English Teaching: Practice and Critique
English in Australia: Complying or disappearing?
Volume 3 Number 2 September 2004
Wayne Sawyer (University of Western Sydney, Australia)
Australia may be about to enter an era of
compliance in educational provision to match the current regime in
England. English is subject here to the same pressures on testing,
outcomes and literacy concerns as in England. It is possible, but is
appearing increasingly unlikely, that our federal system may prevent
the kind of all encompassing accountability and Big Brother-ness that
is educational life in England. Similarly the Institutes of Teachers
growing up in Australia may be a force for good for the profession or
may become just another form of managerialism with which governments
can beat teachers and withdraw from their own responsibilities in
education. The biggest threat to the subject in Australia at present
may, in fact, be the trend towards inter-disciplinary curricula that
ignore the potential and depth of critique and creativity provided by
subject English.