tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/english-texts-16067/articlesEnglish texts – The Conversation2024-01-29T19:04:52Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2200452024-01-29T19:04:52Z2024-01-29T19:04:52Z60% of Australian English teachers think video games are a ‘legitimate’ text to study. But only 15% have used one<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568121/original/file-20240107-27-ot63a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C38%2C5152%2C3368&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/closeup-of-white-sony-ps4-controller-HUBNTCzE-R8">Caspar Camille Rubin/ Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Are you worried about how much time your child spends playing video games? Do they “hibernate” for hours in their room, talking what seems like gibberish to their friends? </p>
<p>Fresh air and life away from gaming are undeniably important. But it may help to know <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0742051X23002664?via%3Dihub">our research</a> shows many English teachers are thinking seriously about how gaming applies in their classrooms – even if there are divided opinions about how to approach it. </p>
<h2>Video games and English education</h2>
<p>The global gaming industry <a href="https://olympics.com/en/news/ioc-president-thomas-bach-exploring-plans-to-create-olympic-esports-games">is huge</a> and continues to grow. It is tipped to be worth <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/gaming-pandemic-lockdowns-pwc-growth/">US$321 billion (A$477 billion) by 2026</a>. </p>
<p>While many gamers are over 18, we know video games are very important to young people’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2021.1936017">culture and identity</a>. In 2023, Bond University <a href="https://igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IGEA_AP2023_FINAL_REPORT.pdf">surveyed</a> 1,219 Australian households on behalf of the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association. It found 93% of 5-14 year-olds and 91% of 15-24 year-olds surveyed in Australia play video games. </p>
<p>More than fifteen years of <a href="https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/61222/88437_1.pdf">research</a> has also shown video games can also have <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/education/school-program-and-resources/game-lessons/">educational benefits</a>. This includes developing problem solving and <a href="https://www.nzcer.org.nz/system/files/Critical%20literacy%20and%20games%20working%20paper.pdf">literacy skills</a>, creativity, team work and developing a critical understanding of their place in the world.</p>
<p>From an English teachers’ perspective, many video games have complex narrative scripts and plots and clear character development. They also typically require players to interpret cultural contexts and apply them. For example, games like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/may/12/nintendo-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-kingdom-launches-critical-acclaim">The Legend of Zelda</a> (first released in 1986 with multiple spin-offs) contain back-stories and plot-lines that are ripe for analysis. </p>
<p>However, these sorts of games (or texts) are still not valued in English curricula. Greater value is placed on studying favourite classics such as Shakespeare, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and other print-based literature. </p>
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<img alt="A young person holds a gaming controller." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568123/original/file-20240107-27-tf6kwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568123/original/file-20240107-27-tf6kwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568123/original/file-20240107-27-tf6kwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568123/original/file-20240107-27-tf6kwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568123/original/file-20240107-27-tf6kwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568123/original/file-20240107-27-tf6kwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568123/original/file-20240107-27-tf6kwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Video games such as The Legend of Zelda contain complex plots and characters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-black-game-controller-1563796/">Deeanna Arts/ Peels</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-why-the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-is-big-news-even-among-those-who-dont-see-themselves-as-gamers-205229">Here's why The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is big news – even among those who don't see themselves as 'gamers'</a>
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<h2>Our research</h2>
<p>To better understand how teachers value digital games in their classrooms and how they use them, we surveyed 201 high school English teachers around Australia. They came from all school sectors. More than 60% of those surveyed had been teaching for at least ten years. </p>
<p>Our research found: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>58.6% of teachers surveyed believed digital games are a “legitimate text type”. This means they thought they can be taught in English programs alongside other texts such as plays, books and poetry. A further 27.4% were unsure and 14% of respondents said digital games were not legitimate texts </p></li>
<li><p>85% had not used digital games as a main or “focus” text for classroom study, with 74% having no plans to do so in the future</p></li>
<li><p>teachers with less experience were more likely to think they could use video games as a text for classroom study. For example, teachers who had used digital games with their students were 260% more likely to have 15 years or less experience </p></li>
<li><p>of those not using digital games as a focus or supplementary text, 23% reported limited knowledge of, and time to explore, how to use them in the classroom</p></li>
