CHAPTER ONE Overview of the Study
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CHAPTER ONE Overview of the Study :7548*=4+=9-*= 9:)>= This research project comprises a discursive exploration of the 2007 Tasmanian Curriculum: English Literacy K-10 Syllabus, hereafter referred to as the Tasmanian English Syllabus (TES). Although English as an oral language was my fifth language, it was my first literate one, and by the end of my primary school years, English had become my dominant language. Without my English language skills, I would not have had access to many privileges in society such as higher education and satisfying employment. My parents’ struggles to navigate Australian society with inadequate English language skills offered me an early lesson in what it might mean to be disempowered by a lack of valued literacy skills. From this background, I have endeavoured to foster high levels of English literacy in my teaching career. Until analysing the TES I had no idea that Aristotelian paradigms would figure so prominently in this thesis. I had viewed the ‘back to basics’ literacy rhetoric common in the media and conservative political speeches as reminiscent of a discourse more so associated with the ‘1950s white picket fence, the hills hoist in the backyard and the Holden in the garage’ constructions of Australian identity (Luke, 2001, p. 8). What I found, however, was that the ‘basics’ went back much further, to a time of imagined Western glory that was far more pervasive than generally acknowledged and is now also far more widespread in its influences than commonly realised. As Richard Rubenstein, 1 author of Aristotle’s Children stated in a radio interview (Philosophy Talk, 2005), both the ‘Blues’ (Republicans) and the ‘Reds’ (Democrats) in the U.S. have embraced Aristotle as a possible answer to the question of how to live in complex multicultural societies without killing each other. This move is evident, for example, in the agenda of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a U.S. neoconservative non-profit, tax-exempt educational organisation, dedicated to educating for individual liberty, limited government, personal responsibility, the rule of law, market economy and moral norms. The ‘Institute’ draws heavily on Aristotle for its curriculum and legitimacy (Official Website, 2008). From the U.K. context, however, Dr Peter Vardy, a self-confessed Neo-Aristotelian has had frequent dialogues with Tasmanian politicians and educators in recent years (Crittenden, 2004), though I had never heard Aristotle explicitly mentioned in any State Education Professional Development sessions. While I attended an international conference in Adelaide in 2004 and a Launceston Independent Schools conference around the same time, with Vardy as a key speaker, and read his book, Being Human (2003), it was only in analysing the TES, that traces of Aristotelian philosophy, particularly related to ‘persuasion’, ‘ideas’ and intensive training into Western cultural ways, propelled me to further investigate this area. An example of an Aristotelian model that is achieving literacy success with the very groups Tasmanian education is failing, namely Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs), is included in this thesis to highlight the importance of inclusion, multilingualism, explicit intergenerational literacy teaching, authentic literacy use and genuine communities of practice, to the fostering of the skills which the TES is advocating. While the JWs do not provide schools for their children and youth, they run a very intensive literacy based program at their kingdom halls as part of their theocratic training. Many illiterate adults, 2 as well as youth and young children have developed excellent rhetorical and reading and writing competencies by attending the five meetings a week. In addition, participants from non-English speaking backgrounds are offered materials in their own language as well as English, fostering literacy in both home languages and English. Reference to the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) in this thesis, however, is not intended to represent them as a group that has entirely and unproblematically achieved the kinds of success, which the TES aspires to. Indeed it is acknowledged in this thesis that JW discourses also marginalise and exclude, particularly in relation to gender and non-JWs or ‘apostates’, and this is not without consequence for this project’s investigation of the marginalising capacities of the TES. Rather, this thesis argues that the TES, in espousing Aristotelian rhetoric, is proposing a pedagogy consonant with theocratic methodology, like the JWs, yet without some of the features such as multilingualism, intergenerational and multicultural support networks, and authentic communities of practice, that contribute to JWs literacy success