Postmodern Literacy Education: The New Red Under the Bed

There's been a lot of fuss in the past few weeks about the influence of postmodern philosophy on current literacy education. Everyone's very worried about this evil "critical literacy" thing that is poisoning our kids' minds. Unfortunately very few of the critics (or loudest proponents for that matter)seem to have any idea what they are talking about. Our Education Minister recently spoke out against it, painting it as some sort of Communist indoctrination or something, and everyone's favourite Pope-wannabe, George Pell also got the front page of the paper last week. I got a letter to the editor published slamming Pell and his supporters. I provide for you an excerpt from the article about Pell's dissection of critical literacy and follow it with my published response and then my cartoon about it.

Pell's text message: English syllabus has no morals
Jill Rowbotham, Religious affairs writer
September 22, 2005

SCHOOLS that abandoned traditional English programs in favour of "critical literacy" were trying to make students agents of social change, Cardinal George Pell warned yesterday.

"While parents wonder why their children have never heard of the Romantic poets, Yeats or the Great War poets, and never ploughed through a Bronte, Orwell or Dickens novel, their children are engaged in analysing a variety of 'texts', including films, magazines, advertisements and even road signs as part of critical literacy," Cardinal Pell declared.

Debate has raged in recent months about the educational value of the critical literacy program, which encourages students to approach all texts - from books through to television commercials - from the point of view of the possible suspect motives behind it.

It has been described by advocates in the education sector as a "radical educational idea" that openly politicises the classroom.

Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson, who has been scathing about the ideologically driven nature of critical literacy, said last month its proponents were "doing significant damage to our future".

Cardinal Pell also criticised the political agendas involved in the critical literacy approach.

"Generally accepted understandings of family, sexuality, maleness, femaleness, parenthood and culture are treated as 'dominant discourses' that impose and legitimise injustice and intolerance. These dominant discourses are then undermined by a disproportionate focus on 'texts' which normalise moral and social disorder."

"My generation has had the benefit of learning from the tradition, and thus we can critique it. To give youngsters all critique and no foundation leaves them rudderless," he said.

"School syllabuses or university courses in which great works of literature and the study of history are dismissed as 'elitist' or relevant only to the 'dominant ethnic and social group' dismantle the sense of an objective reality in young people," he said.

"Conscience would become personal preference - a polite term for 'doing it my way', and clear thinking and past wisdom would be repudiated and ridiculed," he said.

To which I replied:

Critical literacy can be manipulated for right-wing, traditionalist purposes just as easily as it can be for left-wing progressive purposes. However, when it is taught properly, students do not, to quote your reporter Jill Rowbotham "approach all texts...from the point of view of the possible suspect motives behind them". It encourages students first and foremost to enjoy the texts ("classics" included). It then asks them to discuss what cultural background and personal bias the author comes from and acknowledge that there are other perspectives. None of these perspectives are portrayed as inherently evil, unless they espouse violence or something contrary to most human values. Critical literacy is simply about us all learning to "Vive la difference!"

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Nice cartoon! Wasn't Brendan Nelson odious, particularly the way he described the English syllabus as having been 'infected' and 'tainted' by critical literacy. Very McCarthyist. Which is why I find your headline so appropriate.

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Thanks Furry. Yes Nelson annoys me at times. He used to be reasonable when he was a Labor Party AMA President. What happened? The thing is that he contradicts himself so often because he doesn't actually seem to know what he is talking about in any depth.

There hasn't been a lot of Red Under the Bed action this year, crit lit has been about it.

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