Adding his voice to those of campaigning journalist Luke Slattery and consultant Kevin Donnelly, well dressed cleric about town Cardinal George Pell has entered the education culture wars:
In a speech in Canberra yesterday, the Catholic archbishop said some schools were placing too much focus on texts that normalised “moral and social disorder”.
“While parents wonder why their children have never heard of the Romantic poets, Yeats or the Great War poets, and never ploughed through a Bronte, Orwell or Dickens novel, their children are engaged in analysing a variety of ‘texts’, including films, magazines, advertisements and even road signs as part of critical literacy,” Cardinal Pell declared.
Leaving aside the argument as to whether English curricula promote “moral and social disorder”, who exactly is being an elitist in these debates? Are parents really wondering why their children have never read Yeats (nothing against Yeats - fabulous poet) or is there some sort of faux-democratisation of the canon being advocated?
The golden age where students poured over the literary remains of our civilisational heritage was of course an era where very few students went on to year 11 and year 12, and most who did were private school or selective high school students with a focus on University admission.
There’s no doubt that cultural values can be inculcated through studying canonical texts. And there’s no doubt that studying texts can also encourage students to be “agents of social change” - which Pell condemns as leading to gay marriage and abortion. But there’s a common slippage going on here. The argument about literary value and the argument about cultural and political values are being conflated. More seasoned practitioners of the education war arts, like Donnelly, are usually careful to claim that they are only interested in apolitical literary value. Their opponents retort that severing literature from its political and social contexts reinforces hegemonic and conservative values. Pell has let the cat out of the bag by coming out and admitting that his agenda is more about reinforcing a narrow and traditional morality and culture.
As to the question of democratising the syllabus, and the joys of literature that students are being deprived of (despite the great push by parents for Dickens and Wordsworth), someone who’s actually taught English, Bruce Grant, has more than a few cogent things to say:
I, too, believe in the health-giving properties of great literature and I won’t resile from teaching Macbeth, but I also know that I am having success with only a minority. Some will become deeply antagonistic to Shakespeare as a result of my lessons, others might recognise Macbeth as in some way significant but blame themselves for not quite getting it, and only a minority will truly benefit.
And Grant puts his finger on, what is sadly, the real purpose of secondary education, despite the fantasies and political agendas that swirl around it:
For our best students, year 12 is a forcing house and the study of great works of literature is an exercise in the getting of an ENTER score rather than wisdom.
…
What about the rest of my class - were they tattooed too? Most weren’t. For many of them memories of year 12 English probably vary from vague recollection to contempt. For only a very few was it pleasure. We need to remind ourselves that the study of literature at year 12 does not always bring pleasure or wisdom. If it did, then we might detect them more among the general public.
Elsewhere: At Communio e Liberazione, C.L. gives his backing to Cardinal Pell. Mick has more commentary at Quantumbiodiscs.
This is a bot o/t, but sometimes I wonder — have people read the Brontes or Yeats or do they just pluck these names from the Canon at random?
The idea that ‘great literature’ is somehow morally pure always smells of bunk to me.
Take Yeats for example. Want some rape — how about ‘Leda and the Swan’? Want some anti-government violence? ‘Easter 1916′.
Okay, how about ‘Wuthering Heights’? Don’t tell me that Heathcliff’s not a sick puppy.
Shakespeare is pretty gory and amoral and violent too (horrible torture, murder, violence, underage sex etc etc) and then there are those sonnets!
My next point — most parents I know have never read Yeats so why would they care if their children had?
Point three. Inculcating a love of literature, nice as it is, doesn’t seem to me to be the job of high schools, as the English teacher points out.
We don’t exactly live in a culture which fosters or celebrates intellectualism, and students are repeatedly told that they need to study subjects that will help them get good jobs and become good little worker-bees. Then to turn around and insist that they should also love Shakespeare for the sake of it seems to me to be rank hypocrisy.
I thought Big George was saying two things:
1)Children should be reading literary classics not writing about something they watched on TV
2)These classics represent a time when this post-modern claptrap wasn’t around and so makes it easy to make moral decisions.
If he was saying these things then I wholeheartedly agree with him.
Well, Homer:
1. Why do you have a problem with teaching children to critically engage with the mass media they will consume the most amount of in their lifetimes? Just saying TV is bad won’t cut it. Most children watch a lot of TV. Helping them mediate what they see through a lens of some sort of critical thinking is important, IHMO.
