Bias offensively Australian: Framing Australian Literature

in the Classroom.

I am not Australian. I approach every text created by an Australian from the
perspective of Aotearoa. I am bewildered by the idea of an essential
Australianness that could be identified in a text, when all around me is the
diversity and complexity of contemporary life. National borders have become
blurred through globalisation and the internet. Children form international
Minecraft communities online and sometimes spend more time with online
friends than school friends. I had to look up Australian values on the
Government website because I could not infer them from books, films, media or
the behaviour of politicians. In teaching Australian literature, I can only teach
from what I know and I know the perspective of the interested observer.

Like Terry Eagleton, when I read or write the words literature or literary, I place
them under invisible crossing out marks (Eagleton, 2008) because of the
impossibility of a precise definition. In the definition of Literature in the National
Curriculum, literary texts have enduring social or artistic value or attract
contemporary attention;
1
like wise indicating the instability of the terms. What is
valued in one era may not be valued in another. The passive construction also
highlights the ideological construction of the terms. As Gee says,
Text and the various ways of reading them do not arrive full-blown out of the
individual soul (or biology)...One always and only learns to interpret texts of a
certain type in certain ways through having access to, and ample experience, in
social settings where texts of that type are read in those ways. (Gee, 2014,
p45)


1
Australian Curriculum English Overview: Literature, Australian Curriculum, Assessment and
Reporting Authority (ACARA)





In the social setting of our classroom we not only teach that some texts are
valued and belong to a canon, excluding other texts, but we also teach a
selective tradition of of how to do things to those texts. (Freebody, Gilbert and
Luke, 1991)

The texts we choose and the responses we select as appropriate to that text,
such as the expository essay or the close reading of a decontextualised valued
text, are ideologically charged. This is particularly so for students from other
language or dialect backgrounds or those from communities that do not value
the texts that are privileged in subject English. (Murray, 2010) In engaging with
literary texts in the Australian classroom as, Doecke, Maclean Davies and Mead
have said we must confront the difference between the values we espouse as
teachers of literature and the ideological work we are actually performing as
functionaries of larger apparatuses. (2013, p228)

I confront that difference by adopting two metaphors or frames. Firstly I propose
to purposefully read, write and teach as an itinerant . (Reid, 2011) The
alphabetic reading and writing practices and traditions of Australia, like many of
us all come from elsewhere. To be itinerant is to be unsettled. The second
metaphor of hospitality, I have adopted from language teaching pedagogy. This
framework welcomes students into learning and is flexible and responsive;
open to the multiplicities of language and identity, experience and knowledges.
(Kostogriz, 2009, p132)

For multilingual learners who are studying literature while acquiring English as
Another Language (EAL/D) comprehension of a literary text is a complex task.
Students must comprehend texts that may include unusual, specialised or
historical vocabularies as well as complex linguistic structures. Additionally





students access texts within a silent schema of knowledge and language
operating (Murray 2010)
Multilingual students must travel from their own schema to another to succeed
in the discourses of academic study. It is my task in teaching Australian
Literature that EAL/D and other students learning literate behaviours are
supported in their journey and welcomed into the texts they study. For
Aboriginal students, support can be shown in acknowledging the value of
traditional ways of knowledge transmission such as oral storytelling.

The first words, when teaching Australian literature should be an elder saying
This is a story of my country. All stories have a beginning and in the country
some call Melbourne it begins with Bunjil. Every story that is not a Kulin story
comes after; as a colonial or immigrant story. I want to present a web of texts
and textual practices radiating from that point which both engage and unsettle:
that is learning how to read the world from a variety of perspectives. It is in
the texts we choose that students may find a relationship to the world and the
means to write themselves into it as border writers. (Giroux, 2013)
I choose to begin with exploring connection to place and community.
The Australian picture book My Place, tells the history, moving back in time,of
one piece of land in Sydney through the voices of a succession of children and
their annotated illustrative maps. Although it is a childrens book, My Place
effectively and richly illustrates the layering of history and its diverse voices; the
changing environment over time and the connection between identity and
place.
2
The best picture books open up meanings rather present
straightforward messages (Turner, 2014) Stories and characters overlap, the

