Promoting student engagement by balancing the study of canonical literature with popular culture texts in secondary English classrooms

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Alina Layton

Head of Faculty – English

Promoting student engagement

by balancing the study of canonical literature with popular culture texts in secondary English classrooms

Belonging to the canon is a guarantee of quality, and that guarantee of high aesthetic quality serves as a promise, a contract, that announces to the viewer, 'Here is something to be enjoyed as an aesthetic object. Complex, difficult, privileged… You will receive pleasure; at least you're supposed to, and if you don't, well, perhaps there's something off with your apparatus.' (n.d. Landow).

The backdrop of Australian English classrooms is often characterised by debates concerning the supposedly alarmingly low levels of literacy among adolescents as they enter the postschool world, the reasons underpinning the decline in their rates of reading for pleasure, and their perceived disengagement in the classroom. These issues are pitched against the broader backdrop of debates concerning the design of the Australian Curriculum and each State’s Senior Curriculums. Resultingly, there are myriad viewpoints about what students should and should not study in English during their time at school (Merga & Roni 2018, p. 136; Hopwood et al. 2017, p. 46). Given the nature of my role and the fact that text selection for our English programs is now governed to a certain extent by the prescribed text lists for Senior English subjects, I thought it timely to examine the often-disparate viewpoints regarding the incorporation of texts from the Western literary canon and those that fall under the umbrella of popular culture. The opening satirical quip from George P. Landow captures the essence of attitudes towards canonical literature in that if it is not valued by readers, there is something deeply wrong with the receiver (an incredibly unfair assumption!) and, by extension, their taste in popular culture. However, there is a very strong argument in favour of striking a balance between the classic and the popular in order to engage and challenge adolescents.

Defining the Western literary canon and popular culture texts

Landow’s definition of the Western literary canon posits that it is, ‘an authoritative list, as of the works of an author…which forms a basis for judgment’, (Landow, n.d.). Perhaps the most well-known figure associated with the Western literary canon is the critic Harold Bloom, whose seminal 1994 work – The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages – endeavours to ‘isolate the qualities that made these authors canonical, that is, authoritative in our culture’, (Bloom 1994, p. 2). Literary texts on the list of canonical works are conferred the status of embodying what Bloom terms as ‘sublimity’ and ‘greatness’ (Bloom 1994, p. 2-3). Conversely, texts belonging to the category of popular culture encompass those that belong to ‘everyday life’ or the ‘culture of the people’ such as television, films, video games, multimodal

texts, music and social media and are, in our current context, unable to be separated from ‘mass or digitised mediation’, (Benson & Chik 2014, p. 2). Because of this digitisation, it can be argued that historical views of popular culture as constituting what ‘was left after high culture’ are in fact now defunct given the pervasiveness of digital media, and that the lines between popular and high culture are more blurred than they are distinct (Beach & O’Brien 2008, p. 776).

The culture wars

These definitions underpin much of the debate surrounding the place of popular culture texts in the curriculum which has taken place since the introduction of the Australian Curriculum and, more recently, the introduction of the new Queensland Certificate of Education. At one end of the debate spectrum are those canonical texts and authors afforded the status of belonging to ‘high culture’ and at the other are those texts associated with the mass populace and, by extension, ‘low culture’. Furthermore, the debate extends to the pedagogical approaches adopted by English teachers and curriculum writers, namely the critical literacy approach as opposed to more traditional literary appreciation. Much of the argument in favour of students studying the classics revolves around the view that such texts offer greater writerly quality and scope for aesthetic and moral engagement. In an Australian context, many viewpoints stem from the belief that canonical literature is undervalued, with criticism aimed at, for example, ‘posters and graffiti’ sitting alongside the ‘works of Henry Lawson and David Malouf’ and that, ‘instead of privileging the moral and aesthetic value of great works, literature is analysed in terms of power relationships and the rights of victim groups’, (Donnelly 2007). Such problematic sentiments underpin the often-reductive critique of the place of popular culture texts in the curriculum based on their perceived lack of quality and value for students, unfairly blaming them for students’ literacy under-achievement and a broader ‘dumbing-down’ of cultural capital (Beach & O’Brien 2008, p. 780). On the other side of the fence, proponents of popular culture in the classroom do so with reference to the reality of the increasingly digitised world, its impact on schooling, and subsequently the new literacies that young people mediate on a daily basis. Thus, incorporating popular culture into the curriculum has its educational foundations in an awareness that the contemporary practices of students go beyond traditionally print-based literacies and that there is a need to engage with such texts on a critical as well as aesthetic level (Beach & O’Brien 2008, p. 778-779). The necessity of bridging the divide between the students’ ‘lived worlds’ and that of their curriculum is in fact central to literacy development (Marsh 2005 in Dowdell et al. 2014, p. 1).