<li><p>80% of teachers had not received professional development on how to use digital games but 60% had independently read articles, books, or chapters about them.</p></li>
</ul>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/video-gaming-can-bolster-classroom-learning-but-not-without-teacher-support-190483">Video gaming can bolster classroom learning, but not without teacher support</a>
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<h2>What does the curriculum say?</h2>
<p>The term “multimodal” appears more than 300 times in the Australian English curriculum. Multimodal means a text contains two or more modes, such as written or spoken text, video images and audio. </p>
<p>While digital games are indeed multimodal texts, the curriculum does not overtly name digital games (or video games) as an example of a multimodal text.</p>
<p>Perhaps unsurprisingly, only 30% of our respondents felt digital games were mentioned in the curriculum.</p>
<h2>Teachers in their own words</h2>
<p>In open-ended questions, teachers revealed strong and in some cases, polarised views about video games in their classrooms. Those who were positive, emphasised their ability to engage students. As one teacher told us: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think digital games are the future of education […] a medium all students are familiar with, engage in, and enjoy. Students do not read books ‘en masse’ anymore, yet we as English teachers insist on dragging them kicking and screaming through texts they detest, whilst penalising them for playing the digital games they love. </p>
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<p>Teachers also spoke of the rich, complex nature of some games. For example, they valued the way digital games have “multiple plot lines”, “connectivity between segments”, and “immerse students in worlds” as “active rather than passive” users of a text.</p>
<p>But some teachers also said video games hampered students’ creativity: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am so over this stupid fixation. Digital games stymie imaginative writing and actually ‘flatten’ affect in the student’s ‘voice’. It comes to define their idea of writing and they regurgitate silly game stories that lack any emotional or creative flair.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They also expressed strong concerns they were were not good for students (echoing similar, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/31/1178977198/video-games-kids-good-limits">ongoing concerns</a> in news media), with one stating: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I really hate video games and I do not think they are healthy for kids […].</p>
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<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A closeup of a computer keyboard." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568122/original/file-20240107-17-jrz2iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568122/original/file-20240107-17-jrz2iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568122/original/file-20240107-17-jrz2iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568122/original/file-20240107-17-jrz2iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568122/original/file-20240107-17-jrz2iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568122/original/file-20240107-17-jrz2iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568122/original/file-20240107-17-jrz2iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Teachers in the study variously described computer games as the ‘future’ and a ‘stupid fixation’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/purple-and-black-computer-keyboard-74JeU2jfnfk">Syed Ali/ Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>What does this mean?</h2>
<p>Our research shows digital games remain a contentious issue among English teachers. This suggests there needs to be clearer curriculum guidelines about their use in the classroom (rather than general references to “multimodal” texts). </p>
<p>It also suggests teachers need more professional development around video games, including their potential benefits as well as how to use them effectively and for critical understanding in their English programs. This will require practical resources and research-based examples. </p>
<p>We need students to be able to think critically when engaging with all types of texts. Especially those that feature so prominently in their lives. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vacuuming-moving-house-unpacking-are-boring-in-real-life-so-why-is-doing-them-in-a-video-game-so-fun-214853">Vacuuming, moving house, unpacking are boring in real life – so why is doing them in a video game so fun?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220045/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Scholes has received funding from The Australian Research Council, Catholic Education, Qld, The Department of Education, Qld, and the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Gutierrez, Kathy Mills, and Luke Rowe do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many English teachers are thinking seriously about how gaming applies in their classrooms. But opinions are divided about how to approach it.Amanda Gutierrez, Associate Professor in Literacy and WIL partnerships, Australian Catholic UniversityKathy Mills, Professor of Literacies and Digital Cultures, Australian Catholic UniversityLaura Scholes, Associate Professor of Gender and Literacies, Australian Catholic UniversityLuke Rowe, Lecturer and Researcher (Science of Learning), Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1561192021-03-02T19:12:31Z2021-03-02T19:12:31ZWe can see the gender bias of all-boys’ schools by the books they study in English<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386833/original/file-20210228-21-1ycvnr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/back-school-education-children-reading-textbooks-1565838166">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“She’s more crazy than she is female.” </p>
