There is at present an intense debate on about the
content of high school curricula in the Anglo-sphere. For the sake of simple
differentiation, the two sides of this debate could be described as
traditionalists and postmodernists. The postmodernists have been in charge
since perhaps the 60s; now the traditionalists are on the march, largely
because educational achievement (by PISA score for example) has been
deteriorating steadily for decades and the Anglo-sphere is now falling behind
Asia.[1]
Before going any further it is necessary to flesh out the
views of the two camps. Postmodernists are of the opinion that ‘canon’, by
which is meant Shakespeare, Dante, Ovid, Yates and the like, is ‘irrelevant’ to
a modern teenager. If canon is taught it should be in a form that is relevant,
by changing
the setting of The Taming of the Shrew to a modern
white, middle class American suburb, for example. In some districts,
particularly those where students care very little about school (low
socio-economic suburbs for example), canon should be abandoned entirely and
replaced with the study of imminently relevant texts, like rap music. By this
process, children will come to enjoy school and will thus be motivated to
learn. There is some intuitive sense to this conclusion.
The postmodern camp is sometimes guilty of generalising
this position to the maxim that children should be taught what they are
interested in, and that there is no sense in which the things they are
interested in are better or worse than canon. At its most perverse, this
approach to education does away with any standard of literacy and replaces it
instead with ‘literacies’: being literate in the language of your context ((as
Microsoft Office points out, ‘literacies’ is not a word). So, for example, it
is perfectly good teaching to allow a student to write their response in the
form of an instant messenger conversation rather than the form of a traditional
essay, because modern teenagers converse in l33t sp3ak, not high English.
Donald Meyers, a neuroscientist, has written
extensively about how this approach to education pays no
attention to the history of human evolution or the neuroscience of learning.
Humanity has developed rich cultural traditions of coaching, and these cultural
traditions are backed up by processes in the brains of children and teenagers
that make them receptive to coaching. The take away point is that youth need to be directed in order to learn.
If they are left to their own devices they will not absorb much knowledge at
all.
Three other points about the postmodernist approach are
worth making. The first is that, because it has done away with a standard for
good literature, postmodern education tends to teach texts within ‘modules’
that track nebulous ideas. For example, the poetry of Coleridge was taught in
NSW in 2004 within the module of ‘Imaginative Journeys’. This is contra to the
traditional approach to English education of teaching texts on their own and
discussing their merits with respect to an objective standard.
The second is that postmodernism has manifested in
different ways in different disciplines. In history, for example, as well as
studying ‘relevant’ things like WWII rather than the British revolution, the
emphasis of curricula has moved away from narrative history and towards skills.
For example, students are required to examine portraits of Napoleon and comment
on their worth as a source of historical information. There is certainly merit
to this approach, which gives students transferable skills, but it has resulted
in huge gaps in student’s grasp of the arc of history, particularly early
modern (renaissance through enlightenment) history.
Finally, postmodernism has done away with discipline. If
a student is not paying attention in class it is the teacher’s fault for not
making the material more relevant. While there is a great deal of truth to
this, school should not necessarily be fun. Maths is an enormously useful skill
with overriding importance for society, and it is almost never fun or easy to
learn. Teachers should be expected to do what they can, but to place all the
blame for absent minded students on teachers is misguided.
Let us move now to traditionalists. The champion of this
camp is British Secretary of State for Education, Michael
Gove.
Another good example of this attitude can be found here (a
speech that inspired this article). Traditionalists believe that teaching
canon is important. Those texts are timeless for a reason, they argue—they are
expertly crafted texts with a keen insight into the human condition. Such texts
should be taught in isolation and the focus should be on why they are good
texts. These texts can be difficult, but students should be challenged;
otherwise they will not reach their potential. It is the teacher’s job to
inspire and assist, not pander to mediocrity and the student’s desire for an
easy ride. Precisely because such texts are difficult they should be taught
most intensely in marginalised communities, because here the students need to
be shown that society cares about them and thinks they can make it to the upper
echelons. Ironically, it is precisely attempts to make education relevant to
such students that has entrenched their position at the bottom of the class
divide, or so say traditionalists. As a part of this attitude, traditionalists
want a degree of discipline returned to schools, and an emphasis placed back on
the student to be a ‘good pupil’.