2. See my post above. I don’t think the ‘moral’ values of these texts are anywhere near as cut ‘n’ dried as you make out.
Some examples of what Tomatoman is talking about would be nice. For instance I’d like to know more about these road signs that are promoting “moral disorder”.
Perhaps he’s thinking of that “turn left” sign at St Kilda Junction? I suppose too some of those “Dangerous Curves” and “Slippery When Wet” signs could also be seen as pretty salacious in the eyes of a celibate man in a dress.
Inquiring (and prurient) minds want to know.
If there was anything that made me as a sixteen-year old want to leave class and drink cask wine at 11am it was the thought of communally learning the questionable lessons of ‘Wuthering Heights’. It still makes me start when I see it on a shelf.
I resent, though, the idea that Orwell has to be ploughed through—he’s fantastic reading, though irredeemably sexist—Big George is almost as fun as, well, cask wine at 11am when you’re sixteen.
Good points Kate - especially about Yeats and political violence. The British Home Secretary has proposed to criminalise the ‘glorification’ of terrorism: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,15935,1571350,00.html. If the federal government could copy Britain and get the kind of anti-terror measures it wants, reading Yeats would probably become illegal. So much for Pell’s lament.
“1. Why do you have a problem with teaching children to crticially engage with the mass media they will consume the most amount of in their lifetimes? Just saying TV is bad won‚Äôt cut it. Most children watch a lot of TV. Helping them mediate what they see through a lens of some sort of critical thinking is important, IHMO.”
Fair enough. To be boring I think the sensible option lies in the middle ground. Yet while “Helping them mediate what they see through a lens of some sort of critical thinking is important, IHMO.” sounds great. It’s what different people actually mean by it that the rub occurs. Some of us think when we hear that statement that we are receiving a coded message that says “give us your kids and we will do our very best to make values neutral wet little lefties out of them”. Some of us are repeatedly re-assured otherwise and yet we don’t believe. We read what that cow from the Teachers Federation said at that conference and that what that dickhead English teacher said after the election and we don’t like it. Not a little bit.
Oh god no, you mean two teachers said lefty things? Will the rot never stop?
Despite what many parents think, parents actually have more of an influence on children’s attitudes than teachers. Sure they might pick up some ideas from their teachers, especially when they are in the rebelling against their parents stage, but parents still have a lot more influence. If the scourge of lefty teachers is as bad as the right seem to think it is, why aren’t Labour in power and why isn’t all of Australia lefty?
James, I was with you until you laid the boot in with your insults… and I also have no idea who the cow or the dickhead are.
Just because the scourge of lefty teachers has not yet succeeded in attaining its goals, that’s no excuse to allow it to continue unopposed.
Wayne Sawyer was the dickhead, I think. Hope that helps.
As a matter of sociological fact, one of the most reliable predictors of whether young people will become active in new social movements such as feminism and environmentalism is the number of books in their family home.
In my Doctoral thesis, and an article I had published in the December 2003 edition of Environmental Politics, I wrote that “Skogen [1996] points to another dimension of the ‘advantage‚Äô thesis, finding that the propensity of Norwegian school students to support and join environmentalist positions and groups is strongly correlated with the ‘cultural assets‚Äô of their class background, measured approximately by the number of books in the parental home. . .”.
Skogen’s findings are in Skogen, Ketil (1996), ‘Young Environmentalists: Post-modern Identities or Middle-class Culture?‚Äô, The Sociological Review, Vol.44, No.3, pp.452—73. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a link for this journal before 1997.
Speaking from personal experience, I can say that:
(a) my left-wing politicisation was crucially affected by the books I read as a kid, beginning with. . . wait for it. . . The Bible, and the Seventh Day Adventist illustrated popularisations of the Bible which I pored over in my spare time as a child, and supplemented later on by authors including Orwell and Dickens;
(b) my unionised leftie schoolteachers in the 1970s made me read lots of books;
(c) one of the difficulties I face as an educator in getting my students to develop a sound descriptive and theoretical understanding (which is the necessary condition for deveoping a critical understanding) of political and environmental policy processes is the fact that reading books and other serious texts is a foreign experience for many of them;
(d) the young Germans who vote for the left-wing parties in great numbers and take part in environmental and peace mobilisations are required to read Dostoevsky at school - so I am told by a German backpacker I met in Canberra in 2003;
(e) I would be only too happy to see school students required to read Orwell, especially Homage To Catalonia and The Road To Wigan Pier so that they will know where he was really coming from in Animal Farm and 1984, and also so that they can read his description of George Pell’s coreligionists in Spain as “a racket”.
