Canon Fire
Catholic Archbishop George Pell has weighed in on the literature debate, advocating the books and methods he is most comfortable with, in opposition to the use of modern critical methods and texts. While “road signs” and “advertisements” may not meet the standards of a large number of people as literature, there needs to be more in the analysis of the curriculum than whether or not schools are teaching enough Shakespeare, by my reckoning. Critical analysis isn’t simple. Learning to read isn’t hard. Putting the two together, however, is the biggest trick of all. How many children have been turned off from reading anything, let alone anything more difficult than a supermarket circular? While many will be quick to accuse literary criticism tools as the precipitating factor, there’s more involved. I was lucky to grow up in a household that valued reading, even just for its own sake, but that didn’t fail in its efforts to engage in analysis. Other children aren’t so lucky, and they perpetuate the attitude for generations. How many times have you heard the argument “I don’t like novels because they’re not true”? “Art for art’s sake” isn’t going to help these people much. And how many people do you know who don’t read the weekend edition let alone a daily newspaper, relying instead entirely on television for information, news, and entertainment? How many of them are swallowing the Fox line without being able to restate it in their own words? I meet them every day, and if they had learned to analyze what they read, they might now be able to question what they’re told, rejecting or accepting it as the content deserves. Introducting them to substantive reading through movies, television shows, advertisements, or cereal packets, might allow them to attain the ability to move beyond simple forms of communication to more grand and substantial texts. I assume Pell is a smart enough man to know all this. That being the case, his argument with the literature curriculum isn’t Shakespeare vs. a tin of tomatoes, but with the ideological content some literature may have, or – worse – the ideology of the analysis. This is fearful thinking and leads to book bans and other demonizing practices. It’s unworthy of an educated person.