NIK BOGDUK, ON THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

As I look back, I despair about how poorly English was taught. My memories are dominated by the horrible, arcane phenomenon of teaching English by getting boys to read the novel out loud in class.

I remember Mahoney doing this for Silas Marner in Second Form.

The process even continued in Fifth Form or Sixth Form, level 2 English. Was it not Buckley who had the class read Murder in the Cathedral out loud. What happened in that class I still consider was just deserts. People like Con Costa were allocated the part of 1st Knight or something like that. Others were given other parts. Progressively, however, what I shall call the obstreperous rebels took over the class and destroyed it. Before Con could start reading his part, Chris Kiely would start reading instead. Then Barry Peak would subsume another part; and then I. I think the even Mark Kotowicz became part of the conspiracy. Eventually the rebels owned Murder in the Cathedral.

Was this what you learned in a Dip Ed in those days: to teach English by reading the book out loud.

Barry Andrews was the only teacher of English whom I remember to have tried to teach properly. He deserved getting out of the School system to become a lecturer at Duntroon. It was a pity that he died so soon thereafter. I still disagree with his interpretations, however. I would like to revisit the questions, now that I feel more confidently forthright in my answers. “With reference to King Lear, which is worse: physical or psychological suffering? Discuss with reference to Lear and Gloucester”. What a load of shit. You try going through life with your eyes pocked out. Yet we are supposed to have sympathy for Lear for being a dickhead.

My other resentments were that there was rarely, if ever, any instruction in English. Boys were perpetually judged according to the innate abilities they brought with them. If you were born to get 6/10 for an essay, that is what you always got. Never did I learn how to get more than the mark that I was awarded. I never did get an answer to a question that I did pose in a close. “Why did Leith Morton get a higher mark than did I?”. Implicitly, I was destined always to get lesser grades than Leith, because he had a natural affinity with the subject.

What eventually saved me is that I learned more about language, grammar, expression, and argument from having taken Latin.