Yes, endlessly discussed at Troppo, Kate.
The jumping off point for the current controversy is the revisions to the Victorian English syllabus.
I’d be happy to see social and cultural values discussed as part of English - in a balanced way, and also, as Kate says, with a contextual appreciation of the texts - ie Shakespeare or Yeats - and not for its own sake or the values that have since been overlaid onto the mythos of the Canon.
There’s no problem discussing those either, in general terms, as part of English, SOSE or History, provided that the Western tradition is not presented as unitary and students are encouraged to think critically about it. After all, it’s hardly monolithic or we wouldn’t be having ideological debates.
What riles me is this faux nostalgia for times where allegedly students imbibed wisdom at the foot of canonical authors. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with adapting a curriculum to the interests and capacities of students - in fact, educationally, you would think that was the first thing you’d look at doing.
And whilst I think of it, Keith Windschuttle is on record as blaming his reading of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath an a teenager for his youthful embrace of Marxism.
What’s “new” about environmentalism and feminism? Those are old social movements.
“If the scourge of lefty teachers is as bad as the right seem to think it is, why aren‚Äôt Labour in power and why isn‚Äôt all of Australia lefty?”
That’s a different topic. I think that Labor came too close to getting into power and Australia IS too lefty especially in the industry we are discussing.
With or without my insults which were a probably lazy attempt an indicating to you the strength of feeling many have when they read that stuff, my point is that it is very easy to disguise the de facto meaning of the rhetoric with the innocuousness of its literal meaning.
Mindy, clearly you don’t think two teachers saying lefty things is a sign of rot. Yet you and I both know that it is much much more than two; you are comfortable with it as is your right but I am not at all.
Facts would be nice - I don’t have them, but as I librarian I see a lot of kids who want study notes on the ‘classics’ so I presume they are still widely taught.
The best unit I ever had at uni was an English course called “Fate, freedom guilt and responsibility” which started with the Book of Job and finished with Catch 22, and included trifles like Don Quixote, King Lear …. the point being that important moral questions can be dicussed in relation to many different ‘texts’(didn’t use that word in 1970).
Also not sure that the sainted Shakespeare is right for school kids - it’s very difficult. I had lots of Shakespeare at school, it didn’t mean very much compared to My Brother Jack, or All the Green Year …..
Hey, be careful, Mark, or you’re going to re-ignite the famous education wars at Troppo with a statement like that.
Why is Wayne Sawyer’s tripe fit for academic publication when David Fraser’s tripe is not?
Both are using academic publications as a springboard for personal political crusades of no academic value.
Strange you say that, Russell. I honestly cannot recall that my Eng Lit class in the 70’s had any problems at all with Shakespeare being ‘difficult’. Being kids, we loved the dirty bits.
EP, Sawyer’s piece was not an academic paper but an op/ed style talk and not refereed.
Rob, what sort of school did you got to? I enjoyed Shakespeare at High School but the method of teaching it by having us read it aloud was endlessly painful with students who had average literacy absolutely struggling with the language. It was wildly unpopular with the kids I went to school with - State High School - most were heading for careers as secretaries, tradespeople, public servants. About 15% of our senior class went on to Uni or a CAE.
I was educated at Croydon High School in the (then) remote outer suburbs of Melbourne. We did have, though, an absolutely inspirational Eng Lit teacher, who recited, with huge gusto, the answer to a question directed to one of the ladies in Antony and Cleopatra - ‘where would you like the extra inches?’ (or similar): ‘Not in my husband’s nose!‘.
Mark - sounds like a great way to turn people off reading for life.
One of our teachers played us records of Shakespeare plays spoken by expert actors. That went down very well as I recall.
I think the point made by both Mark and Rob, that it takes really good teachers to enthuse students,is missed by people advocating a return to Keats etc in he classroom. I think studying Shakespeare at school was great, but then I really liked my teacher(s) and enjoyed English. Kids I went to school with still avoid reading and Shakespeare like the plague because they didn’t enjoy it at school. Ironically the push to teach the “classics” in schools could actually end up producing the exact opposite reaction from students than proponents are asking for.
