My son, going into Year 12 next year, is really happy about this. I agree that teaching “Theory” derived from the kind of second-hand postmodernism that was until recently dominant in Australian humanities departments is a waste of time, and an unreasonable imposition on students who are conscripted into this course on the assumption that they are going to learn about English (the language, not the academic specialisation of the same name).
On the other hand, I don’t look back to the Golden Age of courses on Shakespeare and the Canon with any great enthusiasm either. What I’d like for my kids to get out of high school English is an ability to write well in a variety of modes and (if possible) a love of literature. I don’t think courses in literary criticism (traditional, modern or postmodern) do much for either goal. As far as love of literature goes, they’re often counterproductive.
More on this from Mark Bahnisch
John Quiggin 
But presumably, JQ, if you believe post-modernism to be a waste of time, it would be a waste of time for students intending to specialise in English literature and not merely for your son, whose interests and academic ambitions lie elsewhere.
JQ you are such a mugwump.
Of course english was a lot better when you an I went to school.
Post-modernisn is a fraud and it is a disgrace it was ever let into a curriculum.
According the linked story, the Queensland Minister for Education, Rod Welford, in scrapping the post modern part of English syllabus, said
“Nothing will leave this department that I don’t understand.”
I don’t anything about this Welford character, but as a general proposition, taken literally that would turn 99% of departments into black holes.
Queensland – Bastion of Modernism
The Australian’s campaign against po/mo in English teaching has scored a scalp – the Queensland English curriculum:
Mr Welford [the Education Minister] said while there was nothing wrong with senior students analysing the agendas behind a write…
Dave, Welford is a lawyer. He was Attorney-General, and his move to Education was perceived as a demotion.
He used to be my local member when he first entered parliament. Nice enough fella. Perhaps he picked up some “plain English” habits as a lawyer?
I’m reasonably literate, have a grasp of PoMo and am capable of deconstructing a text, but I must say that excessive application of critical theory is a wonderful way to destroy students appreciation of literature and make people run screaming from the humanities department of any University. Leave it to the wankers who get off on that sort of thing at Uni.
“Leaving it to the wankers” leads me to wonder why any academic wankery should be subsidised, what with scarce public funds, and the bizzarre spending priorities of universities who claim to be dying from lack of funding.
Literature Lost : Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities is a book I found enlightening. As one review put it, it is “excellent but ultimately very sad” in its description of how social agendas corrupted the humanities.
If you can get hold of a copy, look at Robert Graves’ and Alan Hodge’s “The Reader Over Your Shoulder” (1944). The first part could easily be developed into a really good English curriculum, covering the history and development of English with discussions of the characteristics of each period. I have never paid much attention to the second part of the book, which is an attempt to do again what Fowler’s “Modern English Usage” did better.
A critical literacy approach really belongs at the long end of literacy education. Whole reading was its running mate at the other end. It’s probably doubtful that you could ever inculcate a love of literature by filling the classrooms full of books and letting the munchkins come to it at their own pace. Some will get it and some never will. However you can give some a fear or even hatred of literacy if they don’t get the connection between the written and spoken work at an early age. That requires a structured phonemic approach for most, other than the naturally gifted connectors. Junior Primary education is the most important education sector for this and unfortunately a generation of JP teachers were not given the appropriate tools for the task. There are fantastic resources available to them now and the word is spreading fast, as a vanguard of ‘phonics’ teachers have shown the way. The ignorance and whole reading resistance is fading rapidly, as Basic Skills Testing show the results of the two approaches(no parents, you won’t get those tentative comparisons, they’ll only worry you unduly) Nevertheless, it’s always hard for large cultural bureaucracies to admit they stuffed up big time.
The missus has been coopted for a seminar on phonics for JP teachers in Sept. You guessed it, AFL GF weekend. As a Power supporter, she said she didn’t have any objection to the scheduled date, but are the powers-that-be completely comfy with their date? Apparently ‘The Pride of SA’ are going to get back to her on that.
