(Re)Writing English: English teaching in the public sphere.

Kevin Donnelly has once again evoked the Western tradition in his criticisms of contemporary schooling, dismissing as left-wing radicalism attempts across the western world to ameliorate social disadvantage through education.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20611053-7583,00.html

Upon reading Dr Donnelly’s latest piece, I was left wondering what Plato and Aristotle – to name just two venerable ancients- would make of Donnelly’s ideas on what is "reasonable" in education.

Plato equated learning with moral improvement. He argued that justice requires that the strong look after the weak. As such, society has a moral compulsion to ensure the good of the many.

Aristotle described the good life in the following terms: "the happy person is one who expresses complete virtue in his activities, with an adequate supply of external goods, not just for any time but for a complete life." This definition draws attention to Aristotle’s belief that virtue demands the good of the many outweigh the good of the few. To offer a leg up to one individual is to virtously assist him or her on the path to the good life. To refuse this same helping hand to another is to make it more difficult for them to achieve this same goal - an action lacking in virtue.

Indeed, the great enemy of moral conduct according to Aristotle is the failure to behave virtously when one's deliberations have resulted in clear knowledge of what is right. Given that Aristotle believed that a central function of education is to make people virtuous, it seems hard to imagine that he would oppose the idea of addressing issues of social inequality and disadvantage in schools both systemically and through the curriculum.

We now understand that the Australian education system actively discriminates against the most disadvantaged students. Summing up the implications of OECD testing for this nation, Barry McGaw (an Australian and Director of Education for the OECD) http://www.aspa.asn.au/Confs/vassp2004/mcgaw.htm has suggested that Australia can be described in international terms as having a ‘high quality, low equity’ education system. In other words, Australia has an education system in which the most advantaged students are even further advantaged, and the most disadvantaged are even further disadvantaged. McGaw has contrasted the way Australia has ‘ignored equity’, with the better outcomes being achieved by disadvantaged students in countries such as Finland, Canada and Ireland.

There is a very clear rejoinder in McGaw’s words, and it is one that accords with the wisdom of the ancients. Virtue demands that we recognise and act upon the moral imperative to do something about the inequalities which exist in and are reproduced through schooling in Australia.

Which brings me back to Kevin Donnelly’s piece. Dr Donnelly appears to believe that it is a national moral imperative to sort students into winners and losers through ensuring ‘failure’ for some. (Barry McGaw has identified who these students typically are: those who start their schooling already suffering from significant disadvantage.)

Without irony or apology, Donnelly decries the focus in schools on ‘victim groups, such as women, migrants and Aborigines.’ The fact that victim is not qualified in his piece (“victim”) is telling. The word is not tentatively offered to the reader; it is not a word to be questioned, challenged or resisted. It is now a fact, if not an inevitability; a label putting these people in their right and proper place, in keeping with his desire to sort out the successful from the failures.

The fact that Donnelly is suggesting that attention (and one presumes resources and assistance) should be turned away from such groups, indicates an apparent belief that it is “right” to in fact ignore the causes of social inequality and disadvantage. Rather than focussing on pressing social questions related to the fulfillment of human potential, we should instead turn our gaze to ‘events’, ‘significant figures’ and ‘milestones’. Reading this list of supposed curriculum essentials, I was reminded of the way in which Graham Parr and Natalie Bellis evoke the spirit of Dickens’s dour schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind in their recent English in Australia piece on neo-liberal ideology and literacy teaching in Australia. http://www.aate.org.au/journals/englishinaus/latest.html
Tellingly, by the end of Hard Times Gradgrind abandons his inflexible demands for facts in favour of "Faith, Hope, and Charity". I am not sure Kevin Donnelly is going to have a similar road to Damascus experience any time soon.

In characterising as left-wing radicalism attempts to address issues of social inequality through education, Donnelly inexplicably makes a case for the morality of entrenching social disadvantage.

Surely a defining virtue of this nation has been an enduring heart-felt belief in a ‘fair go’ for all. That belief is now evidently under attack. It adds insult to injury when those doing the attacking then seek to suggest that they do so in the name of the western ‘tradition’. Plato, Aristotle, and Dickens would not recognise the virtue in Donnelly’s clinical social Darwinism.