Traditionalist think the postmodern view is entrenched in
the existing administrative structure of education in the Anglo-sphere, and so
much of this debate is about things like teachers unions, Teach for
Australia/America, public schools, private schools, voucher systems, funding
and whether or not schools need more iPads or just better teachers. This
article isn’t about that; it’s about curricula, so that’s where we will turn
now.
First, for the record, I am broadly in the traditionalist
camp, but I think this debate is far too black and white; we can meet in the
middle. Almost all change, including the shift to postmodern education in the
60s, occurs for a reason. Reverting is thus rarely a good idea—you just return
to the problems that inspired the change in the first place. An anecdotal
example is provided by the issue of discipline. Yes, kids these days are
pricks, and their inherent teenage rebellion is compounded by an education
system that panders to their feelings of being special and much smarter than
they actually are. But we are not going to bring back the cane are we? In the
same sense, we can go back to a rigorous standard of education without teaching
Shakespeare and only Shakespeare.
The most important thing here is curricular design and
content. By all means, do away with modules, teach to a standard of literacy, test
students (postmodernism dislikes tests despite evidence
of neuroscience that it is crucial for information
retention), place expectations on students, bring in performance based pay
(provided there is a commensurate increase in teacher pay[2]), teach narrative history
and make maths compulsory for year 12. But each of these things can be done in
a sensible rather than reactionary way.
Let’s start with putting the onus back on students. In
doing so, one would not want to excuse poor teaching practice. For example,
maths is laborious, but can be taught
in creative ways that improve student outcomes and
attentiveness. For example, when teaching π (pie), rather than explaining what
it is and how to use it, then asking students to perform 200 repetitions,
teachers might try the following. Present students with a cylinder. Ask them
how much water it holds and how they could calculate the answer. Students,
working off their existing knowledge, might suggest using a smaller container
whose size they know to fill the cylinder, thereby measuring its content. They
could also suggest filling using a tap whose rate of flow they know and using a
timer to determine the volume. The teacher could then take the students to some
tabs with relevant measuring implements to test these methods. After forty
minutes, the class could return to the blackboard. The teacher could then say:
‘Right, well those methods were successful, but they took
us nearly a whole lesson. Let me show you a faster way. He is this thing called
pie. It means blah blah blah. You can use it like this blah blah blah. See how
quick that is? Now please do exercise 1-20, that’s plenty.’ Students will remember it because they have an hour’s
worth of memories to fall back on, not just wrote learned mechanics, but those
are present too.
A similar perspective is relevant to the issue of
discipline. Certainly students should have more recourse to traditional methods
like detention, but they should not be excused for inattentiveness or laziness.
Children can be ill-disciplined because the teaching is of a poor quality, or
because the teacher is not paying attention to very real justice issues.
Turning to tests, the biggest problem with the HSC was
that answers could be extensively rote learned[3]. In that sense, they
aren’t a test of a student’s ability, but a schools ability to inculcate them
with the answers. By all means, bring back tests, but make them effectively
targeted. An additional issue is stress. Kids don’t need it, but coping with it
is a necessary life skill. So bring back tests, but let’s not go weekly like
they do in China.
Finally, curriculum; I will here constrain myself to
discussing just English. When discussing the need to teach canon, there is too
often a false dichotomy between Shakespeare and Moby Dick and using The Fast
and the Furious as a case text for revenge tragedy. Neither is good. Shakespeare
and Moby dick are boring for the vast majority of people. That’s an empirical
statement and I can’t find any data for it, but I will make the claim anyway. Some
teenagers will like Shakespeare. A lot of them will be wankers. Some of them
won’t. That doesn’t make it worth teaching. Nonetheless, Shakespeare has an
important place in the origin of the modern English language, and should be
taught for that reason, much like Utopia and Don Quixote should be taught so
that you can effectively use the words Utopian and Quixotic. But it should not
be taught en masse. I was taught seven, SEVEN (!), of Shakespeare’s plays in
high school. That is total overkill. There are plenty of outstanding texts that
deal with racism and the bastardry of bankers other than the Merchant of Venice
(The Respectable Prostitute by Sartre, for example), with Powerplays other than
Anthony and Cleopatra (Game of Thrones...nah jokes...but what about The
Godfather—it’s won enough awards), with family other than King Lear (Freedom by
Franzen); the list goes on.
