On classic consciousness

Critics of English lite - where literary classics are on the same footing as SMS messages, graffiti and movie posters, and students are made to deconstruct texts from Marxist, feminist, class and postcolonial perspectives - are regularly attacked, including by Elizabeth Butel in this space on June 24, as overly conservative and out of touch with developments in postmodern theory.

Ignored is that giving students a weak and insipid gruel, represented by present approaches to teaching literature, not only denies them entry to their cultural heritage, but an uncritical commitment to theory, where all texts are treated as socio/cultural artefacts and reader response is defined as being subjective and relative and also undermines the ethical and moral value of great literature.

During the 1960s, growing up in a Housing Commission house in Melbourne's Broadmeadows and attending the local government school, if the new approaches to literature had applied, I would have been fed an impoverished diet of magazines, comics and the odd film; the internet had yet to be invented. Thankfully, that never happened. Strangely enough, the '60s was a time when teachers knew that working-class kids could think, and that education needed to be challenging and introduce students to unknown worlds and new experiences and emotions. Each year we studied such classics as Shakespeare, Henry Lawson and Dickens on the assumption that one of the redeeming features of great art, whether music, ballet, painting or literature, is that it speaks across the generations and can never be restricted in time or place.

Forget the tyranny of relevance, where education is chained to the here and now as represented by SMS, blogs and television shows such as Australian Idol. Years before the multicultural industry established itself, we read works such as The Merchant of Venice and learned about intolerance and bigotry. Years before Luke Skywalker and Star Wars, we read the Iliad and the Odyssey and learned about emotions such as bravery, hubris, sorrow and loyalty. No amount of analysing a film can fire the imagination or awake the psyche as does following in the footsteps of Odysseus as he battles against all odds to return home.

On graduating, my first job involved teaching migrant children from Melbourne's western suburbs. As English teachers, we faced the same debate that is now being played out. One year we ditched Shakespeare in favour of Puberty Blues, a book about two teenage girls and their adventures in Sydney's surf culture. The argument was that the book was contemporary and exactly what young students would want. After several weeks discussing the book, our classes switched off. Not only was it poorly written and the characters superficial, but there was nothing challenging or profound about the plot or the issues raised. As one of the students said to me: "Why study in class what most of us can see on the weekend?" Given that many of the children's parents had emigrated from Greece, I tried a different tack and introduced the class to Greek tragedy, beginning with Medea.

The benefit? Not only did those students with a Greek background take pride in an aspect of their culture previously unknown, the class also enjoyed the challenge of reading a complex and difficult text. Many learned that education required concentration and that it could not be acquired in a 30-second sound grab.

One of the more insidious arguments against teaching literary classics is that they are of no immediate value or use. Ignored is the reality that what we learn in school, while sometimes of little practical use, may touch us in later life.

Four years ago our son, James, was killed in a hit-and-run accident. On seeing him in the hospital, the first words that came to our daughter's lips were: "Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Not only did her words reinforce my belief that literature, more so than an SMS text or an internet blog, deals with human experience in a profoundly moving way, I also realised Amelia was only able to draw on Shakespeare's words because, years before, Hamlet had been taught.

As Umberto Eco argued in On Some Functions of Literature, the value of literature can never be restricted to what is utilitarian or what theory decides is politically correct. Literature survives because of its intangible power. As Eco wrote: "The power of that network of texts which humanity has produced and still produces not for practical ends but, rather, for its own sake, for humanity's own enjoyment - and which are read for pleasure, spiritual edification, broadening of knowledge, or maybe just to pass the time, without anyone forcing us to read them (apart from when we are obliged to do so at school or in university)."

The above article by teacher Kevin Donnelly appeared in "The Australian" newspaper on July 8, 2006

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