"Incomprehensible Sludge" Teaching of English has been Allowed to Drift into a "Relativist Wasteland" -- Verdict of Literary Critic Prime Minister John Howard. (February 9, 2007)

    The Age's Jewel Topsfield reports that "the Prime Minister used yesterday's launch of conservative education consultant Kevin Donnelly's book, Dumbing Down, to lob another salvo in the schools' culture wars".

Mr Howard told his audience, "There is something both deadening and saccharine in curriculum documents where history is replaced by 'Time, Continuity and Change' and geography now becomes 'Place, Space and Environment'... [w]here Big Brother or a text message jostles with Shakespeare and classical literature for a place in the English curriculum, we are robbing children of their cultural heritage.

    "I would commend to all of you Kevin's work on the way in which the teaching of English has been allowed to drift into a relativist wasteland, where students are asked to deconstruct texts using politically correct theories, in contrast with a traditional view that great literature has something profound to say about the human condition."

Ms Topsfied went on to explain that the book's author "has been described as education's answer to inflammatory columnist Andrew Bolt, although he yesterday said he preferred to think of himself as the 'thinking man's Andrew Bolt'.   

    "The Prime Minister was more complimentary, describing Dr Donnelly, a former teacher and chief of staff to Kevin Andrews, as a 'beacon of common sense' and a courageous defender of the best of the Western cultural tradition, often battling 'against the grain of self-proclaimed education "experts"'".

Undoubtedly, the teaching of language and literature will show considerable variability from teacher to teacher, school to school, state to state, nation to nation, and just as certainly some of it will be excellent, some mediocre some downright poor, but for the Prime Minister of the nation to suggest that there is only one right road is worse than there be a proclamation that there be only one correct interpretation of a Beethoven Quartet or a Handel opera. That is a dumbing down of the worst kind.

It is a fair bet that the Prime Minister has never sat down with the best of the nation's literary critics or academic linguists to seek their views on modern literature or the study of language.

Were he to read how James Murray and his team of lexicographers and volunteers went about developing the OED he might become just a little less closed minded, just a bit more tolerant.

And perhaps it is worth mentioning that Mr Howard, the keen attendee at numerous sporting fixtures over the decade he has been Prime Minister has never in ten years attended a performance at Kirribilli's Ensemble Theatre although it is renowned for the calibre of its repertoire, performances and stars, and he has been invited by the Theatre as their guest.

It is within 7 minutes easy walking of Kirribilli House.

Shakespeare, David Williamson, and Neil Simon have all been performed and Australia's finest actors make repeated appearances.