CHAPTER FIVE

THE 1961/2 SYLLABUS FOR FORMS I-IV:

CHANGES IN, AND FRAGMENTATION OF, THE DEFINITION OF ENGLISH

UNDER THE PRESSURES OF NEW FORCES AND ISSUES

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The history of the formulation of the 1961/2 English

Syllabus Committee demonstrates the erosion of some of the more

prominent ideals of the Wyndham Report concerning the construction

of syllabuses, the fragmentation of the definition of English in

secondary education and the greater success of the Secondary

School Board's efforts to exercise and maintain tighter controls

over the English Syllabus Committee than previously had been the

case under the Board of Secondary School Studies. Both in its

content and in the nature of the forces impinging upon its

construction, the 1961/2 syllabus represents a "series of new

beginings" rather than merely a "continuum of development". -

One of the most important forces operating on the

formulation of the 1961/2 syllabus was the extreme haste which was

thrust upon the English Syllabus Committee. It was indefensible

that the major reorganization of the structure of the N.S.W.

secondary education system which was first mooted in 1933, planned

in greater detail in 1946, and recommended again in 1957 at the

end of four years of investigation, should be rushed through

Parliament in November 1961 for immediate implementation by the

end of January 1962. Thus three weeks before the Act was

officially passed, a new English Syllabus Committee was

established under the Chairmanship of D.A. Bowra (on November 6th,

1961). Its task was to rush out a syllabus to be implemented in

Form I in all N.S.W. secondary schools just over two and a half

months later. The Forms II-IV section of the syllabus would be

completed in 1962. The most obvious difference in membership

between the new committee under Bowra and its predecessor, was the

heavy reduction in numbers representing universities. This was in

accord with Wyndham's declared aim to reduce the influence of the

universities in determining the junior secondary school

curriculum. Where there had been six university personnel,

including three professors, on the final English Syllabus

Committee of the Board of Secondary School Studies, there was now

only one. There was continuity with the former committee and the

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1953 syllabus because seven members of the new committee had been

on the former one and nine of the ten males on the 1961 committee

were members of the English Teachers Group.1

The immediate problem facing Bowra as Chairman of the

English Syllabus Committee was, within only an extremely short

period of time, how to design a syllabus which would take note of

the principles espoused in the Wyndham Report and would stipulate

what should be taught in English classrooms in Form I 1962. Just

over one month after first convening, the committee sent its final

draft of the Form I section to the Board on 18th December 1961.

After making a few amendments the Board approved it and

distributed it to the schools. The rest of 1962 was devoted to

the preparation of the Forms II-IV component which was approved by

the Board on 14th December 1962.2 This syllabus, made up of two

separately prepared documents, will be referred to throughout this

chapter as the 1961/62 syllabus.

Bowra, along with all other chairmen (there were no women)

of syllabus committees, met with Wyndham and Dr. S. Cohen from the

N.S.W. Education Department prior to the initial meetings of

Syllabus Committees. Wyndham and Cohen announced that it had been

decided that syllabuses were to be constructed to allow for three

levels within them. The stratification of these layers was to be

such, however, as to allow for the development of the individual

student's capacities at varying rates and to identify and

encourage the talents of students.3 The Wyndham Report had been

harshly critical of the previous system of secondary education

which, it alleged, had tended to lock students remorselessly into

streamed ability-based classes. Wyndham and Cohen made it clear

that, within each syllabus, there had to be provision to permit

students to move flexibly between levels throughout the secondary

school right up to the start of Fourth Form. At the end of Fourth

Form there would be an external exam which would be set by a

committee and not, as in the past by a Chief Examiner moderated by

an Assessor.

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SUBORDINATION OF THE ENGLISH SYLLABUS COMMITTEE TO THE POWER AND

CONTROL OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS BOARD

The kind of interference which, on the former Board, Price

and Turner had been prevented from exercising over syllabus

committees by the opposition of Mitchell, Dunston and Stevens, was

now put into effect as far as the English Syllabus Committee was

concerned. On a number of occasions the Board showed that it

certainly believed it had the right to impose upon the committee

its own definition of what English in secondary schools should be

and under what conditions it should be taught.