And neither would, many might argue, Jesus. This is a point Kevin Rudd, Federal Member for Griffith, has made recently in speaking and writing about the wholly admirable German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Rudd emphasises the way Bonhoeffer reminds Christians that faith means nothing if it does not lead to social action. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2006/1755084.htm

In his Monthly piece, Rudd evokes Ben Chifley’s famous ‘light on the hill’ as an enlarging vision of the way that values of decency, fairness and compassion are “still etched deep in our national soul”.
http://www.chifley.org.au/jbc/lightonhill.php
Some, it would seem, would like to switch off that light.

The following articles outline the deleterious consequences in the UK and US of governments centralising school curriculum initiatives and mandating a narrow range of teaching strategies. Both are timely given the debate surrounding a national curriculum and school effectiveness in Australia. This sort of international contextualisation of the debate has not taken place in Australia to date.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901333.html (use Billions for an Inside Game on Reading & Michael Grunwald in The Washington Post's Search engine)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20557863-13881,00.html

The first article from the US concerns the teaching of reading, and the possible corruption and mismanagement which has stemmed from the introduction of a program called ‘Reading First’, introduced as a result of the federal government’s No Child Left Behind legislation. A narrow phonics based approach has been mandated by law. This program has in effect centralised control of how reading is taught in US schools, and indeed how reading itself is defined. Teacher professional learning in the area of reading must now conform to the dictates of the federal government. In short, the professionalism of teachers, that is to say the ability of teachers in different school contexts to devise learning programs with the needs and interests of their students in mind, has been severely restricted.

The report highlights how the supposedly ‘scientifically based reading research’ has been hijacked by commercial publishers, with instances of the approval and funding of state reading programs having been contingent upon the use of a particular commercial product in schools.

Many elements of this program, and the supposed science upon which it is based, were endorsed as world’s best practice in ‘Teaching Reading’, the 2005 report of the inquiry into the teaching of literacy conducted on behalf of the Australian federal government.

In relation to the UK, a number of David Starkey’s comments were very telling and in effect amount to an endorsement of arguments recently put forward in this country by the likes of ex-principal Judith Wheeldon http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20537069-13881,00.htmland Jeff Kennett http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20548169-13881,00.html in support of curriculum diversity in Australia. These prominent citizens are hardly the radical Maoists federal education Minister Julie Bishop claims seek to propagate their left-wing thinking through state curriculums. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20533224-13881,00.html

Starkey’s claim that highly prescriptive curriculums, combined with a fear in schools of failing in league tables, have produced "nothing but elaborately polished mediocrity" among students, who are coached to pass exams but not to understand their subjects, sounds a clear warning against simplistic claims that a national curriculum and ranking schools against each other will ensure better learning.

A national curriculum and renewed focus on the basics seem to make a good deal of sense. We all want the best for our children. However, when the facts of student performance in this country and international trends in education are considered, Julie Bishop’s grab for control is not as ‘sensible’ as she claims it to be.

The federal government’s recent inquiry into the teaching of literacy concluded that Australian students “compare well” with students in other OECD countries, with only a “minority” not acquiring acceptable levels of literacy. In the areas of literacy and critical thinking, Australian students outperform students from England and the US, two countries that have centralised the curriculum and legislated drilling in the basic skills. Things are now so parlous in the US, with students not being taught to read for meaning and learning, that a Carnegie Foundation report has concluded “when it comes to student literacy, [the US] is clearly on the wrong track.”

That the federal minister wants to take this nation down the same path is a manifestation of the cultural cringe. It reflects the fraught state of federal and state relations and is not good educational policy.

Julie Bishop has made a vitriolic attack on Australian teachers in her criticisms of their work on state curriculums, as well as her condemnation of their professional associations and trade unions. I can only conclude that she wants to engender amongst teachers the "cynicism" and loss of autonomy, self-confidence and sense of risk that David Starkey bemoans.

In the face of more reasonable and moderate arguments put forward in support of a national curriculum, such as those put forward by Professor Alan Reid (UniSA) and Karren Philp (president of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English), the minister sounds shrill, evasive and vacuous.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2006/1757525.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/podcast/friday.htm

In one of those moments of coincidence (which will not strike those who are avid readers as odd), I continued reading Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello last night and found him to be grappling with the same issues I had been raising in relation to Williamson's distinction between Rhetoric and Story (see my last post). Life does, at times, seem to imitate art.

