"Trish Brown" wrote in message
...
Ooo! What a great post! Thanks for the considered reply! :-)

0tterbot wrote:

1: we have many "education systems", not just one :-)

Yep! I'm in touch with other educators in every state and most share my
paranoia. (That is, 'most of those whom I know', not 'most of those who
exist'.)

Well then, i probably think you're _all_ worrying a bit over nothing :-)

2: it would certainly feature in some classes, but not others. the list
of available literature for schools is massive - from within that,
teachers decide.

Yep! My point is that classic Oz literature from Banjo Paterson, Henry
Kendall, CJ Dennis and so on ought to have a permanent place in schools
because they reflect a period of our development.

I see. I don't necessarily disagree. (I LOVE "Mulga Bill's Bicycle"!!!!) but
really, I don't think it's the sort of thing you could spend an entire term
on, or anything like that. Certainly those things have historical
significance. Then again, so do other things. How does one choose?

One thing that drives me a bit bats is everyone dumping on schools & school
kids re the curriculum. I asked a recent year-12 what he studied in English
for his HSC & was promptly gobsmacked. They did 10-odd different things
which seemed to include a spot of comparitive media studies thrown in. I
didn't do my HSC (dropped out) but at my school you'd do one "biggie" a
term. One Shakespeare play, one English classic of some sort (sadly, Jane
Austen [blurghhh!] seems to have featured heavily), and something "modern"
(perhaps from the 1960s or 70s) & then you must have had to revise, or
something - truthfully, I only remember doing one thing in year 11 but we
must have filled up the time somehow with soemthing boring I've forgotten
about. Same with my kids' schedule for primary school - they cover so much
in the curriculum while at the same age I did virtually nothing in the same
time frame! So when people are saying kids "should" be doing this or that, I
would ask "what the hell do you want them to drop so they can fit it in?!"

We
oughtn't to pretend our history didn't happen!

I'm not sure that they do. But equally, we can't know our history through
literature particularly well anyway - it was all written by white men. :-)

Fair enough! Not gonna argue there! What *is* your favourite book, just
out of interest? I love finding a good read through other people! :-)

It's "Wuthering Heights". Now shaddup & stop laughing g

why would anyone make a machine to do that if _nobody_ knows (nor
presumably, cares)? that doesn't make sense.

Well, I've been in the computer industry on and off for - geez! - nearly
thirty years now! I've watched 'WYSIWYG', 'multi media', 'multi tasking'
and 'the information superhighway' arrive and take hold. I've seen storage
media change from 12" floppies that held 4k of info give way to terabytes
of storage. I've learned that technology does have massive power to change
what we do and how we do it. Kids today don't need to spell, for example.
The language they use to communicate on their phones and MSN bears little
resemblance to accepted English, yet they understand each other perfectly.
It's utilitarian, isn't it?

But this is partly what set this thread going - the dude who wanted cuttings
didn't write "properly" for a newsgroup - he wrote sms-style. He didn't
write it "wrong" so much as he had the _context_ all wrong. I rarely send
sms because I just plain cannot be bothered - it's just so tedious to me, so
when I do, I abbreviate as much as I can. (Almost everyone does.) BUT - if a
person doesn't know a word, I can't see that it can be abbreviated sensibly
either. Everyone who uses sms has already had a good (hopefully) grounding
in Proper English (which changes with time anyway) beforehand, otherwise the
whole system falls down. People really do go on & on about this & I'm not
saying you're being silly or anything, but I cannot see the risk of people
"no longer" using good spelling or whatnot. In Australia, literacy is very
near total - unlike, say, 50 years ago when it simply was not. Literate
people play with language, deliberately. What you see with sms is really
just a by-product of mass literacy, in my view. It doesn't undermine or
particularly effect the standard English that everyone has to use in daily
life if they want to participate in society. IIUC, Braille (novels, say) for
good (older) readers is very, very abbreviated, otherwise things would
simply take too long to get through (the hand being so much slower than the
eye), but until you know what is being abbreviated, you need to learn full
spellings in order to understand the abbreviations. If I've got that wrong
about Braille I am happy to be corrected, but that's a good example, isn't
it?