with those regarded as ‘at risk’ in school populations. The early Australian experience of Jehovah’s Witnesses reinforces the importance of literature and literacy for constructing common values and the construction of compliant, obedient, literate subjects. Literacy and rhetorical skills, along with undivided loyalty to the Watchtower society, ensured rapid reproduction of Witness discourses and subjectivities. Even before Charles Taze Russell, the founder and first president of the Watchtower society, implemented his 1901 plan to send four Bible students to Australia, a book had already brought the message to Australia (WTBTS1, 1983, pp. 34-37). A few years earlier, in 1896, a miner in the goldfields of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, had obtained the book, the Divine Plan of the Ages, and its discourse rapidly reconstructed 1 Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Most publications by the WTBTS are anonymous, therefore no specific authors can be acknowledged. 3 religious identities in the area, in those convinced of its ‘truth’ (pp. 36-37). The Watchtower Society learned the importance of literacy as an aid to governing for compliance and conformity, early in their Australian experience. In 1908, there was a major defection in a Melbourne group, when 80 members chose to exit with the Branch Organiser (Henninges), leaving only 20 faithful to the Watchtower Organisation (p. 37). One of these faithful members lamented, “Many of them (those who defected) are not readers to any extent and have been drawn to his [Henninges’] meetings rather by his eloquence than by the truth” (p. 37). Promoting literacy and suppressing opportunities for personality cults to develop have been Watchtower strategies ever since. Jehovah’s Witnesses have the distinction of being the only religious organisation in Australia to be banned in the twentieth century (Persian, 2008, p. 4) Following the banning of the Communist Party in 1940, Jehovah’s Witnesses were banned in 1941 on the pretext of national security, but as Jayne Persian (2008) argues, ‘personal politics and a cavalier attitude to fundamental legal principles of religious freedom’ were contributing factors (p. 4). Nevertheless, while Jehovah’s Witnesses were politically neutral, under the presidency of Rutherford (based in the US), in the 1930s, the Witnesses aggressively attacked big business, politics and religion through their publications (p. 5). Jehovah’s Witnesses, seen as subversive nuisances in Australia, were put under surveillance by the Army, the Navy, Military Intelligence, the Police and the Commonwealth Investigation Branch (p. 5). Not only were they and their literature banned, but they endured mob violence and vicious persecution (p. 5). While these measures were intended to silence the Witness discourses, the government and religious authorities underestimated the power of the Witnesses’ motivation, which combined with their adversity and necessity, stimulated their creativity. Jehovah’s Witnesses found ways to continue their operations 4 underground, and ‘not a single issue of the Watchtower was missed during the entire period of the ban’, with organisational membership rapidly increasing (p. 78). Authorities thus increased their restrictions by mandating that Jehovah’s Witnesses live in isolated towns, with mobility limited to an 8km radius from the town centre (p. 88). The penalty for infringement was imprisonment (p.88). While Government legislation was not able to stop Witness literature dissemination and organisational growth, it was litigation by the Society that eventually led to the lifting of the ban, return of the Society’s property, and compensation from the Government (p. 88). In the year of the ban (1941), there were 2,500 publishers (active members); in 1943, a month after the ban was lifted in June, there were 4,328 publishers (p. 90). This extensive publication network demonstrates the significance of literature and literacy to not only the achievement of political agendas, but also the continued reproduction of desired subjectivities in times of ‘crisis’. What emerged as particularly significant as I further investigated the elements of the TES, was the motivation for what the data below shows is a rigid monocultural syllabus, namely the fear of being ‘left behind’ economically and educationally as other countries move ahead. Indeed, statistics in the 2006 OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that Australia is falling behind countries that previously performed at a comparable level, and even behind its own performance in 2000 in some areas (ACER, PISA, 2006, p. 15). Within Australia, the relative performance of students in the Northern Territory (NT) and Tasmania (TAS) are cause for even greater concern (p. 6). An earlier statement made in 2006 by the current Australian Labor party