<p>So declared a senior student in a furious critique of Sylvia Plath’s poetry. The classroom was entirely male, myself included. As the teacher, I mediated discussion but had come to expect opposition to conversations about gender in the all-boys’ Sydney private school.</p>
<p>My research into the presumptive biases of single-sex education has affirmed a culture of resistance to talking about gender in all-male schools. Comments like this one can’t be dismissed or excused as teenage bravado. They’re part of an enduring ethos that continues to protect male privilege in the private school system.</p>
<p>Single-sex schools across Sydney are reckoning with sexual violence disclosures in response to a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/rape-culture-reckoning-as-wave-of-sexual-assault-claims-unleashed-20210225-p575r2.html">heartbreaking petition</a> from more than 3,000 women. Hundreds have shared their testimony in a document created by a former Kambala schoolgirl Chanel Contos demanding better education on sexual consent.</p>
<p>Contos also calls for a change to the pervasive misogyny of single-sex male schools. And here, we need to recognise the biases that infuse all aspects of school life, including classroom teaching.</p>
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<p>My research has found the learning differences assumed by teachers and school leaders in gender-segregated schools impact both programming and practice. In an all-male context, this can marginalise women and galvanise destructive gender stereotypes.</p>
<h2>Male schools favour male texts</h2>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-011-0037-y">Neuroscientific research</a> has shown any disparities between male and female ways of thinking are irrelevant to the psychology of learning. In spite of this, studies demonstrate how <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0233378">assumptions about gender guide the type of content selected</a> for study. </p>
<p><a href="https://research.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0029/152957/A-REPORT-ON-TRENDS-IN-SENIOR-ENGLISH-TEXTLISTS-BACALJA_BLISS.pdf">A report from the University of Melbourne</a> recognises the enduring misconception among teachers and school leaders that </p>
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<p>male – rather than female – authors and creators are more equipped to write about and imagine major social, political and cultural issues.</p>
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<p>For the English classroom, where my work is focused, the most visible indicator of this belief is the choice of texts to study. In a single-sex male context there is a tendency to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01596300802643124">favour fiction deemed appropriately masculine</a>, and literature <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20466644?seq=1">written by male authors</a>. The result is that gender becomes both invisible and irrelevant to classroom criticism.</p>
<p>This is contrasted in co-educational and single-sex female school settings, where text choice is less likely to be guided by “<a href="https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.newcastle.edu.au/lib/newcastle/reader.action?docID=1501491&ppg=538">the inevitable privileges of being a boy</a>”. In these contexts gender remains visible and valuable to classroom discussion, <a href="https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.newcastle.edu.au/lib/newcastle/reader.action?docID=1501491&ppg=541">but does not directly inform content selection</a> or curriculum programming.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-literary-canon-is-exhilarating-and-disturbing-and-we-need-to-read-it-56610">Friday essay: the literary canon is exhilarating and disturbing and we need to read it</a>
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<p>In 2015 and 2016 I surveyed more than 130 English teachers and curriculum leaders across public and independent schools. I wanted to investigate whether teaching practices beyond content selection were influenced by gender assumptions in all-male environments.</p>
<p>The interviews were striking in their expectations of gender and student success. There was a near unanimous assumption by teachers I spoke to across all school systems that male students should be steered away from overtly gendered literary experiences. </p>
<p>The teachers I spoke to believed male students were more likely to be successful in assessments if they avoided analyses of gender, including their own. While there is no quantifiable data to support this claim, it is almost impossible to measure student achievement separate from the acknowledged biases of practice.</p>
<p>Many teachers speculated that students in all-male schools seldom had cause to recognise or reflect on gender entitlement. As such, they were likely to be limited in their capacity for literary discussion on this aspect of identity.</p>
<h2>Female literature and male bias</h2>
<p>The issue might suggest a simple solution. By including more literature by female authors and about female experiences, we could seemingly break the silence of gender in male single-sex schools. Unfortunately, the problem is more profound.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387133/original/file-20210302-19-1kh4u2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A co-ed classroom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387133/original/file-20210302-19-1kh4u2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387133/original/file-20210302-19-1kh4u2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387133/original/file-20210302-19-1kh4u2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387133/original/file-20210302-19-1kh4u2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387133/original/file-20210302-19-1kh4u2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387133/original/file-20210302-19-1kh4u2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387133/original/file-20210302-19-1kh4u2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The way literature is studied in co-educational classrooms is profoundly different to how it’s done in all-male schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/multi-racial-teenage-pupils-class-one-280363907">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>The teachers I interviewed from all-male schools spoke about gender being sidelined, even in female-focused texts. They noted in these lessons, discussion shifted to favour other textual concerns, or to prioritise a male perspective of the central female experience.</p>
