Under the heading "English expertise", a version of the letter below appeared in The Australian on Monday 22 December 2014. Underlined words were deleted and the bracketed ones inserted. They also rearranged my four paragraphs into three and removed the quotation marks. Having deleted the words "about whom there have been no allegations of racism" in the final paragraph, the paper failed to remove the now unnecessary preceding comma.
Barry Spurr and the review of the Australian English Curriculum
Ivan Kennedy (Letters, 20-21/12) avers that, from his personal experience, academic Barry Spurr is not a racist, and that therefore there is no need to "revisit" his contribution to the review of the English component of the Australian Curriculum. Kennedy (This) misses the point.
The publication of some of Spurr's emails served to focus public attention on his involvement in the curriculum review as a commissioned "subject specialist". But, whatever people may think of their content and whether they were serious or not, those emails are not the real reason that Spurr's recommendations about the school English curriculum should be accorded little weight.
The review report contains no detail about the process by which Spurr and Dr Fiona Mueller were chosen out of all those in the country who could legitimately be considered to be experts on the content and teaching of English in primary and secondary schools.
In addition, there is no evidence to indicate that the views of Spurr and Mueller, about whom there have been no allegations of racism, can be regarded as generally representative of the views of the many others in the country who have a similar degree of expertise. Spurr and Mueller are perfectly entitled to their opinions, but those individual opinions should have little influence.
Garry Collins
President, Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE)
Stafford Heights, QLD
Tags: Curriculum matters |
March Seminar 2021: Challenge and Change: Doing things differentlyWe are delighted to announce that we will be back with face to face professional learing events in 2021 - usual format but with some important changes: the March Seminar will be a full day event; the AATE-ALEA National Conference will be held in Brisbane in July and consequently there will not be a state conference. The Program Our fi... |
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Grammar at Hervey BayA grammar workshop will be held at Hervey Bay State High School to assist attendees to develop their understandings of grammar in order to fully comprehend and to effectively teach the Australia Curriculum: English (AC:E). Also highly relevant to Years 11 & 12. This will be an updated re-run of the activity conducted in both 2018 and ... |
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May Masterclass 2021THE CHALLENGE OF TEACHING ANALYSIS: DO WE NEED TO CHANGE OUR PRACTICES? Teaching the process of analysing texts in order for students to produce a spoken or written response remains amongst the most exciting and difficult challenges we face as a community of English teachers. Building on lessons from ETAQ's 2020 student and teacher ev... |
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JCU SpectacularJoin Dr Claire Hansen for a two-hour session on teaching Macbeth. We'll dive into an exploration of the language of Macbeth and teaching strategies to engage students with Shakespeare's Scottish play. The workshop will also explore learning activities for Macbeth created by the Shakespeare Reloaded project. This session will... |
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Grammar DayETAQ will be conducting another of the very successful grammar days on Saturday 29 May 2021. The venue will be Elanora SHS; any one who wishes to come is welcome. |
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Jennifer Alford, QUT
The six practices of English teachers who effectively exercise their agency.
Tristan Bancks, author
Keynote: A future-facing method for inspiring young writers
Workshop: Vision boarding
This is the first time I have been to an ETAQ conference and it was really sensational to get so much at all of the sessions.
ETAQ conferences always have sessions that make me excited to be a teacher.
I know that ETAQ conferences in the past have never disappointed - valuable, relevant, practical, inspiring so I came again.
Read AllConnect to a great range of people who are passionate about English and have their finger on the pulse.