I was struck by two passages in particular, which resonate with what I was trying to say in my last post (albeit much less elegantly than Coetzee).

The first speaks to what I was trying to say about the public outpouring of grief for Brock and Irwin. Coetzee's writer protagonist, Elizabeth Costello, contemplating old age and death, is said to "like to think that the gods [note: to whom she attributes the invention of death] admire, however, grudgingly, our energy, the endless ingenuity with which we try to elude our fate. Fascinating creatures, she would like to think they remark to each other over their ambrosia; so like us in so many respects; their eyes in particular so expressive; what a pity they lack that je ne sais quoi without which they can never ascend to sit beside us!"

The second raises the way that poetics might shape what we understand about our emotions and how we learn to 'feel' and act. In this wonderfully metaphysical scene, Elizabeth makes application to a panel of judges, which will determine whether she is allowed to pass through the Gate to the 'other side'. Elizabeth is interrogated about her beliefs, and the judges begin to hone in on her claim that, as an author, she is a "secretary of the invisible" ( a phrase she has taken from Milosz). Elizabeth is asked, "the old Tasmanians, the ones who were exterminated. Do you have any special opinions about them?" Finding her answer - "beliefs are not the only ethical supports we have. We can rely on our hearts as well"-unsatisfactory, the judge continues. "But as a writer? You present yourself today not in your own person but as a special case, a special destiny, a writer who has written not just entertainments but books exploring the complexities of human conduct. In those books you make one judgement upon another, it must be so. What guides you in these judgements? Do you persist in saying it is all just a matter of heart? Have you no beliefs as a writer? If a writer is just a human being with a human heart, what is so special about your case?"

Fatigue beat me last night and I could read no further. But I am very much looking forward to seeing how Coetzee deals with this question through Elizabeth. I am not blind to the authoritarian impulse in the image of these superior distant figures interrogating Elizabeth as to her beliefs (and the way it refers back to other famous trial scenes in literature: Dostoyevsky, Kafka...). But the issues they raise are compelling. Elizabeth herself acknowledges this when the judge finishes, "No fool.... For the first time this day she feels tested."

These last words are, for me, an eloquent expression of the place of theory in the study of literature. To want to test beliefs is NOT the same as having no beliefs at all. It is the desire to want to live an examined life, something the ancients urged us to do. It is about tradition, not anarchy.

A thoughtful and measured response to the national curriculum debate from David Williamson was published in The Australian today.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20546352-7583,00.html

Williamson quite rightly highlights the rhetorical tradition in English, and –surprise, surprise- even suggests there is a place for post-structuralist approaches in the classroom. He uses some apposite examples from canonical literature to highlight how English teaching is inevitably political in nature because of the way the greatest literary works have dealt with such loaded themes as the exercising of power, social stratification, poverty, race, gender and so on. It is almost inevitable that aware young readers will draw parallels between the fictive worlds of these texts and their own.

As I imagine all English teachers would be, I am sympathetic to Williamson’s argument about the affirming power of great literature and the way it imaginatively brings to life the ‘guiding emotions’ of human experience. So many wonderful stories that I read through my childhood and adolescence stay with me today. Indeed, they have all informed who I now am and what I believe. That this appears to be a common - if not universal - experience amongst colleagues (indeed there is research to suggest this is the primary reason why people choose to become English teachers) gives lie to the idea that English classrooms are now inhabited by political ideologues. After all, how many teachers have really become high school English teachers because they are passionate about deconstruction? However, it is because they are alive to the power of literature and its capacity to inform a rich and imaginative life that many English teachers do take theories such as post –structuralism seriously. Such a theory does not negate the power and wonder of literature: it instead emphasises and confirms it by seeking to explain the basis of its transformative powers.

So, it is on this point that I cannot agree with Williamson. His suggestion about splitting ‘Rhetoric’ from ‘Story’ strikes me as unconvincing. It seems to me that Williamson underestimates the power of poetics or literary discourse to actually shape how we understand and enact the proper expression of what he calls the ‘guiding emotions’.