<p>These observations again differ from <a href="https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.newcastle.edu.au/docview/1728219905?pq-origsite=summon">research in all-girls schools</a> and in co-educational schools. Here <a href="https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.newcastle.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1177/0957926595006001003">all students appear to benefit from the presence of female students</a> and the lived female experience to which they are able to give voice.</p>
<p>My research has affirmed these outcomes in Australian classroom practice. As a case study, the HSC English Advanced syllabus prescribes a comparative analysis of Sylvia Plath’s <em>Ariel</em> and Ted Hughes’s <em>Birthday Letters</em>. Responses I collected from all-male schools showed they were inclined to marginalise Plath’s womanhood, and favour Hughes’s account of their violent marriage. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/elite-boys-schools-like-st-kevins-were-set-up-to-breed-hyper-masculinity-which-can-easily-turn-toxic-132433">Elite boys' schools like St Kevin's were set up to breed hyper-masculinity, which can easily turn toxic</a>
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<p>In contrast, responses from all-female and co-educational schools more often presented extensive discussion of Plath’s feminist identity, even when those responses were composed by male students.</p>
<p>More disturbingly, several female teachers I interviewed said they felt intimidated when asked to discuss constructions of gender in all-male school environments. They said a small but vocal portion of older adolescents would become aggressively oppositional, and assert such content was only included as “tokenism” towards a “feminist agenda”.</p>
<p>One senior English teacher based in Sydney’s east recalled a close study of Ophelia’s suicide in <em>Hamlet</em>. The discussion centred on the possibility Ophelia’s death was the ultimate act of passivity. As a woman, the responsibly that burdens Ophelia is too great, and suicide is her only escape. In the all-male class, a student argued he would only write about the sexual connotations of this reading if the teacher could promise his essay would be marked by a male member of staff.</p>
<h2>It matters</h2>
<p>These accounts are troubling. Dangerous learning assumptions indicate the need for reform across curriculum programming and teaching practice. But their innate influence also hints at a clear path for improvement.</p>
<p>Compelling scholarship shows <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44011386">fiction affects students’ social empathy</a>. The English classroom can <a href="https://doi-org.ezproxy.newcastle.edu.au/10.1177/1053451211424604">foster inclusion</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30046755">develop appreciation for gender equity</a>.</p>
<p>The need for our private school system to denounce the most conspicuous elements of misogyny is urgent, but we must also contend with the quietly profound role classroom learning plays in affirming or challenging an institutional culture of oppression.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/not-as-simple-as-no-means-no-what-young-people-need-to-know-about-consent-155736">Not as simple as 'no means no': what young people need to know about consent</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156119/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cody Reynolds does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>All-boys’ schools often choose texts for English study written by men. But the sexism goes beyond that. They are more likely to shy away from any exploration of gender in literature.Cody Reynolds, Researcher & Educator, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1271102019-11-19T19:20:46Z2019-11-19T19:20:46ZOld white men dominate school English booklists. It’s time more Australian schools taught Australian books<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302338/original/file-20191119-169386-18vw476.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shakespeare's plays are still some of the most studied texts in school English.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent weeks, Australian universities’ commitment to teaching Australian literature has come under scrutiny. This came amid revelations Sydney University has withdrawn funding from its Chair of Australian Literature – the nation’s first. </p>
<p>Later news of the <a href="https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2019/11/08/142160/the-university-of-western-australia-to-close-uwa-publishing/">possible closure of UWA Publishing</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/31/australian-literature-in-universities-is-under-threat-but-cultural-cringe-isnt-the-reason-why">compounded anxiety</a> about the future of Australian literary studies. An <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/cultural-cringe-is-creeping-back/news-story/bf0bfbf9c8edd0e4b1c6ac75008865b7">article in The Australian newspaper</a> noted there is no local university in which an undergraduate student can specialise in Australian literature.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-open-access-shift-at-uwa-publishing-is-an-experiment-doomed-to-fail-126684">The open access shift at UWA Publishing is an experiment doomed to fail</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The concern goes beyond tertiary studies. We <a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=324169191985626;res=IELAPA">conducted a project</a> exploring secondary school teachers’ engagement with Australian texts. We found Australian books are not consistently taught in classrooms and, when they are, they more often than not marginalise female, refugee and Indigenous authors. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A professor famously said he would teach the novel Kangaroo, in the absence of appropriate texts by Australian authors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_(novel)">Wikimedia commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The demographic of Australian classrooms has changed significantly in the past fifty years. But the texts studied in English have <a href="https://publishing.monash.edu/books/rr-9781925495577.html">remained remarkably stable</a>. </p>
