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English curriculum and the culture wars

By David Long - posted Thursday, 23 January 2014


While there were good reasons for the Howard government's electoral loss in 2007, John Howard deserves some recognition for his defence of a more traditional view of Australian culture, a view that had been largely under attack from left wing ideologies. At the time of Howard's election in 1996, the paramount ideology being promoted was multiculturalism. Nothing irritated the left more than Howard's white picket fence image of Australia for that image was sepia 1950's and English, suggesting a time before multiculturalism questioned what Australia stood for.

The multicultural war was being fought on two major fronts when Howard came to office.

The first front was opened with the black armband view of our founding which characterised the British colonisation as a white invasion of aboriginal lands and the massacre of the noble savage who was merely defending his way of life. As a part of that front, collective guilt was assigned to everyone for the earlier policy of removing aboriginal children from their families. It mattered nothing that today's aboriginal leaders are largely members of what are called the stolen generation or that they obtained an advantage by being removed from the primitive environment

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The second front and the one that continues to this day was the displacement of the Western intellectual tradition of by multiculturalism. Coupled with the left's insistence that Australia's immigration programme be sourced from Asia, multiculturalism was the nation's prayerful retreat before the advancing barbarians: peace and harmony at any price.

In a war fought more tactically than aggressively, John Howard did not so much confront the left head-on as outflank them with a view of Australia beyond ideology that appealed to the middle class battler. In effect, he gave them prosperity as the political goal so that they forgot about the collective guilt the left were keen to inflict on them.

Howard defeated the left's ideology pragmatically; unfortunately, he was unable to defeat it theoretically and it remained a fertile garden within the universities.

It is worth noting that had Howard not introduced Work Choices, a policy that threatened the very prosperity of his Battlers and which cut through the bridge he had built into Labor heartland, he would probably not have been defeated by Kevin Rudd.

Howard's replacements at the head of the Liberal Opposition, at least until the arrival of Tony Abbott, had no serious disagreement with any policy of the Rudd government. What this meant, however, was that the Liberal Party was attempting to appeal to those who had voted against them, on the same grounds as the ALP. In fact, the only area of disagreement between Labor and the Conservatives was the extent of the Rudd government's purported wasteful response to the global financial disaster.

However, since that expenditure was going chiefly into middle class pockets, wasteful or not, the argument fell on deaf ears. The real basis of the Conservative revival in John Howard, had passed unobserved. Compare how many column inches were written and how many speeches made criticising the excesses of the Building Education Revolution school projects and how much was written about what would be taught inside those buildings.

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The fact that the most scornful rejection of Howard's view came from the universities and the university-educated middle class, rather than "Howard's battlers", proves without doubt that the left's ideologies are transmitted through our education system and that it's power base is housed in Australian universities. It proves, that multiculturalism was always going to be fought as an education war.

This unsavoury fact was confirmed in 2009 with the release of the draft uniform national English curriculum. Even a cursory reading of the draft national English curriculum for years kindergarten to year 10 would have revealed that the left had re-opened hostilities in their culture war. At that point, Howard's legacy was lost for the Opposition had not bothered to read it.

Literacy, the power to read and understand the written contribution of the most thoughtful men and women to Western civilisation is an intellectual power that has to be trained over time. In its place those in charge of drafting the curriculum substituted a sham called functional literacy.

The curriculum abandoned the traditional idea that an English curriculum should aim at improving student literacy to the best of which each student is capable. There is no intelligible aim stated for this curriculum. That it embodies three of the left's ideological sacred cows, atheism, aborigines, Asia is self evident. The conclusion that the literacy achieved by the curriculum has been dumbed-down is unavoidable.

Suggested reading material by the K-10 curriculum includes such edifying texts as tweeny fashion magazines cook books, cartoons and advertisements. The notion that there is good and bad literature is not raised because it is assumed that all literature is good.

One significant criticism of the English curriculum was made by the conservative journalist, Miranda Devine (see here) who has, to her credit, consistently argued that children should be taught to read using the phonics method which links the letters in our alphabet to sounds. This traditional method, however, is not favoured by the education academics whose doctrinaire methodology corrupts their research.

What has been largely ignored is the type of material that the children will be expected to read when, or should we say if, they actually learn to read.

In its rush to be relevant, the new curriculum substitutes modern essays, that might be characterised as mini penny-dreadfuls, and picture magazines for what was once chosen by educated men and women as being good literature appropriate to the age of the student.

This curriculum assumes that its favoured literature, by reflecting the reality of life for today's youth, will soon have them reading. Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll and little girls interests as revealed by their magazines are the substitute for quality. The only literary criterion applied is that the material be written in English – even poor English.

There is an implicit assumption in the curriculum, one that is completely misguided, that literature, like music, is a matter of taste; when, in fact, literature has a capacity to form, or perhaps reform, the character of the child.

It is into this pseudo English curriculum fabric that the drafters have woven their most sacred cow, multiculturalism. In the name of an English education, students will be introduced to Asian literature. The curriculum states:

Studying literature helps shape persona, cultural and national identities. Australia's evolving ethnic composition and the increasing national importance placed on our geographic location in the Asia-Pacific region brings with it a variety of cultural, social and ethical interests and responsibilities.(p.5)

We must assume that an English translation of Asian literature will be used. Exactly what the "ethical interests and responsibilities" are we are not told except that that the student will be exposed to "a variety" of them.

Students, however, whether in Grade 10 or Grade 12, won't ever understand why 99 percent of Asians live under tyrannies by reading Asian literature. This is because the definitive analysis of tyranny was written in Greek 2500 years ago and the difference between tyranny and good government discussed there was one of the foundation stones of Western opinions as to what constitutes good government.

Given that no express part of the curriculum will allow students to learn why only the West can lay claim to being a civilisation, it is a reasonable inference that the intention of the curriculum drafters was to mould Australian students to an Asian cultural outlook.

Unfortunately, no outbreak of the culture wars would be complete without reference to the plight of Aborigines. The English curriculum requires students to read (or listen to) Aboriginal dreaming stories in order to improve student empathy with our indigenous friends.

Students will not, however, generate empathy for the Christian or Jewish religions through reading the English translations of their sacred text. Although the King James Bible is one of the most influential pieces of English literature in the English-speaking world, it will not be studied as a part of the English course. You may ask, "why not?"

Probably because it would "shape personal, cultural and national identities" of the students; but just not the way the multi-culture police in the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority want them shaped.

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About the Author

David Long is a lawyer and writer with an interest in classical political philosophy and Shakespeare. He has written previously for The Bulletin and The Review.

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