Australia too is going through one of its cyclic hand-wringings about
literacy and education. But it seems to me that people wall themselves into
pro and con positions (on the uses of 'popular culture', the absence of
classics &c) that need not be mutually exclusive. With my own early
education, classics (including poetry) were foregrounded. The problem was
that they were often badly taught. Poetry in particular was communicated to
us by people who didn't really like it themselves but couldn't do anything
about it because it was part of the curriculum. I still feel that this can
do as much or more damage than leaving people to discover the classics
themselves. Ditto for popular culture. I've yet to read a book on popular
music by an academic that is anywhere near as informative or interesting as
one written by a music journalist. There are teachers out there who
connect, and these are the ones we owe everything to, regardless of their
pedagogical components.
Laurie
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