Disciplining Literature: Higher School Certificate Prescribed Texts for English : 1965-1995 Garry Rosser University of Wollongong
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University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2000 Disciplining literature: Higher School Certificate prescribed texts for english : 1965-1995 Garry Rosser University of Wollongong Recommended Citation Rosser, Garry, Disciplining literature: Higher School Certificate prescribed texts for english : 1965-1995, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Department of English, University of Wollongong, 2000. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/1368 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] DISCIPLINING LITERATURE : HIGHER SCHOOL CERTIFICATE PRESCRIBED TEXTS FOR ENGLISH: 1965 -1995. A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree Doctor of Philosophy from UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by GARRY ROSSER, Master of Arts (Honours) Department of English. 2000. 0 DISCIPLINING LITERATURE: HIGHER SCHOOL CERTIFICATE PRESCRD3ED TEXTS FOR ENGLISH: 1965 - 1995. Researcher: You said something about analysing, is that not something you enjoy? Student: They say 'give your opinion' and I just have my opinion and somebody else says 'oh, that's not right, it's this' and you think 'well, you said your own opinion.' Researcher: This is a common thing, this notion that you read the poem and you bring your interpretation to it, but that's not really what is meant. Student: Yeah. Researcher: Where is the interpretation supposed to come from then? Student: Study guides, I don't know; they hand out study guides and say 'don't write what these people write, they're just there to help you' or something, and sort of read them, and then that's what they expect you to write; it's pretty confusing. They say 'they're just there to help you' but if you write something else they'll say 'where did you get this from?' (Female Student, Kennedy) Student: I think that's another thing I don't like about English 'cos they always tell you you're allowed to have your own opinion but you get marked down if you don't follow what you've been told; like if they've been saying all this stuff in class or something and...in the tests it's something totally different;...and you still get marked down, even if you can support it. Researcher: So youVe got to follow the line? How do you know what the line is to follow? Student: Just listen to the teacher. (Female student, Kennedy) Pedagogical and Disciplinary Positions in Secondary English, p. 9. A paper presented at the AARE Conference, Hobart, 1995. Janice Wright, Bill Winser, Anne Cranny-Francis and Pat Muir. University of Wollongong. CONTENTS: ABSTRACT CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION Approach 5 Parameters 10 Themes 12 Modes of English teaching 17 CHAPTER 2. THEORETIC CONSIDERATIONS 26 Foucault and Education 27 The 'Hidden Curriculum' 34 ' Cultural Capital' and Education 38 Perspective 41 CHAPTER 3. LITERARY CONSIDERATIONS 44 "Literature' and literature' 45 Literary Canonicity 48 Cambridge English and New Criticism 59 Approaches of Contemporary Critical Theories 67 Educational Responses to Contemporary Critical Theories 78 CHAPTER 4. THE ENGLISH SYLLABUS COMMITTEE The Inception of the English Syllabus Committee The First English Syllabus Committee Background to the Senior English Syllabus, 1965 The English Syllabus Committee, 1966 - 1976 The English Syllabus Committee, 1976 - 1995 The Termination of Syllabus Committees, 1995 CHAPTER 5. SECONDARY SENIOR ENGLISH CURRICULUM: 1965 -1995 The Wyndham Scheme Innovations in The Wider Curriculum, 1965 - 1976 Senior English Syllabus, 1965 Senior English Syllabus, 1974/76 Expansion in The Wider Curriculum, 1976 -1988 Senior English Syllabus, 1982 2 Unit Contemporary English Devolution in The Wider Curriculum, 1988 -1995 Anticipated Changes CHAPTER 6. PRESCRIBED TEXTS FOR SENIOR ENGLISH: 1965 - 1995 Prescribed Texts and Graphics Text Selection Gordon Shrubb's Study (1986) 2/3 Unit Novels 3 Unit Texts 2 Unit (General) Novels HSC Poetry HSC Drama Conclusions CHAPTER 7. HSC ENGLISH EXAMINATION Introduction Responses Required of Students Discussion of Findings Grading Students' Responses: Official Criteria Grading Students' Responses: 'Cultural Capital' Conclusion CHAPTER 8. CONCLUSION Summation Point of View ENDNOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDICES 1 ABSTRACT 2 This thesis presents an analysis of the prescribed texts on the NSW Higher School Certificate English syllabi between 1965 and 1995. These, and the strategies that inform their reading, are not examined in the manner of literary criticism but as an expression of institutional practices and cultural discourses. The selection and study of these texts has played an important role in the construction of literary and cultural 'truths' in Australia during the second half of this century. This study traces the origin of the selection of these texts to principally two sources: Cambridge English, as it was first practised in the U.K. by F.R. Leavis and his colleagues from the late 1920s, and later adopted