Already at the very first meeting on November 6th 1961,

even before Bowra's committee had focused its attention on the

English syllabus, there occurred a striking example of the Board's

deviating from a major plank of the Wyndham Report and seeking to

weaken the position of English in the Form I curriculum. It was

Wyndham's original recommendation that those students who had just

completed primary school should not study foreign languages but

rather should experience a broad curriculum as they adjusted to

the new environment of the secondary school. Under the original

plan, foreign language study was to be postponed until Second

Form. Apparently as a result of some strong lobbying of members

of the Board by modern language academics and school teachers,4

the Board decided to alter its policy and to decree that "2 (sic.)

or three periods in English (could) be used for language and

vocabulary work in first term",5 with a concomitant reduction in

the allocation of English periods for such students from nine to

six or seven. During the second term of 1962 this study for

"certain groups of pupils"6 was to become more linguistic in

preparation for third term when these students could commence

their foreign language studies in full. At the same initial

meeting the members of the committee were also informed that the

Board had decided to ignore, for the time being at least, another

fundamental principle of the Wyndham Plan - the abolition of

95

streaming first form classes according to ability. "Form I in

1962", the Board informed the committee, would be "ability

grouped".7 The English Syllabus Committee was to be completely

defeated by the Board on the overturning of its period allocation

formula in favour of modern languages.

When faced with the daunting task of producing a new

syllabus within a month, Bowra's committee decided to divide the

task into five areas and to establish sub-committees to design

segments of the syllabus for each section. Thus the process was

immediately underway to fragment English and to produce a document

which would lose that consistency and coherence displayed in the

1953 document's pervasive, if limited, rationale of English being

fundamentally concerned with the expression and comprehension of

thought. The Minutes of the first meeting indicate that Bowra and

his committee believed that they could carve up the 1953 syllabus

into five manageable chunks. What they did not foresee was the

loss of a coherent definition of English that this process would

effect. The five chosen areas were 1. Comprehension - reading

understanding, listening. 2. Expression of thought - oral and

written composition. 3. Language Study - including relationship

of words, vocabulary, spelling. 4. Literature - Poetry, Prose,

Drama. 5. Oral.8

By 23rd November the drafts of three sections were

presented to the full committee. Indicative of the excessive

pressure under which these members, most of whom were teaching at

schools all day before meeting in the afternoon and evening, had

to operate is the fact that the poetry sub-committee forgot to

include any objectives.9 The first poetry draft was an exact

replica of the 1953 section on poetry. Already at this early

stage one can see that the English Committee and its

sub-committees were ignoring the Wyndham Report's directives to

all syllabus committees that they should draft shorter and less

detailed statements. The 1961/2 syllabus is by far the longest

and most detailed of the five syllabuses under review in this

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study. By the meeting on the 11th December four drafts had been

examined and amended by the committee. The committee did not have

time to consider the Language draft. The next day the draft of

all sections was sent to the interim Secondary Schools' Board for

its perusal.

The very first response of the Board upon receiving the

syllabus was to pass a resolution which in effect implied clearly

that it considered the English Syllabus Committee to be

incompetent in its construction of the language section of its

syllabus. Unfortunately, the full Syllabus Committee had not had

time to consider this section before it was sent to the Board.

The Board directed the committee to "re-examine the emphasis on

Language Study in the course proposed in the draft".10 It was

reported back to the committee that one member of the Board of

Senior School Studies, R.B. Farrell, who was Professor of German

at the University of Sydney, had criticised the language used in

that section and that the Board had been informed that the

"university representative on the Syllabus Committee (Delbridge)

was concerned about the Language Study section". 11 That

Delbridge, a linguist and a student of transformational grammar,

would not have been satisfied by the taxonomies of Latinate

terminology and the directives on parsing and analysis (with which

this section was replete) was quite understandable.12 A.W.

Stephens, co-founder of the English Teachers' Group with its

intense devotion to the pre-eminence of the place of literature in

any officially approved English curriculum, was another member of

the Board concerned by what he considered to be an undue emphasis

being placed on language study to the detriment of "English".13

The members of the English Syllabus Committee were incensed at

what they believed to be the improper trespassing on their

specific area of professional expertise by the Board.14 Only

after prolonged debate was it decided not to protest formally to

the Board. The committee permitted itself only the following

somewhat sarcastic jibe at the Board's assumption that it was

competent to dictate what should be the content of an English

syllabus in general, and Stephen's comment in particular, by

noting that

...the committee was pleased to be informed thatit could now 9ive the required attention toEnglish itself.1

For a week from December 18th, three members of the

committee revised the draft and re-submitted it to the Board on

the 2nd January 1962. Once again the Board attacked the document

and made a number of changes. These included several alterations

to the preamble. Bowra informed his committee colleagues that he

"had been at a loss to understand the alterations" 16 but because

of the compelling time constraints he felt he had no option but to

accept them. By June the committee was perturbed to hear reports

that despite its vigorous protestations to the Board concerning

the erosion of English at the expense of foreign languages, the

Board had not only failed to reply to the committee, but had sent

circulars to all school Principals informing them that rather than

having to wait until third term to commence formal foreign

language studies by the usurpation of English periods, they could

begin such studies in their schools whenever they felt their

students were ready. Quite clearly the Board was determined to

gain the upper hand quickly in any dispute with the English

Syllabus Committee.