The argument in favour of striking a better balance

The rationale of texts in the Australian Curriculum for English pertains to affording students with opportunities to engage with literature beyond ‘the scope of their experience’. It encourages teachers to move beyond only using texts traditionally seen as ‘literary’, favouring instead an approach which sees students examine, evaluate and discuss classic and contemporary Australian and world texts ranging from novels, poetry and plays to multimodal texts such as films and non-fiction texts (ACARA). The necessity of a balance of texts is underpinned by the description of the Literature Strand, which states that students are to be offered opportunities to ‘identify and explore ideas and viewpoints about events, issues and characters represented in texts drawn from different historical, social and cultural contexts’ (ACARA). In turning to a Queensland context, this same embracing of balance and variety is largely apparent in the new Senior English syllabus documents and the rationale underpinning the prescribed text list. The criterion justifying the texts on this list – which range from those in the Western literary canon such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the poetry of Keats, Dickinson and Browning to contemporary print and multimodal texts such as Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Tara June Winch’s Swallow the Air and the television series Stranger Things – centres on reflecting cultural and social diversity, providing range and balance in respect to time, place and gender, and encouraging critical and creative engagement (QCAA 2018, p. 1). Thus, the English curricular at both a national and Queensland State level value variety, scope and balance with the aim of engaging and challenging students. As educators, we must consider our approach to the teaching of popular culture texts, especially with reference to navigating the way that such texts are discussed and viewed, and being mindful of striking a balance between attention to the pleasures afforded by these texts as well as the opportunities for critical examination (Alvermann et al. 1999, p. 23). What needs to be avoided, therefore, is a situation whereby popular culture texts are included as a means of ticking the ‘relevance to youth’ box, and then the manner in which they are examined subsequently reverts to a values-based one where students are reduced to being seen as ‘mindless viewers’ of texts that are either harmful or invaluable (Alvermann et al. 1999, p. 24-25). We should embrace an ‘aggregate approach’ that recognises the authentic nature of popular culture texts’ influence on the lives of students, their expertise and pleasure in relation to such texts as well as the possibilities for critique (Alvermann et al. 1999, p. 28). Research-based practices with regards to the use of popular culture texts in the classroom are numerous and include strategies such as the interpreting and using genre features, connecting and revising texts, sharing personal responses to as well as constructing popular culture texts, and critiquing them (Beach & O’Brien 2008, p. 779-780). For instance, facilitating students’ knowledge-construction links can assist in comprehending particular concepts in one text type by engaging with conceptually similar television shows, films or music (Beach & O’Brien 2008, p. 785). Additionally, creating opportunities for multiple forms of representations and sharing both constructions of and responses to popular culture texts via online spaces, rather than strictly print-based forms for example, encourages engagement and creative expression (Beach & O’Brien 2008, p. 787-788). Furthermore, pedagogy in English classrooms that is characterised by deep engagement with popular culture texts and thereby viewed as a ‘serious’ pursuit in itself, rather than as leading to more ‘serious’ explorations of traditional texts, is more successful and thus more likely to offer greater relevance and engagement for adolescents (Benson & Chik 2014, p. 5).