James - apologies I was being glib. I seriously don’t think it’s a big problem, but I accept that you do. IMHO the best thing to do to combat it is spend lots of time talking with your kids about all sorts of things. That way they get your pov as well as that of their teachers. Then you just have to let the little buggers make up their own minds.
Kate,
you and the rest of the watermelons have missed the point.
The classic cannos of literature didn’t teach morals however it was easy to discern good from bad.
There was absolutes, noe of this relativist rubbish.
ccompare Star Trek with the next generation!!
Watermelons?
Mindy, a lot of people I’ve spoken to about this make the same point - it’s not Shakespeare as such that is the problem, but the teachers. And yes, i suppose the thees and thous can be tough.
But surely the words stand alone, and resonate with anyone with some kind of sensitivity? (Apologies if the following misquotes:)
“Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to th’ rooky wood.
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse
Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.”
That’s not difficult!!
Recently I was designing a course for would be writers and used a piece from Hamlet to illustrate the sheer power of language.
“‘Tis now the very witching time of night
When graveyards yawn and hell itself
Breathes out contagion to this world.
Now could I drink hot blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on”.
I mean, if your blood doesn’t chill to those words, you’re a lizard.
Probably OT, sorry.
No Homer, you miss the point. Read Hamlet again, okay, and tell me about the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ and the moral simplicity, and then we’ll chat.
Maybe it’s some obscure Shakespearian reference, Kate?
Homer,
Can you respond to the point that Mindy and I were making - that many, many children are not going to respond to the classics. Force 16 year old boys to read Middlemarch (if you can) and most of them will never want to read anything they think might be like it.
It’s funny isn’t it, that some of the people criticising the study of a/v sources are advocating the study of a bloke who wrote plays. His contemporaries were much more likely to have seen than read his work, and in an environment far less sedate than the classroom.
I had an English teacher who managed to enthuse people about the subject and who put a great deal of effort in contextualising the work of Shakespeare and bringing out the humour and politics that is apparent once your in the know. We got plenty of Dickens too. I was lucky enough to have him for both Year 11 and 12 and I have no doubt that he was one of the biggest reasons that I got my best mark in English. He must have been doing something right because the class quite high marks, particularly when you consider that the two top students loved their metal and parents in the area would often send their kids to other public schools which were considered ‘better’.
to clarify … not saying the classics should disappear - just that presenting a range of literature will more likely give kids a positive experience of ‘literature’ - and yes, the teaching is probably more important than the texts.
Rob, it’s not just the thees and thous - the sorts of notes that Russell is talking about (and that I used to read Shakespeare in school) proliferate explanatory footnotes on the meaning of the text and the words as much as differences in grammar.
And if anything, because Shakespeare wrote plays, they’re relatively accessible to 16 year olds compared to something like Middlemarch - as Russell says. That’s going to need a lot of “translation” before it grips high school students.
I don’t think you should cast aspersions on 16 year olds as “lizards” because they don’t respond to Shakespeare as you do. Even with most of us who actually like reading the classics (and it’s very much a minority taste among adults - as Grant argues in his article), it takes years and much life experience and learning before we really appreciate them to the degree that they should be appreciated.
Mark makes a fair point that a big part of why people respond to culture is the process of identifying (not neccesarily identifying with) characters and plots on an emotional as well as rational level. This is not always easily done when you are sitting in a hot class-room several hundred years after the text was written.
Oh, come on, dj!
What is it that stops a modern teenager identifying with Greek or Norse creation stories thousands of years old? There’s this magic thing called imagination that can make any kind of reality as real today as it was back then, whenever that was. These stories are as emotionally real today as they were back then. Try reading Homer or Ovid again.
And as sexy and subversive, I should add.
Ok Rob, settle down. Some people don’t like that sort of thing. Some people do. Some teenagers will respond. Some won’t. It’s not up to YOU to decide who responds to what. Unless you’re the culture police.
What stops you identifying with Gangsta Rap? For me personally, one one hand it’s hard to accept lazy, tortured rhyming about ‘nines’ and ‘hard time’ coming out of the mouths of white or black boys mouths who either grew up middle-class, or are now on easy street. Give me Public Enemy any day, even if Farrakhan isn’t a prophet I think I should listen to.
I thought everyone knew Rob was the culture police.
Kate, if by ‘that sort of thing’ you mean the vast panoply of western art and spirituality, which ’some people don’t like’, then……well, I really don’t know what to say.
Gangsta rap rules, I guess.
Oh Rob, you know that’s not what I meant at all.