<p>In our multi-cultural society, where compulsory schooling is intended to help develop critically informed and empathetic citizens, this situation requires serious attention.</p>
<h2>Why teachers don’t teach Aussie books</h2>
<p>Studying English and literature in settler societies was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1358684X.2017.1351228">historically intended</a> to support students to value <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/55220/">“Englishness”</a>. As a result, Australian literature, if it was acknowledged at all, was <a href="https://publishing.monash.edu/books/rr-9781925495577.html">systematically marginalised</a> and maligned in the 19th and early 20th centuries. </p>
<p>In the 1940s – in a precursor to what we now call the “<a href="https://meanjin.com.au/essays/a-a-phillips-and-the-icultural-cringei-creating-an-iaustralian-traditioni/">cultural cringe</a>” – an English professor <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/blog/a-classic-is-a-terrible-thing-to-waste">famously renounced</a> Australian literature. He said that, in the absence of appropriate books by Australians, he would lecture on DH Lawrence’s novel, <em>Kangaroo</em>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-has-no-culture-changing-the-mindset-of-the-cringe-85995">'Australia has no culture': changing the mindset of the cringe</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Australia’s first national curriculum, in 2008, attempted to respond to this enduring imperial literary legacy. It <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/cross-curriculum-priorities/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-histories-and-cultures/">mandated teaching Australian literature</a>, placing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature at the heart of this commitment. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harper Lee is one of two female authors on the list of the top 15 books taught by English teachers we compiled from our national survey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird">Wikimedia commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most states and territories have mandated text lists for school senior years, which generally include titles by Indigenous authors. But <a href="https://www.vate.org.au/news/report-trends-senior-english-text-lists">recent research</a> in Victoria has shown school uptake of these texts is limited.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=324169191985626;res=IELAPA">research shows</a> teachers are often reluctant to select books by Australian authors. Reasons for this include a limited knowledge of diverse Australian texts, often due to a lack of exposure to Australian literature at school and university.</p>
<p>There are fewer teaching resources for Australian literature too and teachers are concerned about inaccurately representing the stories of Indigenous Australians. </p>
<p>Some teachers we spoke to also raised questions about the quality of Australian literature, as compared with more established canonical texts. One teacher said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While I appreciate that it is important to have Australian literature in the curriculum […] I find that Australian texts are often very similar and this limits the number of themes and ideas the students are exposed to over the course of their education.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We also conducted a national survey of more than 700 English teachers, asking them what books they taught in class. The following top 15 texts were most referenced:</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>This should not be seen as a definitive list of texts most used in Australian classrooms. But it does offer insight into the relative status of Australian literature in the curriculum. </p>
<p>Most works on this list are written in the past, by male British or American writers. Most of these have formed part of the school literary canon for generations. There are only two texts by women, Hinton and Lee, and no texts by Australian women, migrant Australians or Aboriginal writers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/diversity-the-stella-count-and-the-whiteness-of-australian-publishing-69976">Diversity, the Stella Count and the whiteness of Australian publishing</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The only texts by Australians cited here are Marsden’s 1990s dystopian invasion series and Silvey’s 2009 coming of age novel. </p>
<h2>How do we change it?</h2>
<p>Our research showed teachers need more time, knowledge, resources and confidence to include more Australian literature in the classroom. This is not surprising given teachers we <a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=324169191985626;res=IELAPA">surveyed and interviewed</a> often completed both secondary and tertiary studies in English without significant experiences of Australian literature. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Coleman’s speculative fiction novel has been studied by our teacher researchers.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In response, colleagues and I have partnered with the <a href="https://thestellaprize.com.au/">Stella Prize</a> (a literary award for Australian women writers) to develop the <a href="http://teacher-researchers.org/">teacher-researchers project</a>. </p>