Balance in action – a personal reflection

In my experience, adolescents have an array of literary and non-literary tastes, reflected in what they choose to engage with outside of the classroom and the way in which they SUNATA 41

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respond to the texts that form part of the curriculum. They are fairly immediate in expressing their boredom or distaste for the texts studied, but in equal measure also their enjoyment and appreciation. These expressions of genuine enjoyment can often be surprising! While it is common to hear some English teachers bemoan their students’ dispassionate attitudes towards poetry, there have certainly been times when my students’ eyes have lit up when they finally ‘get’ a passage from Shakespeare or when they have shrieked with delight upon reading Mr Darcy’s declaration of love for Miss Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Equally surprising is when students have, contrary to popular opinion, lambasted with keen critical minds a modern television show for its veiled racism or a film’s problematic gender stereotypes. What has been constant, however, is that secondary English students crave variety and relevance, though not necessarily simply of the contemporary kind – too much of one thing is never conducive to ongoing learning engagement or fostering creativity and critical reflection, and students are keenly aware of this. Rather, it has been my experience that we as teachers, parents and commentators need to give adolescents a little more credit. Presenting them with canonical texts that they should view as authoritative and from a deferential perspective, with little attention to facilitating their ability to both critique and appreciate, is a situation which will only ever result in them disconnecting and most likely lumping all canonical texts in the same basket of dry, yawn-inducing irrelevance or the basket of highly problematic attitudes, values and beliefs concerning race, gender and class for instance. Equally, it has also been my experience that you cannot simply arbitrarily insert texts like song lyrics into a unit on poetry without attention to students’ expertise in popular culture, or include internet memes merely as vehicles to achieve fleeting moments of student engagement, or even include reality television shows into a classic novel study but only with the view to discrediting them and, by extension, their personal enjoyment of them. The incorporation of both canonical and popular culture texts must be considered and purposeful in relation to meeting the requirements of curriculum documents and creating opportunities for students to be both critical consumers and imaginative creators of traditional print-based and multimodal texts. In light of this, I like to think we do achieve this balance here at St Margaret’s. Our English programs offer students the opportunity to engage with contemporary texts such as Wonder by R. J. Palaccio; The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon; Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman; Life after life by Kate Atkinson; The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak; the poetry of Rupi Kaur and Neil Gaiman; the documentary 2040 directed by Damon Gameau; and the film Hidden Figures directed by Theodore Melfi. These texts sit alongside the works of Shakespeare, George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee and the poetry of John Keats, William Butler Yeats, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning. However, our selection of texts is a moveable feast and we constantly strive to update our programs to reflect both the learning needs and engagement of our students.

References

ACARA n.d., F-10 Curriculum: English, viewed online 27 March 2021, https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10curriculum/english/ Alvermann, D, Moon, J & Hagood, M 1999, Popular culture in the classroom: teaching and researching critical media literacy, Routledge, New York. Beach, R & O’Brien, D 2008, ‘Teaching Popular-Culture Texts in the Classroom’, in Coiro, J, Knobel, M, Lankshear, C & Leu, DJ (eds.), Handbook of research on new literacies, Routledge, New York. Benson, P & Chik, A 2014, Popular culture, pedagogy and teacher education: International perspectives, Routledge, New York. Bloom, H 1994, The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages, viewed online 27 March 2021, http://joshvahvmphreys. com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/BLoom-Canon.pdf Bowmer, M & Curwood, J 2016, ‘From Keats to Kanye: Romantic Poetry and Popular Culture in the Secondary English Classroom’, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, vol. 60, no. 2, pp. 141-149. Donnelly, K 2007, ‘A canon we can’t afford to overlook’, The Australian, viewed online 27 March 2021, https://www. theaustralian.com.au/

Dowdall, C, Vasudevan, L & Mackey, M 2014, ‘Popular culture and curriculum’, Literacy, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 1-3. Hopwood, B, Hay, I & Dyment, J 2017, ‘Students’ reading achievement during the transition from primary to secondary school’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 46-58. Merga, MK & Roni, SM 2018, ‘Children’s perceptions of the importance and value of reading’, Australian Journal of Education, vol. 62, no. 2, pp. 135-153. Landow, GP n.d., The Literary Canon, viewed online 9 August 2020, http://www.victorianweb.org/gender/canon/litcan.html Queensland Curriculum & Assessment Authority (QCAA) 2018, prescribed text list for English and English as an Additional Language 2019–2021, Queensland Government, Brisbane.