Notwithstanding Welford’s decision on the place, or rather the displacement, of critical literary theory in Queensland, if one examines semiotic Lacantianism, one is faced with a choice: either accept postmodern textual theory or conclude that truth serves to marginalize the less educated. The paradigm, and thus the economy, of semiotic Lacantianism is in my view intrinsic to Welford’s policy anouncement, although in a more mythopoetical sense. Thus, the main theme of la Fournier’s critique of subtextual narrative is the common ground at present between class and political identity in Queenland.
On the other hand, “Context is part of the fatal flaw of language,” says Sartre. The subject is interpolated into a pretextual literary theory that includes narrativity as a reality. However, if the semioticist paradigm of narrative holds, the works of Gaiman are an example of self-falsifying objectivism, so Beattie’s appointment of Welford, and Welford’s subsequent decision in relation to the repositioning of critical theory in relation to the Queensland syllabus, are open to any number of appropriations concerning the role of the writer as participant.
TN
Nice one. But I suspect that your attempt to draw the crabs will fail! Loved the reference to Sartre, but a bit old fashioned don’t you think?
yeah, tn, sartre? nup. when did you go to uni? in the 1970s? if you had slotted in some deleuze then it would’ve been more likely…
hmmm, what i find problematic in all this is the equivalence of ‘english’ to ‘literature’, rather than ‘language’. The discourse that links English to literature is invoked when one talks about pleasure of the text, or questions of aesthetics.
why is teaching critical theory a waste of time?
If English is to be about how to understand ‘language’ better then I cannot possibly fathom why you would not want to have critical reading skills, etc. Surely every parent wants their child to have the skills to interrogate the language used in suspect advertising, journalism, political issues, etc? Don’t you want your children to be able to one day explain to their children how the latest Commodore ad, for example, encourages the circulation of certain beliefs about technology, speed and so on and to understand the complex play of signifiers that constructs the ad as a text? If not Commodores then political ads like for IR reform (union or govt)?
Isn’t there an ethical issue here of sending your children out into the world with the best set of tools possible for dealing with tide after tide of bullshit from people marketing both commodities and political views? It isn’t about instilling the ‘best’ ideas in their heads, that is nonsense because the world changes too fast for that, but it seems much more sensible to give them the capacity for figuring out for themselves what ideas to have. no???
…and if you think that learning ‘theory’ enough to be an expert (ie do a PhD) within the field of literature means that you no longer have a love of literature, well you are deploying rhetorical nonsense. To have a more sophisticated set of reading tools actually allows you to engage with texts in much more depth or complexity. Once you have a sufficient grasp of particular basic concepts then it allows for a much more sophisticated appreciation of any text.
…and ‘language’ should not only mean grammar or linguistics. Focusing purely on these domains is like locking a lawyer in a library for four years and then expecting her to perform in court.
I really see this as part of the process of dumbing down Australia. Pumping out workers for the new post-welfare economy where people are only given the social tools they need to make someone else money.
“I really see this as part of the process of dumbing down Australia. Pumping out workers for the new post-welfare economy where people are only given the social tools they need to make someone else money.”
Isn’t this crediting Rod Welford with too much intelligence?
As a Victorian, I haven’t had the pleasure of any knowledge of Mr Welford until news of his self-sacrificial gesture of personally vetting all prescribed books reached these cooler climes.
Mr Welford’s defence of traditional educational values has left us a little underwhelmed down here. To the extent it is noticed at all, it is interpreted as Queensland politics as usual. (Foreigners should understand that it is difficult for many to think about Qld politics without also thinking about Vince Gair, Jo Bjelke-Petersen, Russ Hinze, or that bloke with the truly grotesque nose whose name escapes me.)
Thus Welford’s Readathon looks a lot like an old-fashioned exercise in cheap populism. The Tories have stolen a bit of a march on Labor on the populist front, what with their Global War on Terror (sorry, Global Stuggle Against Extremism) and all. So instead Labor has to be content with the Local Battle of the Books.
Are Queenslanders expecting fridge magnets? “Intertextuality. Be metaphorical, but not self-referrent.”
“Pumping out workers for the new post-welfare economy where people are only given the social tools they need to make someone else money.”