<p>Teachers select a text from the Stella long-list. They then work intensively with the project team – which includes teacher-educators and Australian literary studies experts – and university archives or other cultural collections, to develop resources to teach their chosen texts that can be shared. </p>
<p>Texts in this pilot project have included <em><a href="https://thestellaprize.com.au/prize/2015-prize/heat-and-light/">Heat and Light</a></em> by Ellen Van Neervan, <em><a href="https://thestellaprize.com.au/prize/2018-prize/terra-nullius/">Terra Nullius</a></em> by Claire G. Coleman and <a href="https://thestellaprize.com.au/readup/books/the-hate-race/"><em>The Hate Race</em></a> by Maxine Beneba Clarke.</p>
<p>This project will expand the literary knowledge and experiences of teachers, students and school communities involved. But a concerted, bipartisan and enduring commitment to resourcing scholarship and teaching of Australian writing across universities and schools is imperative. </p>
<p>If we are to ensure all students experience Australian stories from the past and the present, Australian writing, in all its rich diversity, must be a central part of a literary education.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127110/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Larissa McLean Davies receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Program) for Investigating Literary Knowledge in the Making of English Teachers. The Teaching Australia project was funded by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund. Teacher-Researchers is funded by the Melbourne Graduate School of Education - University of Melbourne. </span></em></p>We compiled a list of the 15 most commonly cited books taught by English teachers we surveyed. It contains only two Australian writers, neither of which are Indigenous.Larissa McLean Davies, Associate Professor Language and Literacy Education, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/402682015-05-08T04:31:05Z2015-05-08T04:31:05ZIt’s time to take the curriculum back from dead white men<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79429/original/image-20150427-18164-gg662m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's not that Shakespeare needs to burn out – but it's time for him to fade away.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dead white men rule the roost at South African and British universities. They preside over open spaces and lecture halls. They clog up reading lists and dominate the syllabus, particularly in subjects like philosophy and English literature. </p>
<p>In eight years of university teaching in the United Kingdom and South Africa, I have had to cover works by Malory, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Eliot, Sophocles, Ovid, Homer, Beckett, Joyce, Hopkins, Heaney, Anouilh and … more Shakespeare. In all that time, I’ve been required to teach literary texts by just three women, also dead and white: Sappho, Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen. </p>
<p>Outside of the courses I have designed myself, only one person of colour – <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1988/mahfouz-bio.html">Naguib Mahfouz</a> – has featured in my required teaching. Academics can suggest additional texts and offer optional modules but not all students will delve deeper in their own time or explore authors not included on the required reading list. </p>
<p>In South Africa and the UK, students who want diverse, transformative education are growing increasingly restive. Their first target was not an author or theorist, but an entirely different sort of dead white man.</p>
<h2>Toppling Rhodes from his plinth</h2>
<p>For 81 years, a statue honouring British mining magnate, politician and committed colonialist Cecil John Rhodes occupied a perch on the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) campus. But on March 9 this year the statue’s silent contemplation was interrupted when 30-year-old student Chumani Maxwele threw a <a href="http://www.citypress.co.za/news/student-spring-is-long-overdue/">bucket of human faeces</a> over the statue and sparked a movement, #RhodesMustFall.</p>
<p>Rhodes openly derided black people and foreshadowed the formal introduction of apartheid as far back as 1894, when he <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes">told</a> the Parliament of Cape Town: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I hold that the natives should be apart from white men, and not mixed up with them … We fail utterly when we put natives on an equality with ourselves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>UCT students, staff and alumni argued that a man like Rhodes did not deserve a monument at one of Africa’s <a href="http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2014#sorting=rank+region=+country=+faculty=+stars=false+search=">top universities</a>. The statue, they insisted, was a physical reminder of just how little the institution had changed from the days when it only served white students.</p>
<p>Their complaints struck a national chord. One month after Maxwele’s pungent protest, Cecil John Rhodes was <a href="http://citizen.co.za/359936/students-predict-new-beginnings-as-rhodes-finally-falls/">evicted</a> from UCT.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79450/original/image-20150427-18138-11vu7tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79450/original/image-20150427-18138-11vu7tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79450/original/image-20150427-18138-11vu7tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79450/original/image-20150427-18138-11vu7tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79450/original/image-20150427-18138-11vu7tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79450/original/image-20150427-18138-11vu7tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79450/original/image-20150427-18138-11vu7tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79450/original/image-20150427-18138-11vu7tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A statue of Cecil John Rhodes is removed from the University of Cape Town’s campus in April.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Hutchings/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Students in the UK are also questioning the lack of diversity in higher education. They are asking: <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-fewer-than-100-black-professors-in-britain-why-24088">“why isn’t my professor black?”</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dscx4h2l-Pk">“why is my curriculum white?”</a>. These are not new questions. Calls for transformation are as much a hallmark of higher education as it is a resistance to change. </p>