2
Explore the interconnectedness of Country and Place, People, Identity and Culture in texts
including those by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors (ACELT1806)






dead father of one story is the child who climbs a tree in a following story as
time moves back past colonisation. The video Eora: mapping Aboriginal
Sydney
3
, 1770-1850 shows artworks from a State Library of NSW exhibition in
2006, which was designed to depict the lives of the Eora before and after
colonists arrived in Australia, contextualises and grounds the narrative.
For students learning English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) or
disengaged readers, My Place, offers a chance to engage independently with a
complex and interesting text. I encountered this book for the first time as part of
a unit where students made their own identity map using the illustrations as
models. It offers enormous potential to open up many stories as students
describe the significance of the images chosen for their own maps. Students
who have difficulty in writing can also present their story.
The poem Condors Dandenongs by Kate Middleton likewise layers history and
perspective. The density of this deceptively small poem of a viewing of a
painting is illustrated by a suite of images and websites I have collated on
pinterest. http://www.pinterest.com/lesleighmcd6/condors-dandenongs/
My way into the poem was through collecting the images, emphasising the
relationship between mind picture and visual representation, imagery and
image. This process of reflection, collecting images followed by modelling of
close reading and then by joint construction of an analysis
4
would be particularly
useful for EAL/D and low academic literacy students. Such an approach allows
students to find and show connections and understandings; welcoming and
scaffolding students into the work of reading a semantically dense text.
Conversely it offers a way into the production of text, using the images to build
their own work.

3
http://splash.abc.net.au/media/-/m/154420/eora-mapping-aboriginal-sydney-1770-1850
4
Refine vocabulary choices to discriminate between shades of meaning, with deliberate
attention to the effect on audiences






While the painting View to the Dandenongs shows an idyllic, light suffused
landscape, the short story The Drovers Wife by Henry Lawson shows the
reality of the idyll.
5
The life of the bushwoman is lonely and perilous. The
textbook English for the Australian Curriculum 2 (2011) asks students to
develop their own questions about the text. This is also an approach I would
follow. This text is taught over and over. Encouraging students to develop their
own questions not only develops critical skills but allows students to investigate
their own fresh reading of the text. To learn to ask quality questions is a
fundamental skill not only of language but life. To scaffold the task I would
expand the definitions of the different types of questions, and provide more
modelling of questions using question stubs. A scaffolded reading of the story
and language focus tasks would also be completed beforehand to welcome
students into the language of the text. The story would also be contextualised
with historical background, images and texts. As a contemporary reader I am
struck by the attitudes and assumptions of the bush woman towards Aboriginal
People. The William Barak site curated for Culture Victoria by the Koorie
Heritage Trust offers a counterpoint to to Lawsons nineteenth century
colonialism.

Martin Flanagan, gave a talk at the Wheeler Centre
6
on The Drovers Wife. The
talk (link below) opens by connecting his personal experience and history to the
reading of the story. He describes identifying for the first time, in the social and
emotional isolation of the bushwoman the existential, Big Lonely. What
resonances could be explored by comparing and contrasting The Big Lonely of

5
Analyse and evaluate text structures and language features of literary texts and make relevant
thematic and intertextual connections with other texts (ACELT1774) Year 10
6
http://wheelercentre.com/videos/video/australian-literature-102-henry-lawson-the-
drover-s-wife/






this canonical story with the immigrant urban alienation of Alice Pungs
Unpolished Gem?

Viewing the talk on The Drovers Wife offers a model for approaching the text,
as well as points for debate. The conversation between the host James Ley and
Flanagan also shows literate speak; (Gee, J. 2014) frameworks which
students may not have encountered in their cultural or social experience.
Seeing people talking about literature gives vitality to the task of: reflecting on,
extending, endorsing or refuting others interpretations of and responses to
literature. (AUSVELS, Year 10), modelling the concept of literary sociability.
(Doecke et al 2013).

Flanagan concludes his talk by framing The Drovers Wife in a modern setting.
The threat she waits for rather than snake is bush fire. Christine Kenneally
wrote an essay The Inferno, for the New Yorker on the Black Saturday fires of
7th February 2009. Reading this, I was immediately returned to that day and
tears came to my eyes. Journalism can be powerful. Effective and interesting
features of form and style
7
are not only found in poetry and novels. It is a
comprehensive essay following the experiences of a Marysville resident Bruce
Ackerman interspersed with background information, descriptions of the
firestorms and the aftermath of the fires. The essay could be described as the
genre, Information text, which diminishes the impact of the story telling and
vivid description. Kenneally describes the heat wave preceding Black Saturday,
Many elderly people died; steel train tracks buckled; in one Melbourne park a
thousand fruit bats fell dead from the trees.
8

Narrative viewpoint changes from reporting to direct speech, where we hear
Bruce Ackerman recount the last time he saw his neighbour a to first person

7
Australian Curriculum English Overview: Literature, (ACARA) accessed 11/09/2014
8
The Inferno in The Best Australian Essays, 2010 p9





account of the ruins of Marysville. At one moment we are surveying the
narrative at a remove; the next we are right there, listening.