The question that needs to be asked is what you are
trying to achieve by teaching canon? If you are teaching old stuff for the
sake of it that is stupid. If you are teaching it because it is a foundational
text, like Utopia, that is sensible, but should not be overdone, and can easily
be done in combination, or entirely with the aid of, more modern texts like
Brave New World or Battle Angel (a very famous Manga). If you’re teaching it
because it provides an insight into human nature then perhaps something more
modern with the same insights is more appropriate. The Gothic Novels are a
major part of English literary history and provide keen insights into human
nature. Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll Mr Hyde, Dracula and the others are also a damn
sight more readable and entertaining than Shakespeare.
Such a rule of thumb applies to ‘relevance’ more
generally. Madame Bovary is great but a young lady today is more likely to
acquire valuable insights on life from something like Eva Luna. Things should
be age and context appropriate where possible. The Grapes of Wrath, for
example, means very little to even a very sophisticated Australian youth. Such
a youth knows little of working class life, the experience of the Irish in
America, or the historical conditions of vagrant farm workers. These are crucial
not only to understanding the plot of the book but also to understanding why it
is a masterpiece and why it became famous. More importantly, Grapes is really a
piece of adult fiction written for adults—it is not appropriate for teenagers
regardless of how great it is. You don’t lose much by teaching something like
David Copperfield instead (you do lose by The Hunger Games). If you are hell-bent
on teaching old stuff, then at least teach old stuff where the language is not
overly complex and the plot is fast paced and riveting—The Odyssey comes to
mind, as opposed to say, The Inferno.
I suspect that people teach canon foremost because they
want to expose children to high quality literature. But this should not
preclude more modern, more ‘relevant’ and yet equally high quality texts from
being studied. Some people may fear that I am advocating the study of Batman,
or worse, South Park, as these are, at least at times, very high quality texts.
I am not. English education in high school should be about providing students
with a foundation. Without such a
foundation it is extremely difficult to understand the full depths of the
recent seasons of South Park or the more famous issues of Batman anyway. I am
merely suggesting that texts be chosen on criteria other than the highness of
their prose. It is all fine to say school doesn’t have to be fun, but there is
no point being sadistic about it.
In the Westminster system, with its two parties and rabid
oppositions, we frequently get ourselves into situations where we have to
choose between two diametrically opposite positions that are both a bit
average, when a compromise solution would be the most beneficial. Such a
situation is currently playing out in the education debate, and it behoves the
intelligent and engaged among us to approach the matter thoughtfully.
[1] I
would like to note that Asia and the Anglo-sphere are at very different stages
in their development. The Anglosphere is rich, most of Asia is not. There is no
point in being rich if we don’t consequently enjoy more leisure. This must be
kept in mind when approaching education as well. Sure, Asian children perform
better on Pisa. They also go to school for several more hours a day and have
significantly more pressure placed on them than Anglosphere children. The youth
suicide rate in South Korea (a top education performer) is the second highest
in the world behind Latvia last I checked.
Not a good ‘welfare’ outcome in the economic sense if you ask me.
[2]
Once upon a time I was a big fan of the unions. In many cases I still am, but
my first step on the road to disliking them came when the Australian Teacher’s
Union declined an increase in wages in exchange for an increase in
accountability.
[3] My
school was among the top performing public schools in the state, and nearly all
my class-mates rote learned their exam essays before entering the room. I had
close to a score of essays in my head that could be easily adapted to the minor
modifications the department of education made to questions year on year.
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