Some teenagers want to sit around reading Norse mythology. Some teenagers want to sit around reading comic books.
By your reckoning, the ones who want to sit around reading comic books are ‘lizards’, right?
The point is, you can’t force people to like the art and music and books you find moving, interesting and important. You can show them, hopefully, what is great about it, and explain why you love it so much, but you can’t shove ‘culture’ down people’s throats and expect them to love it. Regardless of whether they’re teenagers or not.
Yes, adolescents need to be exposed to a wide range of different novels and poems and plays — and comics and TV shows and other media — but in the end you can’t be their arbiter of taste.
No, Kate, I said anyone, child or adult, who doesn’t respond to the Shakespeare quotes cited (when appropriately spoken by a skilled actor) with a chill up their spines is a lizard.
I agree Kate.
As the link about the Victorian syllabus I posted in a comment above shows, students in the various states are.
So what’s all the fuss about? Students get canonical texts and contemporary material - some of which is film, whatever.
I’d suggest with people like Pell and Nelson, it goes to politics rather than literary value.
Kate said:
“Some teenagers want to sit around reading Norse mythology. Some teenagers want to sit around reading comic books.”
Often they are the same thing in different clothing.
Rob, on a personal level I can partly agree with what you said about imagination. However, I’m also highly aware that I don’t always respond well to stories about earnest upper-middle/upper class people in Victorian England and that I would often prefer to read speculative fiction or sf.
is someone kidding me
Hamlet has no moral lessons.
err try the King. queen, Hamlet, polonius etal
I’d make the point I’ve made tiresomely often before - that kids don’t need an education system to explain popular culture to them since it’s their culture anyway. They know more about it than their teachers. The (or a) point of education surely is to open their eyes to the things that are not part and parcel of their own lives, to open doors that may have been shut to them. This could be Sumerian civilisation, Nordic creation legends or Bach cantatas. Anything to open their eyes, minds and ears to things that were not part of their actual-experiential envelopes.
Maybe this is culture police stuff, Kate, but if this is not what education is about, then what is it about?
Yes Homer, Hamlet has moral lessons — but they aren’t cut and dried. Good and bad. Black and white. That’s what makes it so good.
Polonius’s ‘to thine own self be true’ speech is the classic example. Considering that Polonius is presented as a fool and a suck-up, what moral weight does his speech has?
Indeed Rob you can do that but you can’t make them like it! I’ve got no qualms with teaching people these things — and a bit of pop culture/contemporary culture as well.
It’s all about balance.
Look, this makes me think about the whole Harry Potter thing. You would no doubt argue Harry Potter isn’t as good as Shakespeare. I would agree. But is a 12 year old more likely to enjoy Shakespeare or Harry Potter?
So, why not utilise popular culture as a back door into more complex literature and ideas and themes? I’m not suggesting we chuck out the canon — far from it. But that there is value in looking at things beyond the canon as well.
And the fact is some children and teenagers and adults aren’t going to be enthralled by Shakespeare or John Donne or Yeats or whatever. That doesn’t make them bad people or unable to be moved by certain things — it just means they’re not that into it. Give them the chance, show them why these things are great — but don’t berate them for ‘not getting it’.
Anyway, the point I was making was that there should be room in a school curriculum for Shakespeare and media literacy (which despite your protestations I feel is a very important subject in today’s media saturated world).
And let’s not forget that Shakespeare was popular culture in his day too.
“And let‚Äôs not forget that Shakespeare was popular culture in his day too.”
Yes. And let’s celebrate the fabulous, undescribable, unrepeatable genius of that extraordinary and magical man as though it were part of our own popular culture too - which it is. Harold Bloom has even argued that Shakespeare actually created us as we are today (more or less).
I’m not actually sure what your point is Rob.
Schools still teach Shakespeare. Unis are full of people studying him. It’s amazing how many people still write their thesis on Shakespearian plays. Movies are made of Shakespeare’s plays. His plays are still performed all around the world. Hundreds of thousands of people visit Stratford on Avon each year.
So what’s your problem?
Seems I have no problem, Kate. So long as Sheakespeare is ensconced at the top of the Angl-Celtic pantheon, understood and taught as such, and strikes just a few sparks in the ears of those ‘policed’ into exposure to him, I’m happy.
Pell reckons kids should read the ROMANTIC POETS? OMG, that Percy Shelly and that rotter Byron hung out in a commune practicing free love and boasting about it like a bunch of nineteenth century HIPPIES! Hang your head in shame George Pell!!