Despite the temptation of ticking off a whole suite of language and literacy
content descriptors; I would focus on the creation of students own texts in
response to the essay. This would follow language and text orientation and
scaffolded reading.
There are so many places to write/create from in this essay: from magazine
articles to poems to fictions to debates to websites. The form and medium of
response I would open to the students. There is a wealth of resources to
support a creative project. My favourite is mosaic of stories from the ABC, Black
Saturday.
As you hover the mouse over the photos, a little quote pops up. You choose a
story and it opens to a description and a video to play.
9
I am a little afraid of the
near future when students can create such sites themselves.

When I think about students, I try to think from the perspective of a fifteen year
old whose family does not have a piece of print media that has personal,

9
Choose a reading technique and reading path appropriate for the type of text, to retrieve and
connect ideas within and between texts (ACELY1753)





cultural, social and aesthetic value
10
in the house. The family may however,
have an entertainment room with screen two metres wide and a laptop for every
child. The texts I choose must reflect the diversity of literacy practises that
students engage with and the validity of those practices. I do not devalue
traditional text forms but rather stretch the discourses of what is inside and
outside the tradition.

I welcome in new literacies or rather multiliteracies in which written-linguistic
modes of meaning interface with oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile and spatial
patterns of meaning. (Kalantzis, Cope, 2012)
11
An example of this is the
interactive online comic, Nawlz in which the reader/ viewer pushes the action
forward by navigating through the screens, animations and prompts. The viewer
also interacts with the soundtrack. The navigator/reader follows the story of
Harley through a future city somewhere. The screen shot
12
below cannot do
justice to the experience of interaction. The little red dots activate individual
little animations and soundscapes essential to the understanding of the plot. I
know from the internet that Stuart Campbell, the creator, is Australian and that
he has inspiringly won international awards for his work. I can not however,
infer from the text Australianness or Australian values.
I could not teach this text. I do not have the skills to evaluate and analyse this
text. (also drug references) It is outside my
cultural practice.
It blends too many textual genres. Reading
is sometimes the sum of several events

10
Australian Curriculum English Overview: Literature, (ACARA) accessed 11/09/2014

11
http://newlearningonline.com/multiliteracies
12
NAWLZ series 1 episode 14





happening simultaneously across the screen.
How could I write an assessment for it? It is my favourite piece of Australian
literature.
I am completely unsettled.
In the documentary Helen Garners Monkey Grip, the author Christopher
Tsiolkas talks about how important it was to read about places he knew. I
similarly, after reading Monkey Grip, walked around Carlton and Fitzroy with
fresh appreciation. If I didnt belong; at least I knew where I was.
Reading/viewing/navigating work by Australian artists, writers and creators
orientates and inspires. Through critically, intertextually engaging with a
diversity of texts that are drawn from the world and Australian literature,
(ACARA 2014) all our students may find themselves and their voices; not only
within canonical definitions of Australian literature, but rather in context to that
tradition and in relation to the wide world they live in.


































Works cited

Kenneally, C. (2009) The Inferno in The Best Australian Essays 2010 Drewe, R.
(ed) Collingwood, Vic: Black Incorporated, 2010. p7-19

Lawson, H.The Drovers Wife in The Billy While the Billy Boils, (ebook) Adelaide
:The eBooks@Adelaide, University of Adelaide Library.
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/lawson/henry/while_the_billy_boils/book2.1.ht
ml
accessed 06/09/2014

Middleton, K Condors Dandenongs, (2010) p168 in The Best Australian Poems
2010, Adamson, R (ed) Collingwood, Vic:Black Incorporated, 2010

Campbell, S (aka Sutu) (2008) NAWLZ http://www.nawlz.com/season1/

Pung, A. (2006) Unpolished Gem, Melbourne, Vic: Black Incorporated

Wheatley, N. (author); Rawlins, D. (illustrator) My Place, (1998) Newtown,
NSW: Walker Books Australia. This edition 2008


Websites cited

ABC: http://www.abc.net.au/innovation/blacksaturday/#/stories/mosaic
ABC Splash: http://splash.abc.net.au/home
last accessed 14/09/14

Culture Victoria:





http://www.cv.vic.gov.au/stories/william-barak/5588/william-barak--king-of-the-
yarra/
last accessed 14/09/14

New Learning: Transformational Designs for Pedagogy and Assessment
http://newlearningonline.com/literacies last accessed 14/09/14

Wheeler Centre: http://wheelercentre.com/videos/video/australian-literature
last accessed 14/09/14



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