Status of books not worth a can of beans

Abstract

BEANS. I can't help but think of beans. "No Name" baked beans. Cheap price, fewer beans than a brand name, watery tomato sauce. But what a bargain. It seems Australians want fewer beans and watery tomato sauce in their literary diet. They want No Name literature, not Australian literature. It certainly seems that way for authors. The recent Australian Literature in Education Roundtable in Canberra, of which I was a member, heard that 47 per cent of the NSW English curriculum consisted of Australian works. On reflection, this was an appalling figure. Imagine telling a group of American litterateurs that American works made up only 47 per cent of the American English curriculum. There would be outrage, as in hindsight there should have been in Canberra. We don't have sufficient confidence in our own culture, in all its diversity, to place it first and foremost. We prefer No Name to Australian. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a rabid nationalist. I'm not suggesting everything should be Australian. Nor am I suggesting all English teaching should be from books. Our students need to study film, newspapers, television and other forms of narrative to make sense of today's world. And we must have Shakespeare. Without him we don't have a reference point to make much sense of English literature over the past 500 years. But, when it does come to books, why Frost when we have Wright? Yeats when we have a (living!) Murray? Pinter when we have Sewell? Austen when we have Stead? Woolf when we have White? One of the concerns of the roundtable was that Australian students were not exposed to the history and breadth of Australian literature. We determined that Australia's literature, along with its history, has an important role in helping people understand and appreciate the Australian imagination. Why don't our schools and universities use our own imagination as a starting point? Instead we make apologies for having an imagination. Only 47 per cent Australian literature - like 47 per cent No Name beans! Why, it's a bargain! Some bargain, dispensing with our own culture! It is not surprising that educators do not give literature high regard, given the contempt with which it is treated in the wider community. What do I mean by contempt? I mean the lack of interest we have in our literary culture, the fact that we think of it as nothing more than beans.