Great poetry, Helen, is the point, not lifestyles. Not too may hippies produced any of that.
To be or not to be, that is the question
whether it is nobler in the mind
to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?
that’s all I can remember of that one, but clearly a man troubled by his conscience. Come to think of it, it could be comparable to Brogden and Latham. Oh look, Hamlet is suddenly contemporary.
Actually it’s largely commercial culture, Rob, and therefore warrants examination/critique/deconstruction. So I agree again with Kate. Media literacy is an important thing to study.
What’s also ignored in most of these discussions is the obvious vocational relevance of being able to engage with and critique new media. Again, what’s often being expressed here is a swansong for “pure” education regardless of vocational relevance.
But senior education is for the masses now not for a cultural and social elite.
I suspect that a lot of this lionising of the Canon and denigration of pop culture is really a conflict between the aesthetic and the commercial, and reflects status distinctions of a rather traditional bourgeois kind - as I’ve previously argued.
Pell’s point is clearly about lifestyles.
Meanwhile, C.L. supports Cardinal Pell on this.
So do I.
On what grounds, Rob? Just the literary aspect or do you too believe that teaching non-Canonical texts at school leads to moral disorder?
I am currently teaching a 2/3 year undergrad course on Shakespeare’s comedies, and a 1st year subject which includes a number of canonical texts including James, Austen, Shakespeare (and Philip K Dick, and Irvine Welsh.)
Some observations:
Shakespeare is difficult. This is what makes him worth studying. Any approach to Shakespeare that makes him seem easy is a waste of time, basically. It is not the unfamiliar vocabulary, but the economy and density of the language, the psychological depth and range, and above all the structural complexity of the plays, that is hard to grasp and comprehend let alone think about critically. Add to that the fact that much of what the plays are actually doing is invisible without a fairly detailed knowledge of renaissance society and culture, and, well, I think there’s very little point in inflicting Shakepeare on secondary school students. My impression is that they are taught to read the plays as only about characters, which is limiting and misleading and needs ot be unlearned if they want to study him seriously later, either formally or independently. The students who are ready will find him on their own, and the others will get more out of reading things that come with less baggage and are less culturally foreign.
I wonder how Archbishop Pell would wish teachers to represent such plays as As You Like It, or Twelfth Night, where girls (played by boy actors in drag) disguise themselves as beautiful boys and use their heavenly androgyny to woo men….
I meant to say too that the experience we’ve most of us had of a charismatic teacher, who made some forbidding writer or other palatable, is a pleasant memory to have, but really doesn’t have much to do with actual learning. Preserve us from Dead Poets Society syndrome!
Sorry to whinge but I hate coming into these discussions 50 or 60 comments in. Stupid time zones… why aren’t there any euro-blogs talking about Pell’s latest rant…
Anyway, to the point. This might have been already discussed, but I thought the hidden subtext in the article (as opposed to what Pell said, I haven’t read the whole speech) was that traditional, or “pure”, education reinforces mainstream societal norms. Pell seems to argue that it is necessary to critique society, but that a traditional grounding in the classics is sufficient for this. Extending on this line, he seeks to argue that the degree of critical questioning proposed by relativist teaching styles seemingly undermines societal norms.
The thing is, as a typical conservative, Pell believes that his own moral code is at the center of mainstream society. Not unlike the Opus Dei types who like to say that their beliefs are mainstream beliefs, Pell believes that any questioning of the dominant culture necessarily undermines his own moral code. As a cardinal, you could understand that he takes his moral code somewhat seriously. What Pell seems to be afraid of is that relativist teaching will bring about a new morality, and that this new morality will be fundamentaly opposed to his. It’s true that relativist teaching in some sense seeks to “renormalize” society’s values. However I don’t necessarily believe that the central dogma of the church will essentially be undermined by this (but rather, “edge” issues like opposition to homosexuality might be undermined - and rightly so, papal opposition to homosexuality isn’t exaclty a fundamental tenet of Christianity as an interpretive take on some stories in the bible).
Well put, both Laura and mick.
Oh, and to semi-quote me on my blog, Pell seems to be terrified that in the last 50 years we have all turned into baby killing homosexual zombies, well, at least he said something like that. He seems to forget about the massive advances anglo-american society has made in civil rights over the same period of time, either that or he doesn’t care about them. Is he really that worried about where society is heading, would he seriously like to go back in time 50 years?