Perhaps, just perhaps, school students in their English classes should be first taught why (non) sentences like the above are not actually sentences. After that, they could move onto the critical interpretation of commercials for motor vehicles.
This set back for the academic po-mos is another nail in the coffin of the Wets. The Great Re-Learning continues apace.
to paraphrase: ‘this is not a sentence.’
what is that? a discursive variation of Magritte’s “The Betrayal of Images”? ‘the betrayal of grammar’ perhaps? good one!
but why bother, dave? seriously? so english students can comment on blogs without the smartarse obvious replies? see my comments re: grammar or linguistics. i have little time for such a pompous insistence on ‘correct’ usage of language when, for example, one of the most powerful people in the world is GWB. have you heard the way he uses ‘language’? please…
pursuit of ‘correctness’ is only useful if you want play games of the ‘more correct’. who is ‘more correct’? probably my next editor and probably the person who thinks it matters, while the rest are actually doing things in the world.
worrying about the rules of language or some alleged aesthetic essence of literature is utterly useless in nearly all situations where language is actually put to use. surely that is what is important? how language is actually used?
hmpf. in all this debate i have yet to see the actual syllabus. you need intranet access for the EQ (or is it QE) webpage on the matter.
i’m with dave.
glen, you need to read some Orwell to understand why clarity in communication matters and rules/grammar are essential to clarity. it’s not just a status game. why does popular science sell so much better than sociology/cultural studies texts even though arguably the former is just as if not more difficult than the latter? because science writers write well.
but Orwell is probably too old fogey for you, eh?
Disagree with Jason and Dave.
The sentence made sense to me, didn’t strike me as particularly ugly, and therefore it was a valid sentence (with clarity sufficient unto the day of course).
I really don’t see the problem.
Glen & Andrew,
while we’re at it, why not change the mathematics syllabus so that one plus one is optionally equal to some number close enough to two?
Actually, mathematicians have lived with the consequences of the post logical-positivist world for well over half a century. Kurt Godel’s second theorem, which is generally paraphrased: “If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent and complete from within itself, then it is inconsistent.” blows a hole through the naive optimism of nineteenth-century logical-positivism.
Certainly, train students to add up and to subtract. Expose students to various literary canons, sometimes grandiloquently dubbed “the great tradition”, but find the right time and method to indicate to them that so much of what seems certain in reality stands on intellectual quicksand.
Let’s be clear about what Godel did and did not say.
He did not say that nothing can be proven in mathematics.
He did not say anything goes.
He said that there are some things that cannot be proven.
He did not say what could and could not be proven.
There are theorems in mathematics that have not yet been proved, and Godel’s theorem means that may never be proved, not because they are wrong, not because mathematicians will never be smart enough to prove them, but because there are some things that can’t be proved.
However, once a theorem is proved, it is proved.
Thus, the proof of Fermat’s last theorem is rock solid and irrefutable and is not – repeat not – subject to the critique that it might be wrong because of Godel’s theorem.
(Please excuse the interchangeable use of proven and proved. I forget which is correct in what context.)
What you say is true, DR. Nothing you said contradicts my previous point.
Glen wrote:
“I really see this as part of the process of dumbing down Australia. Pumping out workers for the new post-welfare economy where people are only given the social tools they need to make someone else money.”
Funnily enough, University of Newcastle Business Prof Bob Catley agrees with you, Glen:
“In the main, from 1990 – effectively the first cohort of post-Dawkins graduates – to 2004, entrants to this career path moved from rent-seeking activities to efficient management of factors of production as their major wealth-creating criterion . . . [L]abour in the new high productivity sectors was not the same as that vacating old low productivity sectors, but was increasingly new labour market entrants replacing retirees. Many more of these entrants were university graduates.”
http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/archive_details_list.php?article_id=775
via:
http://larvatusprodeo.redrag.net/2005/08/04/queensland-bastion-of-modernism
Katz Says: August 5th, 2005 at 11:28 am
I think Katz is confusing “naive inductivism” with “logical positivism”. Logical Positivism was a 20th C production. It more or less started with the Vienna Circles discussion of the implications of Einstein’s revision of Newtonian physics, Frege-Peano-Russell’s revision of Aristotelian logic and Wittgenstein’s revision of Millian epistemology. It is therefore impossible that L-P was part of the “naive optimism of nineteenth-century” philosophy.
