[Tax-chick]

"While parents wonder why their children have never heard of the Romantic poets, Yeats or the Great War poets, and never ploughed through a Bronte, Orwell or Dickens novel, their children are engaged in analysing a variety of 'texts', including films, magazines, advertisements and even road signs as part of critical literacy," Cardinal Pell declared.

Wow.

[satchmodog9]

I agree. Someone is pushing for the Pope job in my book.

[SittinYonder]

"radical educational idea"

Radical educational ideas, IMO, are bad ideas.

[Billthedrill]

Oh, dear me - deconstructionism rears its ugly head again. That the dominant subtext in any piece of communication must of necessity be a manifestation of the dominant discourse, itself an expression of a dominant class, is one of those wonderful-sounding crypto-Marxist foundations of postmodernism that is not actually falsifiable and hence untestable. But a very great deal of Critical Theory depends on it.

If this stuff weren't sanctioned by a generation of fast-talking French intellectualoids it would be relegated to the ravings of a loony-bin. That is, in fact, where a fellow named Michael Foucault found it in the first place.

[Reactionary]

Public "education" is the greatest threat to individual freedom that has ever existed. It should be abolished.

[little jeremiah]

Moral Absolutes Ping.

Moral relativity in English class. It's all the same - Emily Dickenson, Shakespeare, Pepsi ads, MTV. No difference. Except actually they say there is a difference - Shakespeare and the like are actually evil since they were white males and part of the patriarchy, whereas MTV is good because it has thugs of color.

Moral relativity is NOT relative. Those who promote it, in all its varying manifestations, actually think themselves a sort of god (or actual God) and they are right, and we are wrong.

Freepmail me if you want on/off this pinglist.

[TAdams8591]

I applaud Cardinal George Pell. He's right! Now what will be done about it?

[Blind Eye Jones]

Critical theory calls attention to itself as a method that can't be critical of itself. It's more an article of faith for the faithless. If Shakespeare were alive today he would would think the French intellectuals were actually a comedy trope.