Mick, on whether or not Pell is particularly excited about civil rights and/or democracy, you might find this old post by Ken Parish interesting.
Pell’s into democratic personalism!
DEMOCRATIC PERSONALISM!!!! Thanks Mark, my blood pressure needed that! He can’t get it through his head that not everyone believes in God! He really can’t. He seems to be paranoid about … Oh wait, I just read Ken Parish’s rant, he beat me to it…
I think I remember that piece from last year. It had me storming around UQ in a rage for a day or 2.
I don’t know about his view’s on civil rights either. I have heard him speak out agains Oz’s treatment of refugees a few times. He isn’t exactly a feminist but I don’t htink he is entirely opposed to gender equity in the workplace (as long as it doesn’t impinge on family values…).
I think one of the intersting things about Pell and several other prominent conservative church-types is their blindness to the good in modern society. He seems to be so worried about pornography, IVF, euthanasia, etc that he claims that these are “the things by which secular democracy defines itself and stakes its ground against other possibilities.”. He is way off the mark. What he’s talking about is the periphery not the center. They are moral battles in which the church has found themselves on the backfoot. This does not make them central to secular democracy in any way.
A sort of tangent to the main argument.
Curtis White‚Äôs The Middle Mind (on the lack of imagination in modern culture) examines the arguments the cultural right uses in what he terms The Great Canon Debate. The debate here though is about what is “greatness?” The cultural right fear that the postmodernists and the deconstructionists have devalued the great books. Of course great is a subjective term and the cultural right tend to use question begging to define great (great is great because it is the best of what has been thought and said).
This paragraph is the interesting one. It is easy to bag the evil academic leftists and forget about other forces that undermine attitudes to culture:
“The huge irony here is that what cultural conservatives like George Will fear most, that the values of a shared cultural tradition are being lost, has come true. But traditional culture has not been lost to the efforts of academic leftists. It has been lost to Will’s own beloved free market economy moving ever further into its international mode. It is capitalism that looks without pity on Will’s cultural sentimental¬¨ity. What does Shakespeare matter to George Bush II? Hey, George Will, Bush doesn’t even like your precious Cubs! Wrigley Field? Fuck it! Sell it to the Japanese and build something in its place with lots of luxury boxes where corporate execs can munch sushi and watch Sosa launch homers. If nobody but Stupid White Men (in Michael Moore’s endearing phrase) can afford to go to the game, who cares?
On the other side, the joy of Cultural Studies in its conquest of the humanities in academic America must come tempered by the understanding that it is not its leftism that allows it to win, but its unacknowledged complicity with the globalized corporate culture of the future.”
Hear, hear, that last paragraph.
Whenever this issue crops up, which it does with tiresome regularity, I really question the seriousness of the folks raising it. Of all the issues facing us in education, this is the most important one? Despite reading a million opinions like Pell’s and Donnelley’s etc I fail to see where the classics have somehow faded from our culture, or from our schools. I’m with Kate, I see our culture pretty saturated by the Canon, a good thing too imo. As far I can see and experiuenced at school (1982-1994), the syllabus has the balance pretty right. Interested students with aptitude will also seek it out and it always has been and also will always be taught in schools. Parents and family/cultural influences are the most important factor in whether kids are going to be influenced to seek out and perservere with literature. Which is why Latho’s free books idea was a little wacky but I thought he was on the right path with the focus.
I’m way more concerned about other things. I didn’t do a single minute of foreign languages in 12 years at school, despite it being officially compulsory to get your school cert, because my “disadvantaged schools” couldn’t get the teachers so we got an exemption. Don’t need to parlez vous francais to work at BHP (or get sacked from BHP, more to the point)or Franklins, I guess, was the thinking. Learning other languages, even at the basic level you pick up at high school, is a major asset in opening your mind to all sorts of possibilities and complexities. I’d like to see a little less obsessing about Yeats and a bit more little advocacy on the inadequate LOTE at many of our schools. And maths, and science. And, and, and ….
Of course that would involve addressing the issue of higher wages/incentives for teachers which probably makes it un-PC for most of the right wing panic merchants.
(And such unfocused rants are exactly why, Liam, I don’t blog about politics!)
Yeah Amanda. But making teaching a more rewarding and sought-after career, reducing class sizes and introducing innovative subjects requires a will that seems to be missing.
Much easier to rail against po-mo teaching styles and the lefty infiltration of schools.