Godel (Mr Impossibility), with Popper (Mr Falsifiability) and Heisenberg (Mr Uncertainty), were ex-officio members of the Vienna Circle who conducted a critique of L-P. This crew tended to re-inforce skepticism about the absolute validity of logical rules and objective veracity of empirical laws. In short it was the “left-wing” of the L-P’s who destroyed “naive optimism of nineteenth-century” philosophy.
The fact that we all live on intellectual quicksand does not imply that one bog is as good as another. It is the task of the formal intellectual disciplines (logic, epistemology) to show students a way through the mire to higher and firmer ground. Unfortunately from the true philosophical premises of Godel, Heisenberg and Wittgenstein we have derived false intellectual conclusions.
I should add: Prof Bob Catley is plainly speaking from the side of capital, not labour, when he posits uni graduates being fodder for corporate profits (and nothing else) as an inherently good thing.
What is strange is that Prof Catley doesn’t even seem to consider that those speaking from the side of labour (rather than capital) in this debate do, could, or should have a voice.
Catley is a genuine article right winger, who amongst other things has a dig at the ARC for having been captured by left wingers. En passant, he writes
“It is true that probably the only left-wing economics professor in the country is financially supported by the ARC”.
I wonder who he means?
The funny thing is, Catley was once a genuine article left winger, a self styled political economist, as his writings from the 1970s will attest. What appears to have converted him to the right is his time as a federal Labor politician from 80s to early 90s.
Bertrand Russell published these books on the following dates:
1903, The Principles of Mathematics,
1910, Philosophical Essays,
1910–1913, Principia Mathematica (with Alfred North Whitehead), 3 vols.,
1912, The Problems of Philosophy.
They are pioneering statements of logical positivism. And yes, they were published in the 20th century, but historians, being less literal-minded than members of some other disciplines, often call the era to 1914 the “Long Nineteenth Century”.
Indeed, here is a reference from that Google search:
Results 1 – 10 of about 11,900 for “long nineteenth century”. (0.29 seconds)
More recent work on computability, like Chaitin’s, shows that there are things that are both true and unprovable – random truths. That blows away any faith based hope that unprovable things might actually be false (that’s a naive description of what is meant by “false”, which immediately leads to a problem).
Yes indeed PML. As long ago as the 1930s Alan Turing of Enigma fame discovered incalculable numbers.
What Minister Welford might make of those is, well, incalculable.
One thing that is really pleasing to me about dedicated followers of fashion like Catley (and they are legion) is that there never seemed to be a point at which I was on the same side as them. In my memory at least, there was a seamless transition from a time in which they were radical Marxists attacking me and those whose views I shared as running dogs of capitalism to their reinvention as free-market capitalists attacking us as elitist bourgeois leftwingers.
Presumably there must be some period of transition in cases like this, but it never seems to take the form of a gradual movement from left to right, implying some period of support for social democracy/democratic socialism. Rather, there seems to be a period of contradiction in which inconsistent messages are conveyed to different audiences, followed by a dialectical synthesis (see, I can do the Hegelian stuff if I want to) in which the capitulation to the right is completed.
Katz,
If we accept what Google says as persuasive, then I am more persuasive than the “Long Nineteenth Century”, if a little bit slower.
Results 1 – 10 of about 50,200 for “Andrew Reynolds”. (0.30 seconds)
Is that “critical literacy”?
Results 1 – 10 of about 70,700 for “critical Literacy”. (0.21 seconds)
Merely a matter of degree Andrew. (Or is it degrees?) (Or is it Andrew Reynoldses?)