The recent public mourning of the deaths of Peter Brock and Steve Irwin is a case in point. The excessive public attention given to the deaths of these two accomplished men seems to me to draw at once on the conventions of tragic drama and epic adventure. Here were two intrepid heroes, each living much ‘larger’, more thrilling and colourful lives than the rest of us, daring to tempt fate at every turn. Yet, each man was also one of us. They retained a ‘common touch’; they were not gods but god-like. Because they were mortal, it was inevitable that fate would win out - as many great stories remind us. The greatest narratives of all time teach us that we can only aspire- or, as some would have it, are only allowed – to test the limits of our humanity, and therefore our mortality, so far. So we mourn Brock and Irwin. Indeed, to do otherwise has been labelled ‘unAustralian’. Their ‘largeness’ reminds us of our ‘smallness’, their risk taking reminds us of our trepidation. Above all, their too-early deaths remind each of us of our own inevitable fate; in mourning them we anticpate our own demise and mourn for the loss of the hope that we too might yet have lived as giants.

Meanwhile, for the days that Brock and Irwin dominate our media, countless other less 'heroic' deaths (eg the victims of famine and civil war) pass unremarked and unmourned, relegated to a few seconds of screen time in television news bulletins or a few words in the middle pages of the major newspapers. Our great stories of the past have not taught us to weep for the deaths of these innocents, the victims of man’s enduring inhumanity to his own kind.

In a week in which Prime Minister Howard congratulated the celebrating staff and supporters of Quadrant for their 50 year ‘culture war’ against the ‘left’ in Australian public and intellectual life, federal education minister Julie Bishop made a surprisingly hairy-chested public grab for control of school curricula. Existing state based syllabuses could have been written by Chairman Mao she argued, without providing any support for her claims of left-wing bias other than the unsubstantiated and half-baked anecdotes routinely trotted out in the News Ltd press.

The sadly laughable irony of a minister in the Liberal government making such an offensive comparison at a conference of high school History teachers will not be lost on many. The Prime Minister has consistently condemned the so-called ‘black arm band’ view of History, reserving particular criticism for historians who use the word genocide in relation to white treatment of Aborigines in Australia’s past. (This is despite the fact that such an eminent thinker as Australian philosopher Raimond Gaita, who is hardly a Maoist, has argued that a ‘conception of genocide’ can be applied to ‘what sometimes happened to the stolen children and their parents.’ http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Oct00/essay.html)

Bishop’s unfortunate comparison trivialises the fate of the victims of Mao’s brutal regime in China. It is a surprisingly reckless piece of historical thinking for an education minister who has been championing a more rigorous approach to the teaching of History in schools- a case of do what I say not what I do? Moreover, it is a gross insult to the hard working, dedicated teachers who are responsible for writing syllabus documents. Minister Bishop’s reassurances that she is not targeting teachers in her criticisms simply do not wash. In attempting to create a ‘bogeyman’ in shadowy and overtly ideological educational bureaucrats who are responsible for the writing of syllabus documents, the minister fails – wilfully or otherwise – to acknowledge the significant role played in the writing of syllabuses by seconded teachers and teachers voluntarily working out of school hours. These teachers have dedicated themselves to the values of our liberal democracy by working (beyond the requirements of their paid employment) to ensure that all of our young people have access to a curriculum that is relevant, challenging and equips them for life in the twenty first century.

Which brings me to my next point. The minister’s grab for power was endorsed by the Prime Minister on the basis of a ‘crisis’ in literacy and numeracy in this country. If the states are not getting it right, he argued, then the federal government needs to assume control, dictating what is taught and how it is taught, as this is in the best interests of Australian parents and children. Interesting, then, that a freedom of information request by the Sydney Morning Herald for the national data that would support the claim that there is an educational ‘crisis’ in this country was denied on the grounds that no current data is available. However, as the host of educationalists quoted by the SMH did point out, Australian and international data that is available in the public domain simply does not support the Prime Minister’s claims. An ABC Lateline report on the Quadrant birthday celebration and the Prime Minister’s speech can be found at: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1754941.htm
The SMH report on Minister Bishop’s grab for power is here: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/educator-denies-standards-are-sliding/2006/10/06/1159641533678.html
A typically self-congratulatory editorial in The Australian, which takes the credit for drawing public and government attention to ‘politically correct’ school curricula, can be found at: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20537378-7583,00.html