<p>But in the era of social media, student activists are armed with more efficient and powerful tools than ever before. The message to universities, carried on platforms like YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter, is clear: engage with these issues – or get left behind.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mBqgLK9dTk4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A panel discussion hosted by the University College of London.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>After the fall</h2>
<p>The Rhodes monument seems an apt metaphor for the looming presence of certain authors, texts and narratives in the humanities and social sciences. The problem is that they are not as easily dislodged as statues. If we want to build on what movements like #RhodesMustFall have achieved and really decolonise universities, it’s time for dead white men to stop controlling things. </p>
<p>Altering the curriculum is a necessary part of this change. That doesn’t mean Shakespeare should pack his bags and leave universities once and for all. It simply requires a different way of teaching – and here’s how it can be done. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Academics and their students must engage with English being a language born of and sustained by migration and cross-cultural contact both in Britain and overseas. This narrative must be a central part of the curriculum, from the very beginning of the literary studies degree.</p></li>
<li><p>We must acknowledge the power structures that have allowed some people to contribute to the canon while keeping others out. These structures have also preserved certain texts while ignoring others. We must also explain the role universities have played in this selection process. </p></li>
<li><p>It’s time to eradicate the notion that writing by women, people of colour and other socially and culturally excluded groups is only interesting to a limited number of people. Being familiar with these voices is essential to the kinds of skills cultivated by and assessed in a literary studies degree. It is not an optional extra.</p></li>
<li><p>Teachers must be retaught. We tend to reproduce the narratives we absorbed as students, so an ongoing process of research and sharing is crucial if we are to teach differently. The Sheffield SEED project is <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/seed-project-sheffield">tackling this issue</a> well.</p></li>
<li><p>“Race” and “gender” do not just mean blackness and womanhood. There must be space in the core undergraduate curriculum for analyses of whiteness and masculinity, too. Rachel van Duyvenbode’s White Like Me: Reading Whiteness in American Literature <a href="http://www-online.shef.ac.uk:3001/pls/live/web_cal.cal_unit_detail?unit_code=EGH6019&ctype=SPR+SEM&start_date=09-FEB-09&mand=Optional">MA module</a> at the University of Sheffield is a useful template that can be adapted at undergraduate level.</p></li>
<li><p>Students must have opportunities to produce original research and pursue their own concerns and interests from the outset of their literary studies degree. The University of Sheffield again leads the pack here through its Radical Theory module. This asks students to actively engage in “re-interpret[ing] the university as a site for philosophical speculation and theory-based intervention” through independent projects and peer-to-peer learning. </p></li>
<li><p>Creative writing can give students – and teachers – a chance to imagine the voices that are ignored in our existing curricula. A possible starting point might be the responses of the Africans who, in 1607, witnessed the <a href="http://www.rsc.org.uk/explore/shakespeare/plays/hamlet/stage-history.aspx">first recorded performance of Hamlet</a>: on a ship off the coast of Sierra Leone. </p></li>
</ol>
<h2>A long-term investment</h2>
<p>It will take more than a month-long campaign sparked by a bucket of waste to transform higher education in South Africa and the UK. In the short term, at least, there will be no empty plinths. Changing the curriculum is just one of many things that needs to be done – but it’s an important start.</p>
<p>By allowing different voices to step up to the lecture podium, we can begin to push dead white men like William Shakespeare out of the limelight and ultimately produce a curriculum that better reflects the diversity of English literature and culture both past and present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40268/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Pett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When literary studies degrees focus almost entirely on the work of white, male writers, we do our students and the academy a great disservice.Sarah Pett, Teaching Fellow, SOAS; Teaching Fellow, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/396332015-04-14T20:22:19Z2015-04-14T20:22:19ZWhy do we recycle the same old texts in our English curriculum?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77849/original/image-20150414-24336-1rd02qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens: are there no new books to compare? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/benleto/3485066591">Ben Leto/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you look at the texts you studied at school, you’ll probably find they were quite similar to those being studied by your kids and perhaps even those studied by your parents. </p>
