Here's something from my Year 12 days that might be of interest to English teachers and students alike. Our year, the graduating year of 2004, sucessfully argued that a game (for example, a P.C. game or a console game etc.) was not only a text type, but could be used in an assignment as a supplementary text. I think it could have been the crowning achievement for the Advanced Class there. While originally I was only along for the ride (the ride of debating with my favourite teacher), as of late, I have been wondering if this was a valid argument, and will we see more 'adstract' text types in the future? Perhaps.
But of special interest to someone, how long until we see blogs as a text type that are being studied and referenced in high school classrooms? I had to study a diary of someone, write three journals of my own and write 'opinion pieces'. Aren't some blogs one, if not all three, of these things? Sure, there exists the fabrication, 'seriousness', truthiness, reality and validity element to a blog, but without a doubt there are some serious blogs out there that certainly could be studied, thus ruining the experience of blogs for the next generation, just as English ruined the experience of movies for me.
Thomas.
4 comments:
Hear hear! The instructions on the back of toilet duck are also a text type -- and excellent toilet reading.
Blogs are an interesting text type from a linguistic viewpoint because the genre is still evolving. Some blogs are also extremely good texts, though the majority are probably not if you apply value judgements rather than merely descriptive or linguistic ones. English Studies has long been caught between value judgement on the one hand and pure description on the other. In the 60s there was a great stink about the usage status labels 3rd edition of the (real) Webster's Dictionary along those lines.
I am old-fashioned enough to give priority to texts (whatever their nature) that exhibit some qualities that make them stand out from others, but pomo enough to recognise the value of taking more than one approach.
MP's toilet duck is actually very similar to a question we were posed in an English Honours seminar in 1964: is a literary work in the same order of reality as the back of a Corn Flakes packet? That was long before the much discussed decline of English Studies, and the answer is neither simple nor obvious.
I would not propose studying blogs instead of Shakespeare, but would certainly favour studying blogs as well as Shakespeare, if for rather different reasons.
In my opinion, being a product of the new syllabus, I would be in favour of studying blogs ahead of studying Shakespeare. What would give you more of an insight and understanding of today's world more: a blog or Antony and Cleopatra? While Shakespeare does have his place, I still believe that asking kids to want to learn his plays, trying to get them to engage with them etc. is a hard enough task, so why not make it easier by putting his works to be studied in a separate subject or something? And this from someone who loved the English subject at school.
I want to know which games young Thomas would like to see on an HSC text list.
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