Edyoocayshun

The debate over the best way of teaching reading continues in Australia. Educators elsewhere will be familiar with the 'whole language vs phonetics debate', which, for reasons best known to academics, have been acrimonious at times. Both systems seem to have their strengths and weakness and, as best I can work out, a skillful mix of the two has proven to be effective. Senior educational bureaucrats seem, however, to have had a Damascan moment. Apparently, phonetics is back on the agenda, probably for no better reason than the need to seem to be doing something new.

That's a pretty fundamental way of thinking in this country. If it isn't some concoction lifted from overseas, then its just a facelift for something that already exists and that already has a perfectly happy name, for heaven's sakes. Just like the tortured English that passes for Business English...but I dont want to get started on that!

Allied with this kind of thinking is the debate over English syllabi in my home state of NSW. About five years ago, a new syllabus introduced into high schools a far more ambitious project in learning and understanding English than before. Unfortunately, it imported most of the jargon associated with tertiary post-modern communication studies. So for author/playwright/poet/writer, read 'composer' and for reader, read 'responder'. That's just the tip of it.

Don't get me wrong. I had a lot of fun with post-modern studies at uni the second time around, but then, I had already completed a first degree in the traditional way. I had a grounding( a dangerous and delusional word as it implies that something is solid) already, so I could afford to learn the academic buzzwords and play the game. Its was interesting and challenging but in the end, I knew it was like a play and I was was giving a performance. And for a micro-second, even I, imagined that analysing the text that was, say, toilet graffiti, was as valid as analysing the text that is, say, King Lear. I know I'm exaggerating, but I'm sure you get my drift....