into some academic circles in Australia; and American New Criticism, derivations of which similarly flourished in the Australian academy from the 1950s. One implication of this is that those parts of the Australian academy which wielded power within secondary education sources from the 1960s to the 1990s were intent on looking overseas — towards the U.K. and the U.S.A. — for literary guidance and direction, rather than being attentive to developments in writing and criticism that were occurring here, one consequence of which was that the formation of the 'citizen' within the NSW education system at this time was modelled in large part upon expectations that were foreign to social realities in Australia. Within NSW education a hybrid of Leavisite criticism and American New Criticism developed between 1965 and 1995, which was taken by academics, teachers and students as the 'norm' and 'truth' in literary interpretation. This hybrid dominated most aspects of criticism and reading. The thesis attempts to generate explanations for this domination. Having first sketched in what we consider key theoretic and literary considerations as background to our discussion, it scrutinises, for example, the composition and influence of the English Syllabus Committee, which was responsible for text choice, nomination and review. It reveals that this sub-branch of the NSW Board of Studies largely comprised academics from the same sandstone universities where Leavisism and New Criticism were so unswervingly adhered to. The study looks, too, at different Senior English syllabi to show that again the reading and critical practices of Cambridge English/American New Criticism are evident, and entrenched in, these official directive documents from the NSW 3 Department of Education. It also examines the texts themselves to disclose that their choice privileges these same literary regimes. Finally, it discusses how the Holy Grail of high school education in English, the HSC exam, reinforces these values and practices. The study concludes that the HSC prescribed texts for English from 1965 to 1995 are but a singular expression of broad cultural and institutional phenomena. Their selection and how they are studied conceal an array of power plays and ideological standpoints that go to the heart of our understanding of what is 'literary' and why it should be so. * CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 5 Approach This study examines some of the implications of the selection of prescribed texts set on the NSW Higher School Certificate (HSC) reading lists between 1965 and 1995. These texts are all books, as distinct from, for example, film-scripts, TV material or journalism, and with one or two exceptions only, they are generically distinguishable as works of 'literature', meaning in this context, the contemporary commonsense understanding as writing that is generally of a 'high' 'standard' of an imaginative and/or creative kind.1 In the English syllabi they are usually grouped as poems, plays and novels. In this study they are not examined in the manner of literary scholarship or criticism, but as an expression of institutional practices and cultural discourses. In other words, it is not our interest here to examine the texts' contents, form, or for that matter, their historicity; rather, we are concerned with assessing their place and function in some aspects of our culture. This is not to suggest that this study is purely speculative, in the sense that its focus is entirely philosophical or theoretical — it does present empirical data, for example, in its arguments, and it does try to inspect policy statements and syllabus documents with objectivity and rigour. Rather, it relates, in admiration at least, to the work of such author/educators as Raymond Williams2, Terry Eagleton3 and Chris Baldick4 in the UK, Robert Scholes5 and John Willinsky6 from the USA and Canada, and in Australia Jack Thompson7, Kevin Hart8, John Docker9 and Allan and Carmen Luke10. It shares with Williams, for example, some of the importance he gives to historicism, cultural materialism and, after Gramsci, his concepts of ideology and hegemony,11 with Eagleton his systematic dismantling of received notions of literature,12 and with Thompson his empathetic analysis of students' reading interests and capacities.13 From the field of education this study takes most of its content — pedagogical practices, teachers' subjectivities, syllabi documents, historical developments in high school curriculum in NSW, archival material, and the lists of texts themselves. It attempts to treat these in terms of some of their assumptions about writing, cultural context and institution implications. It asks, for instance, what notion of 'good literature' is conveyed in HSC 6 syllabi, what knowledges of 'education', citizenship and national identity are formulated by the prescribed texts, and who sets the agenda, and to what end, for the HSC Senior English syllabi and the HSC examination? As far as the author is aware, the substantive body of material addressed in this study has not been examined in this way elsewhere. While Paul Kenneth Nay-Brock’s unpublished Ph.D.