What We Learn in School

Firstly, I would like to say thanks to everyone that has commented in the shoutbox. Now I have more joy in my heart as I sit down to waste time writing. But enough about the wasting time. I'll assume we all know that by now.

During my usual meander through the back pages of "The Age", I came upon an article which discussed the comments made by Mark Lopez, a teacher in the English system who recently stated that the English texts chosen were biased towards the left wing "politically correct" ideologies (wonder what he'd say about the "culture" films we get exposed to in French...)

He also made the proposal that half the books should be chosen by "right wing" thinkers, and half by "left wing" thinkers. Surely books cannot be summed up as "right wing" or "left wing". Authors of books often deal with many complex themes, and to simply summarise an entire work as "right" or "left" seems ridiculous to me. This battle of ideologies would only cause conflict, and encourage the opposing sides to propose more and more comprehensive books illustrating their "political bias", until educational value is overlooked entirely.

Brave New World, for example, is a book which paints a portrait of communism, where there is one society, where everyone fits into the larger part. While the right might hail this as a challenge to the apparent bias in schools, I think that Brave New World does not attempt to pass judgement on the world, it simply shows. We see John the Savage does not fit in at all with the values of this society, but he is not glorified into a conservative valued hero. (I, for one, would gladly live in the society of Brave New World - after all, I'd be conditioned to...)

We can use books to demonstrate anything. It is often quite easy to staple meaning to books that were completely unintended by the author, yet plausible. And to attempt to classify literature into "barracking" for different ends of the political spectrum seems to me very wrong.

In Catcher in the Rye, for example, did anyone else notice Holden wore a RED cap? Or that clearly Algernon and Jack's Bunburying in The Importance of Being Earnest was a thinly veiled metaphor for satisfying the individual, and rebelling against authority (as was no doubt the highly organised political agenda of Oscar Wilde?)

Ok, so WE SHOULDN'T USE ALL LITERATURE AS MASCOTS OF DIFFERING POLITICAL FIELDS. Wow, these rants are really addictive. But probably pretty boring for you..."just shut up and give us links gelati gecko".