THE "PREAMBLE" TO THE 1961 ENGLISH SYLLABUS

98

At the first meeting

committee's brief was just to

five sections. The Literature

draft had demonstrated this by

the 1953 document. However

believed his committee's task

'thought and comprehension'

Bowra had indicated that his

divide up the 1953 syllabus into

poetry sub-committee in its first

merely reprinting that section of

Bowra later indicated that he

was "to broaden the base from

of 1953".17

Under Bowra's

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direction the committee set out to broaden that rationale to

incorporate:

1. English as a three-fold skill.2. The essentials of teaching the course.3. The social significance of English to the

individual and to the community.4. Literature and human understanding.18

The 1961 Form I syllabus preamble is certainly more broad in

its conception of English than the 1953 preamble; but this breadth

was achieved at the expense of the loss of that consistent rationale

characteristic of its predecessor. The primary orientation is

towards what Dixon has described as a skills-based model. Students

were to be offered a course which would inculcate in them a

three-fold skill. They were to be able to express themselves in

speech and writing and must understand the speech and writing of

others. Finally they must develop the ability to "feel and

appreciate the appeal of literature".19

This was merely a

re-wording of the 1953 three part division of Sections A, B and C

but without the underpinning philosophical rationale that the

expression and comprehension of thought must be the basis of

teachers' efforts to give pupils an experience of their

language.20

Indeed the 1953 document had gone on to insist that

adherence to this fundamental principle would

...prevent the isolation of the several partsof the syllabus and ... prevent the teachingof any one part as an end in itself...21

Then there were added two priorities not to be found in the

1953 preamble. The first, that students should not merely imitate

prevailing language conventions in the community, was a direct

response to what Yelland had claimed in the Wyndham Report to have

been a flood of dissatisfaction from all quarters critical of the

declining standards in language conventions of students. The second

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addition insisted that there must be preserved "the essential unity

of language and literature".22

The Minutes of the English

Syllabus Committee suggest, but do not explicitly state, that these

were the two additions to the draft preamble made by the Board

itself when presented with the Syllabus Committee's first draft.

The rest of the preamble consists of a vigorous and confident

statement of the Newbolt assertion of the pre-eminence of English in

the school curriculum. While the 1953 syllabus had been deeply

influenced by the Newbolt English, it had never gone so far on this

question of the status of English. In its interview with the

Wyndham Survey team the Board of Secondary Schools Studies had

expressed such a conviction23

which had received its most

vigorous affirmation in the English Teachers' Group's

submission. The preamble to the 1961 syllabus confidently

declared that

...for the pupil, no other form of knowledgecan take precedence over a knowledge ofEnglish. In an English speaking community itmust always be the central subject of thecurriculum, for it is basic to comprehensionand progression in all studies; it ismoreover an important influence in theshaping of personality.24

Thus the 1961 formulation goes well beyond its predecessor in its

definition of the supremacy of English. The definition is still

content-based as Homer has observed of the earlier period up to

1941.25 This 1961 preamble is reminiscent of the Arnoldian

belief that the reading of literature by a large cross section of

society would weaken class struggles and produce a stable

society. It asserts that there is "no better way" of maintaining

a civilization based on shared awareness of human qualities,

problems and values "than through the reading of literature".26

The 1961 formulation places more emphasis upon the social and

communal aspects of "Language Communication" than does its

predecessor.

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A consideration of the preamble reveals how far the

committee took notice of the three criteria as specifically set

down by the Wyndham Report for the construction of

syllabuses.27 Only one, the first, that students are to be

provided with English skills which will help them later take their

place in society, was taken into account. There is no mention in

the preamble of the need to treat the material in such a way as to

arouse pupil interest. The 1971 successor to this syllabus would

incorporate that objective in its introduction. Although the

third criterion was that a syllabus should be constructed so as to

be within the power of comprehension of the students at a

particular stage of their adolescence, there is no hint in the

preamble that it is defining English for eleven and twelve year

olds. Indeed the preamble ignores Wyndham's fundamental principle

that syllabus content should not be determined by "academic

conceptions".