<p>For decades <a href="https://anu-au.academia.edu/MelissaJogie">the same English texts have been recycled</a> on prescribed lists. Newer texts are hardly ever added to the curriculum. Is this because there is just nothing new to compare to Shakespeare, Chaucer and Dickens, or is there something else behind the choice?</p>
<h2>Text selection in Australia and the UK</h2>
<p>I looked into the text selection practices in Australia and England and found two patterns. </p>
<p>Firstly, the texts are not really chosen with the students in mind, so engaging students does not seem to be of highest priority for curriculum boards. </p>
<p>Secondly, in both systems it was well known that the current texts are constantly repeated or reshuffled from other areas of the curriculum into different English sections or study units. </p>
<p>This means that not only were there texts that did not engage current students in English, but fewer recently published texts were being added to the curriculum for teachers to consider when planning lessons.</p>
<p>Both case studies in Australia (New South Wales, Board of Studies Higher School Certificate HSC) and England (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) A-Level) show that older or traditional texts in both curricula have been on the prescribed reading list for decades. This means that the well-known texts published pre-1900 to 2000 far outnumber the texts published from 2000 onwards.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How many of you studied this old biddy?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/srgblog/762689357">srgpicker/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one section of the NSW English curriculum I found that in 14 years 16% of the texts were published up until 1900, 47% of the texts were published from 1900 to 2000, and only 37% of texts were from 2000 onwards. </p>
<p>Even the texts from 2000 onwards were choices that were repeated or reshuffled; they were not newer options. I found some texts have been on the curriculum for over 50 years, such as Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. </p>
<p>Even if the argument is made that Great Expectations is a great text and undoubtedly a shorter text to teach, it is further limited because it is a choice of one in five texts that teachers can pick from in the curriculum. </p>
<p>So text choices are even further limited not only in the variety or types of texts and their publication dates, but also in the quantity of texts teachers are able to choose from when selecting from available options.</p>
<p>Similarly in England, over eight years for a contemporary English unit of study, 81% of the texts listed were published from 1900-2000, 19% of texts were published from 2000 to present. Even after their most recent education reform, only one new text - The Help - was added to the list scheduled to be taught from 2015-2017. </p>
<p>This means only one new text would have been added to the prescribed list, which was published in 2000 and is intended to be taught until 2017. This evidence suggests that after major education changes in the UK, the English curriculum seems to include even more well-known, traditional texts (published prior to 2000) rather than a wider range of modern choices. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">…and this one?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/liampye/16833879721">Liam Pye/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>This is interesting given the public appeal by a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/michael-gove-axes-to-kill-a-mockingbird-and-other-american-classics-from-english-literature-gcse-syllabus-9432818.html">former education secretary, Michael Gove</a>, to reduce the number of American classical texts on the current English curriculum to accommodate more contemporary British options.</p>
<h2>Why are there few new options?</h2>
<p>When the curriculum boards (NSW Board of Studies; AQA) were questioned about text selection practices, they said texts were repeated or reshuffled because of the lack of resources and limited skills of teachers to manage newer texts. They also said teachers were the ones who often repeated texts and did not make use of the newer choices that were added to the prescribed lists. </p>
<p>However, 80% of all 48 teachers interviewed for this research argued that this was not the case.</p>
<p>Teachers, in both case studies, argued that text selection was a burdensome process for them. They felt the main issue was not being able to select texts that were most appropriate for their students and their learning abilities.</p>
<p>Teachers agreed that most times texts were repeatedly taught because of the lack of resources at the school, or the limited time available to design new lessons.</p>
<p>However, they voiced that the current lists of prescribed texts were often boring to teach, felt like texts were forcibly used to address aims in the curriculum and that, to an extent, the current selection even disengaged students who once did enjoy English literature.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789460917059">Research into text selection</a> argues that if students enjoy the texts they study at school, the meaning becomes reinforced and the curriculum aims are better achieved. </p>
<p>This isn’t to say we should reduce the number of texts or well-known favourites in the curriculum. But we do need to select texts that engage our contemporary and culturally diverse students, while also achieving the learning goals set out in the curriculum.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Melissa will be on hand for an author Q&A between 3 and 4 pm AEST on Wednesday April 15. Post your questions in the comments section below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39633/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Jogie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Do English texts stay the same over the decades because there are no good modern books? Or because the process of selecting new books is just too hard?Melissa Jogie, PhD Candidate, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.