDE 20

SOFT CANONICAL

The NSW Draft has retained much more of the multi-media, the pop cultural, visual texts and

notions of representation. It has also, notably, attempted to come to terms with digital

technologies, which the Federal document, notably, does not. All in all, technically, I think it

is a pretty good adaptation, with a much more sensible, integrated approach compared to the

‘three strand approach’, and a much more active awareness in its structural layout of

evidence-based contemporary pedagogies focused around constructivist approaches to

learning.

But running back up the barrel of the canon, this downgrading of critical literacy, is it the

right move for English teaching, or indeed, for our society? Because, after all, that is what we

are ultimately about as English teachers.

The weight of complaint against contemporary syllabi

In relation to these Emancipatory perspectives, criticism of our subject English and English

syllabi has been vigorous, caustic and sustained over the last decade.

SLIDE 21 THE WEIGHT The global assault upon ‘Emancipatory’ approaches in subject

English has been mounted from a vast array of the tenured and the published amongst them

heavy weights such as Steiner (1989; 2001) and Bloom (1991):

“This intolerance, the self-congratulation, smugness, sanctimoniousness, the retreat

from imaginative values, the flight from the aesthetic. It's not worth being truly

outraged about. Eventually these people will provide their own antidote, because they

will perish of boredom.”

SLIDE 22 THE WEIGHT OF COMPLAINT

Bloom’s tone is characteristic of similar outrage in Australian media from the left (Turner

2008; Slattery 2008a, 2008b) and right (Donnelly 2006, 2008, my Divine Ranter, Miranda

Divine), and many in between.

Tellingly, several key ‘emancipatory’ English theorists have expressed latter-day concern

about contemporary teaching of ‘literature’ around the globe, including Eagleton (2008),

recanting much of his position of 1983, Said (1991) and Derrida.

In NSW, deconstructionist teacher-practitioners such as Golsby-Smith (2007) and even key

‘postmodern’ figures in the conception of the current NSW syllabi, Mission and Morgan

(2006; Howie 2008) have also expressed concern and qualification about the critical literacy

directions of existing syllabi. SLIDE 23 DUMB AND DUMBER

There have also been multiple, sustained accusations over the last decade, of students

‘dumbing down’, paradoxically, for this most complex braining-up of curriculums.

SLIDE 24 SARAH GOLDSBY-SMITH

Neither is the goal of ‘emancipation’ being achieved through a ‘Critical theory’ approach to

English, asserts Golsby-Smith (2007):

“the practical implications of the literary theories implemented by the Stage 6 2000

Syllabus are, ironically, the reverse of what the theories intend. They intend to open up

a space for the ‘other’, but in doing so set the theory up as an untouchable ontology,

and thus shut out questions and conversations that might threaten the sovereignty of

that central ontology. The ‘other’ becomes almost inaccessible’. SLIDE 25 IS

CANONICAL THOUGHT

Furthermore, it is defensible that canonical thought is socially natural. Every culture,

everywhere, canonizes cultural heritage in literature. Global habits of reading, film going and

hysterical awards ceremonies reflect no retreat from this tendency, whether held to be

theoretically true in our syllabi or not. Such concerns, in various degrees and intensities, are

widespread, and I assert have reached tipping point, in part resulting in the current shape of

the National English Curriculum.

The necessity of retaining critical approaches

Notwithstanding apparent support for ‘canonical’ perspectives out there in English land,

however, the earlier knowledge problems of Cultural heritage/ Aesthetics models remain.

Negative critiques of sceptical approaches, such as Eagleton’s, have decisively undermined

the various literary hand-maidens of mid-20th century rationalist arrogance. The author may

not be dead, but F.R. Leavis and his exclusive social agenda most certainly is.

SLIDE 26 WHY SOME CRITICAL A likely target for these concerns is the AEC’s

removal of Critical Literacy approaches from the problematically named ‘Essentials English’

lower-academic course in the senior curriculum.

Indeed, the whole definition of work and career in the AEC is unashamedly framed by

utilitarian vocationalism, particularly in the language of supporting documents. However, it

could be argued that the senior Essentials English course emulates a social class-structured/

social reproduction subtext (Harris, 1978).