John, If Catley has “seamlessly” (ie continuously) moved from far left to far right, then by the Mean Value Theorem there must have been a time when his views were parallel to yours.
jquiggin Says: August 5th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
I remember c. 1980 being set Catley and McFarlanes “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” by a radical (not bearded) tutor as a text in my first year politics course. Even as an ignorant teenage undergraduate I found its thesis – that there was little ideological difference between the Whitlamite ALP and the Fraserizing L/CP since both political parties were technocratic service providers for transnational capitalism – somewhat implausible. It was one of many intellectual experiences that gave me a life-long aversion to New Left politico-economic theory.
Dr Knopfelmacher’s scintillating lectures on classical social theory helped to immunize me from the more virulent forms of New Left politico-cultural theory. But even Dr K drew the line at some things. I remember asking him explain post-modernist deconstructionism to me, in words of two syllables or less. He wrinkled his nose in civilized disgust, threw up his hands in mock despair and exclaimed that “Nuzzing vould give me greater pleasure zan to fashion a comprehensive critique of zis theories. But unfortunately zey are beyond my comprehension”.
FWIW, on the subject of my ideological evolution, I have always been a more or less culturally conservative, politically nationalistic social democrat. I am now Wetter in my politico-economy and Drier in my politico-culture, than I was a decade or so ago. I put this down to travelling and living in the US. This experience brought me face-to-face with a society where military service was the most effective constraints on the demoralizing effects of class-division and race-conflict. The welfare state is a cheaper and nicer way of bonding society than the warfare state.
Perhaps Pr Q would care to enlighten us on the subject of his political education.
Katz Says: August 5th, 2005 at 1:26 pm
When it comes to designating centuries it is numeracy, rather than literacy, that is the required skill. Russell is squarely within the modern tradition of both logical and epsitemological studies, however you count the centuries.
In any case Katz makes yet another research blunder in his characterization of Russell’s work. It is true that Russell’s analytical philosophy was a proto-form of logical positivism (L-P). But the first proper statement of L-P epistemology came with Wittgenstein after the First World War (hint: thats why they localise Logical Positivists in the Vienna Circle rather than Cambridge). And we have seen that L-P was conceived as a rigorous 20th C scientific critique of naive nineteenth century “anecdotal positivism”.
It is also true that Russell, like his Whig godfather, began his logical studies with the “naive nineteenth century” aim of rationalising mathematics into logic. But Russell’s work on logic was a precursor, not an object of refutation, by Godel. Russell’s discovery of a paradox of classes in set theory began the long process of undermining the stable, safe secure underpinnings of “naive optimistic” nineteenth century logical rationalism.
Godel certainly did not “blow a hole in logical positivism” in either its naive 19th C, or sophisticated 20th C, form. His work on logic had nothing much to do with the critique of L-P epistemology. It was much more devised as a critique of Hilbert’s naive nineteenth century “logical comprehensability” program.
In any case, I would not write off the L-P program just yet. Popper may be right about the contingency of verifications but he is not right about the necessity of falsifications. So the L-P program of building knowledge by statistical generalisation must still be attended to.
“John, If Catley has “seamlesslyâ€? (ie continuously) moved from far left to far right, then by the Mean Value Theorem there must have been a time when his views were parallel to yours.”
This was the paradox I was trying to get at. There are no obvious discontinuities, and yet there is no point at which his views match mine.
You can represent this with a path in two dimensions of course.
No, Katz, the recent computability results relate to something even stronger and more specific. Do a search on Chaitin’s Omega to get started on this.
It turns out that the curriculum covers the canon after all. The Minister might have been too swift to react to op/ed criticism.
I suspect over-reaction on Welford’s part, but my problem is not with the set of texts being studied, but with the adoption of an over-theorised approach to them
Yes, I see your point, John, but the challenge is always to come up with an alternative approach. The big problem with anti-theoretical approaches is that they’re as loaded as any others, but claim that their presuppositions are not open to question. Having said that, it would be nice to look at the material from a variety of different perspectives rather than one orthodoxy.
I certainly don’t have as big a problem with the syllabus as might have been foreseeable from Slattery’s characterisation (caricature?) of it.
A couple of other observations, though.
First, I’d be interested in the degree to which there’s overlap with the SOSE (Studies of Society and Environment) syllabus over the curriculum for all years.
Secondly, there’s more to English than subject positions, ideologies and discourses.