Rob, I agree the words send a chill up my spine. But then I understand them. I have taught classes of kids who a) wouldn’t be listening, and b) wouldn’t understand it even if they were listening. Shakespeare isn’t something that you can just throw at most students. The focus on current culture helps get them into the ways of thinking about themes etc then you start to sprinkle in the Shakespeare and show them that all the themes in Shakespeare are still relevant. That’s when you get them hooked and you can start getting into Shakespeare for fun.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that schools and students have changed somewhat over the years and many students are a lot more up front about demanding to know what relevance something has (in my brief experience anyway). So you can either take that as a challenge to your authority, or as a challenge to your creativity. The way different teachers handle it very much determines whether kids come out running a mile from Shakespeare, or reading more of it.
Another thing that many seem to be unaware of is the great inertia in schools regarding buying new books etc. If they already have resources that can be used then they are going to use the old ones rather than buy new ones. Some of the books I read in the late 80’s early 90’s at school were purchased in the 60’s but were still on the syllabus so we used them.
Following on from Mindy’s point: if teachers have a range of works to choose from those who love Shakespeare et al will choose them and teach them well. I think I must have had the teachers who didn’t like him ……
And Rob, not fair, you just quoted the good bits. We all love Nessun Dorma or the Torreador Song, but very, very few of us will go to, or listen to whole operas.
And I’d like to blame Pell and his ilk for any decline in values - if they hadn’t bored people out of the churches, and hadn’t been so hypocritical, more people might have stayed in the church to hear it’s teachings !
Catharine Lumby has more.
Good link Kate.
Rob - I have been thinking about a Yr 8 class I used to teach and why they wouldn’t have responded to Shakespeare with shivers, but rather blank incomprehension.
1. many of them were more concerned about when footy training started
2. some of them would have been wondering what they were going to scrounge up for dinner that night, still being hungry from having no breakfast and probably no lunch
3. others would have been wondering if Dad and/or Mum were going to get drunk that night and hit them
4. some would have been dreading Maths/English/ whatever with that teacher they hated
It’s hard to reach kids who are hungry, tired and generally too worldly wise for 14yr olds. Occassionally you would see a spark in their eyes as you connected with something they understood. I’m sure that there are some fantastic teachers out there who could relate Shakespeare back to footy and get these kids in. But would that satisfy George Pell?
I daresay you’re right, Mindy. In ‘A Clergyman’s Daughter’ George Orwell wrote about how kids took naturally to Shakespeare. Since it’s hard to believe Orwell could have been wrong about anything, I guess the times really have changed since the 30s, and kids with them.
Russell, I both listen to whole operas and go to performances whenever I can. Sad to think it’s such a minority thing but you’re no doubt right about that also. Looks like it’s my day for being depressed about myself and the sad state of the world.
But which kids took to Shakespeare, Rob — even the poor ones who weren’t educated anyway? The children sent down to the coal mines? The children who worked in factories from age five?
It’s a myth to think that previous generations were brimming with educated poetry (or opera) lovers. Yes, the wealthier people were well-educated in the canon and latin and had beautiful handwriting. Opera was once a more popular art form too. But again, with the wealthy few.
On the other side were those who couldn’t read at all and who made their own music etc etc. In my family, for instance, my father left school when he was 15 to work full time. His father left school when he was 10. Not much time for Shakespeare when you’re working as a drover from age 10 or as an apprentice at age 15.
Whenever people go on about the shocking state of education in Australia I think about how it wasn’t so long ago — within my grandparent’s lifespan — when education was a boon for a lucky, wealthy minority.
Yes, education can be improved in this country but let’s not fall into the trap of believing that our near-universal literacy and high education rates aren’t as good as the fine old days when only middle and upper class boys had all the educational opportunities.
Amanda is right, this is not remotely the most important problem facing our education system. There is also a heavy element of farce about it. Even the sort of limited canon George Pell would like is ten times larger than what a committed student could cover in high school, and that is ten times larger in turn what other students can be cajoled into in year 11 and 12. If an appreciation of the classics is dependent on the last year of high school then it will cease to exist in short order.
The biggest problem I see is the culture of some schools. What you learn is far too dependent on the quality of the teaching and the type of class you had. In my year 12 class we never discussed the books because barely anyone had read it and the only skill I learnt was how to balance a chair on two legs. Unfortunately this wasn’t on the exam.
Personally I’d like to see a more tex