What follows are my thoughts on Minister Bishop’s speech, which can be found at: http://www.dest.gov.au/Ministers/Media/Bishop/2006/10/B001061006

Julie Bishop’s inflammatory rhetoric about taking ‘control’ of the curriculum, with its abhorrent reference to ‘Chairman Mao type ideologies’, might play well to the leadership and backbench of a government bent on pushing a federalist agenda on many policy fronts. However, it is not in the national interest. It does a great disservice to students and parents, and is insulting to teachers.

Criticisms by the Minister and the Prime Minister of English teaching appear to rest on two unsupported claims. Firstly, that there is a literacy ‘crisis’ in this country that demands the centralisation of the curriculum and tighter controls on how it is taught. Secondly, that the English curriculum has been hijacked by left wing ideologues, who have been promoting ‘radical’ ideas such as Marxism and Feminism.

The first claim simply ignores the inconvenient fact that the literacy achievements of Australian students are second only to those from Finland. The federal government’s own recent inquiry into the teaching of literacy concluded that Australian students “compare well” with students in other OECD countries, with only a “minority” not acquiring acceptable levels of literacy. In the areas of literacy and critical thinking, Australian students outperform students from England and the US, two countries that have centralised the curriculum and legislated drilling in the basic skills. Things are now so parlous in the US, with students not being taught to read for meaning and learning, that a Carnegie Foundation report has concluded “when it comes to student literacy, [the US] is clearly on the wrong track.” That the federal minister wants to take this nation down the same path is a sad manifestation of the cultural cringe. It reflects the fraught state of federal and state relations and is not good educational policy.

The second claim appears to stem from reporting in a News Ltd publication relating to a task completed by a particular Yr 12 class of students studying one component of a particular course in a single state. (Certainly, the publication concerned has applauded itself for bringing this to public attention.) The full scope and intent of this task was not dealt with in the original report, which overlooked the emphasis that the task put on students having a personal response to the play being studied – an aspect of English that the Minister herself has endorsed today as being at the heart of English. It is irresponsible for a federal Minister to use such a limited evidence source in order to make derisory comments about the current ‘state of play’ of English teaching in Australia. In fact, the Minister is inexplicably ignoring a much richer and more rigorous source of information about what is happening in English classrooms across the nation: a curriculum ‘snapshot’ collated in recent weeks by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). ACER has examined the contents of the various state English syllabuses as part of research commissioned –ironically enough- by the Minister to further discussion around a national curriculum. Tellingly, the ACER research found no requirement for Australian students to study left wing ideology in English. What is common across Australia, however, is an emphasis on literature (both contemporary and from the past), reading for meaning, appreciating the power of language, and critical thinking. It will not escape notice that the skills listed here are also those for which OECD testing shows Australian students are exhibiting higher levels of achievement than their peers in the UK and the US. Clearly, on objective and measurable terms, the different English curricula in Australia are exemplary by any international comparison.

That having been said, English teachers are aware that there exist great commonalities in what we teach and how we teach it. English teachers are not opposed to the idea of curriculum consistency per se. However, with state ministers having already signed up to different initiatives in this area, and with work being done by ACER in conjunction with the teaching profession to identify what should be the ‘core’ of a subject such as English, teachers are left wondering why the Minister should feel the need to undermine in such a heavy handed manner the consensus building which has been taking place. Certainly, the idea of placing curriculum development in Australia the hands of an ‘inner circle’ of federal public servants is a worrying proposal. It is a much less representative and democratic process than that which exists at the moment at a state level.

Indeed, the Minister does not seem to understand the curriculum development process as it takes place at a state level. Teachers are widely consulted about curriculum changes, with consultation reports being made publicly available. New syllabuses are typically written by teachers seconded from schools by government authorities, meaning that a ‘real world’ professional understanding of the needs and interests of students in diverse school locations is brought to the curriculum writing process. To align these dedicated and expert professionals with the mass murderers of Mao’s regime in China is offensive in the extreme.

(Re)Writing English has just moved from http://hwmrk.wordpress.com/. Previous postings can be found at my old address.