Suggested texts include Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, Hollier’s Conflict

Resolution Trainers’ Manual, and Help with your Resume and CV. Students are to “Develop

the language of negotiation and problem solving including: identifying examples of language

that promote compromise and negotiation”, and enjoined to “share vision or mission

statements that enshrine management perspectives”. Note the single bizarre concession to the

political Left, where students might read management perspectives “compared with workers’

perspectives in other genres such as minutes from union meetings.” Such approaches are not

without pragmatic merit for struggling students, but unaccompanied by a critical hermeneutic

they appear designed to pre-destine students into a ‘workplace’ future, a long cry from

whole-person education models proposed by many key figures in contemporary education

SLIDE 27 WHY SOME CRITICAL Furthermore, the new AEC’s controversial definition

of ‘standard’ grammar, which I have already characterized as pre-structuralist, derives from a

similar foundation, and raises similar problems. Critical discourse linguists such as

Fairclough (in Rogers, 2004) and Critical theorists such as Bordieu (Jaworski & Coupland,

2002: 502-510), might argue that the AEC’s very reduction of language education to a

‘standard’ notion of a ‘text’, beyond which understanding is not relevant, is in itself an

ideological act of institutional coercion.

SLIDE 28 WHY SOME CRITICAL [TEACHER’S PROTEST] Furthermore one

wonders what might happen to text selection procedure under the AEC ‘canonical’

worldview. The AEC states in its ‘textual requirements’ that “each text will be ‘worthy of

close study’; and ‘reflect community standards and expectations’. Does this require English

teachers to avoid texts that may grind against community standards? Criteria for defining

‘standards’ and ‘expectations’ is not provided, which could be seen as another normalizing

act concealing certain power assumptions. Touching on AIS religious-based schools,

including the one we are sitting in today, faith-based schooling movements as a whole could

be seen as a form of benign negotiated social dissent: seeking to establish a separate/ distinct

approach to learning and life in contrast to secular approaches. At what point is it decided

that text selection in a faith-based school no longer reflects ‘community standards and

expectations’?

Conclusion

So what is to be done? I for one, am going to go out on a limb, and say that I am rather

relieved that notions of canon are being ramped up and emancipatory approaches ramped

down. But we cannot afford to forget the lessons of the last decade: Canon must always be

problematized. It needs to be much more contestable than Bloom’s big snobby list of the

Western Canon. There is a much bigger thing rumbling around the Zeitgeist, being played out

in English curricula, as usual. This stew of postmodern dogma that nothing can be known or

defined was in full flight when I was at Sydney Uni in the late eighties. Attractive then, in a

kind of tragic existentialist way, like Milton’s Satan, or some great hope that it might free us

all from nasty institutional oppression, (such as being forced to read Domby and Son). The

existing English syllabi are complex artefacts of this great postmodern doubt.

Yet, as a civilization, now we have ambiguity fatigue. We are, as a civilization, weary of

being told that nothing is true, when many things clearly are. And hence we are inevitably

tiring of these English syllabi. What began as a necessary postmodern correction, became

exaggerated as the only necessary social truth. The resulting drift towards destructive

suspicion, self parody, and growing alienation is now seeking to auto-correct, in the

Australian English curriculum.

Running back up the barrel of the canon, which the Australian English Curriculum does, and

the NSW adaptation of it is more gracefully doing, can be seen as just another response to

this ambiguity fatigue. It is a symptom of a culture reaching towards a different approach -

not just to language- but to knowledge. It is for this reason that the canonical focus will likely

survive in the state adaptations of the national curriculum, in NSW and in the other colonies.

With Emancipatory scepticism not as the villain, but as a cantankerous narrative helper, a

somewhat more obnoxious version of Horatio, muttering alongside, that great protagonist,

English education. And I suspect, beyond our initial gripes, we English teachers will once

more reach for our neglected copies of Middlemarch, cry havoc, and sound the mighty canon

over the rooftops of the world.

Now, what texts can we use to assist us:

SLIDE 31: NEW LANGUAGE CONTENT

SLIDE 32-36 DISCUSS

OTHERS?