Voice
recognition has taken a long time to come along in a useful form, but it's
nearly there. I can see a day when it'll no longer be necessary to write
what you want to say. Your computer will 'hear' your voice through
supermicrophones and transmit your info to someone else who will simply
listen to it and save it in audio format. Where's the need to write
anything? Just a suspicion I have...

Sounds a bit like that wacky modern invention, the "telephone". g!

Gawd, I sound like a technophile when really I'm a bit of a Luddite - but I
do strongly think people get worried about literacy somewhat unduly -
instead of enjoying the effects of mass literacy, they see it as further
excuse to get into a panic about the country going down the toilet.

Yep! I hear what you're saying and respectfully keep my own counsel. :-)
D'you happen to like classical ballet? I think poetry is very like ballet:
it's stylised and has boundaries and rules, that's all. Not everyone can
write a poem; not everyone can perform a great ballet, but they do have
standards of excellence and neither is everyone's cup of tea...

I rather do like classical ballet although not to the point of going to see
it. I approve of its existence :-) And I _did_ very much approve of poetry
when I was younger, but I just got over it. It's not that I think poetry is
bad or irrelevent - it's more part of a general gripe of mine about people
faffing about with the "arts" as though it makes them a better person, when
in truth the vast majority of them simply don't have enough talent or
relevence & are just being utterly self-indulgent.

Among my favourite poets: Paul Simon (seventies writer of songs: Simon and
Garfunkel) stands far out there! Also, Till Lindemann of Rammstein, an
East German group.

Ja, Rammstein. Cookie Monster got a new job & that's what it was G! sorry
;-) I think you bring up an interesting thing, though - poetry set to music
(i.e. a "song") will always have a far greater audience. I think there's a
human need for song but no corresponding great need for poetry. Or so it
seems to me.

Hmmm... I think I can see your point. I have to say, though, that 'great'
writers such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoyevsky etc etc are often an
acquired taste and come with age. I only managed to read 'The Lord of the
Rings' (generally regarded as one of the great modern classics from the
Days of My Youth) by putting it in the dunny and reading it in short
bursts. I can't *stand* Tolkein's inflated, self-conscious writing style.

Um, I'd just say that Tolkein just isn't that good & be done with it. :-) I
wouldn't consider it a modern classic whatsoever. LOTR does have mass
nerd-appeal, though. Some things just do - it defies explanation & is hard
to pick. The others? Shakespeare - excellent. Dickens - infantile.
Dostoyevsky - actually pretty readable if that's your thing. We could go on.
I'm sure we agree that there's something for everyone out there! :-)

LOL! I've often wondered what was the drug of choice among those ancient
prophets. I think the Bible stands alone, though, since it's pretty much
unique in its origins, history and purpose. It takes a certain kind of
mind to want to wade through much of its allegory and ancient forms.

I find it pretty interesting & i'm NOT a believer. & yes, mostly it's
interesting due to historical significance - not for its own sake. So that's
probably a different category again. But do I think it could be published
now? No - just not good enough. I'm pretty sure the Revelation is a record
of either a drug experience or a psychiatric event :-)

The bible doesn't stand alone so much as it stands with other religious
"classics". They're all a bit mental, but as you say, it's just a different
case.

Yeah, but did you know the taxonomy of gum trees has recently been
changed?

Yes. But fortunately, having known almost nothing about any of them under
the old classifications, the new ones therefore don't bother me!! :-D

Just to upset all our applecarts, I s'pose. In fact, a friend
who is a botanist in Texas broke the news to me. I was talking to her
about Angophoras and she gently corrected me, saying 'You mean 'Corymbia',
don't you?' Apparently, the whole family Myrtaceae has been revamped and
'fixed' so that many former Eucalyptus species now come under 'Corymbia'.
I think there's more info on the SGAP website.

Ack! Why do they do these things to us?

Again, thanks for a really enjoyable post and interesting point of view!
:-D

Well, you too!! We are very on-topic here, as a rule!!
Kylie