Pomos: formerly in your university, now in your kids' school

What the article Alas, poor students, from today's Sydney Morning Herald is saying, but doesn't put in so many words, is that our children are being fed a diet of postmodern literary theory which is as toxic as it is prevalent.

I don't know why Justine Norrie doesn't point the finger at the pomos, and wish she had, but the article is good anyway.

Baz le Tuff sent me the link this morning, and I mentioned to him a few lines of verse I wrote (in January, 1995, and I mistakenly told him it was a decade earlier, but le Tuff once forgave the sins of a whole species so I guess I'm safe):

In English departments
all round the world
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
the students are making cardboard shields and swords.

Interestingly, these words rebounded on me as my own high-school-age son tells me that basically what they do in English classes is "watch videos".

Here's a bit from the SMH article (note the telltale pomo word 'texts'):

"Parents complain the HSC English syllabus is full of confusing jargon. Now educators are agreeing, writes Justin Norrie.

"As year 12 boys from a North Shore school walked out of an English exam a couple of weeks ago, they gathered to compare notes. Adam, studying advanced English, says the conversation turned into 'a competition to see who had out-bullshitted the others. It was like comedy hour.'

"In an essay on the Australian poet Gwen Harwood, he wrote his interpretation of her poem At Mornington 'reflected the personal or economic values and beliefs of the responder and the analysis of binary opposites or art versus science and its importance in affecting the action of the poem'.

"The disaffected student says he 'had to write like this to get the marks' ...

"Glossary from English syllabus

"Meaning
The dynamic relationship between text and responder involving information (explicit and implicit), the affective and the contextual.

"Affective
Relating to a thoughtful consideration and evaluation of emotions and values associated with an idea or set of ideas.

"Texts
Communications of meaning produced in any medium that incorporates language, including sound, print, film, electronic and multimedia representations.

"Composing
The activity that occurs when students produce written, spoken, or visual texts … involves the shaping and arrangement of textual elements to explore and express ideas and values."