Wyndham had urged syllabus committees to produce documents

that would be suggestive rather than exhaustively and

prescriptively detailed. He had insisted that such syllabuses

should allow considerable flexibility and a variety of

implementary strategies to be exercised by classroom teachers

intent on effecting such principles. The 1953 syllabus was far

more aligned with these aims than was its 1962 successor.

It is not difficult to suggest reasons which may account

for the great amount of detail provided by Bowra's syllabus.

Mention has already been made of Bowra's keen sense of the

shortcomings of English teaching.28 Bowra and his committee

would have been well aware, for example, that in late 1961 both

Stephens, Director of Secondary Education, and Wyndham as

Director-General had persuaded Owen Jones, Director of Primary

Education, to re-appoint up into the secondary school system

approximately five hundred primary school teachers who had no

secondary teacher-education qualification, in order to help ease

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the teacher shortage crisis in government schools. 29 Bowra and

his colleagues were also acutely conscious of the confusion and

apprehension in the schools which had been brought about by the

haste with which the Wyndham Scheme was being imposed. There was

a natural tendency to reassure anxious teachers by explaining in

great detail what was required in a syllabus in the new

system.30 Thus, those idealistic recommendations of the Wyndham

Report which had recommended the decentralisation of curriculum

implementation and the creative exercise of professional

initiative at the school and classroom level, had to contend with,

and in the case of the 1961 English syllabus, succumb to other

pressures. On a broad level the N.S.W. system was rigidified by

generations of centralised curriculum control and the regimen of

textbooks which for so long had adhered to the same formula of

grammar, composition, literary "taste" and, especially since 1953,

"comprehension" passages. Throughout all this, the system had

been regulated by the narrowing and predictable demands of an

external examination system and monitored by an inspectorial

system designed to bridge the isolation barriers but which had

operated often in a threatening way wherein inspectors were viewed

with fear, even at times hatred, by school staffs.31

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE SPECIFIC DETAILS OF THE 1961 FORM I

AND 1953 ENGLISH SYLLABUSES

What follows is a comparative analysis of the 1961 Form I

and 1953 syllabuses in each of the five sections into which the

former statement is divided. Clearly, in a chapter of this size,

such comparisons must be selective and representative rather than

exhaustive and detailed. The 1961 document followed the 1953

innovation of detailing the content of the syllabus on the left

hand page, and its "Commentary" on the right hand page.

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(i) The speaking of English

The first section "The Speaking of English" goes well

beyond the limits of the 1953 syllabus which in its turn had

treated this matter more comprehensively than its 1911 and 1944

predecessors. This section was chiefly the result of the work of

Mr. Dan Dempsey, N.S.W. Inspector of Schools in Speech and Drama,

who was adamant that a speech programme could be effective only if

a proficient diagnosis of the speech needs and abilities of the

class were conducted. All teachers, not just English teachers,

should be concerned with oral expression. The criticisms of

Bryson Taylor32 are not echoed in the document.

(ii) Reading and Comprehension

The section on "Reading and Comprehension" is considerably

longer than its predecessor and incorporates considerable

quantities of new material. The document follows Bess Bannan's

advice and adds to the syllabus the need for the proper diagnosis

of reading abilities. Reference is also made approvingly to the

theories and practices of speed reading programmes as well as the

use of speed reading machines which had been pioneered in N.S.W.

by Bannan at Sydney Teacher's College. Such recommendations had

been most strongly supported in the English Association's

submission. The quite extensive bibliography provided at the end

of this section is predominantly American. This represents the

first major American input into a N.S.W. English syllabus in this

century.

While the 1953 document had specifically prohibited the

practice of reading short passages from literature in any

intensive way, on the grounds that it might spoil the primary

purpose of encouraging "a delight in literature for its own

sake",33 the 1961 syllabus takes the opposite view by insisting

that such a practice would "lead pupils to more extensive reading

in literature.34 The 1961 formulation repeats the 1953 emphasis

104

upon understanding the meaning of a passage and upon the need to

be able to recognise the methods used by the writer rather than

upon encouraging any personal critical response. The definition

of reading comprehension to be found here puts its emphasis upon

the first two processes outlined later in the Bullock Report.35

That third process, according to Bullock, which is mastered by the

most competent readers, not only incorporates the earlier two of

accurately decoding and understanding the writer's meaning, but

includes the capacity to read with discrimination, constantly

exercising a judgment based on, and sensitized by, one's own

experience. Such a capacity is mentioned briefly in the syllabus'

small segment on, what it terms, "the oral comprehension lesson".

As is typical of this syllabus, the Reading and

Comprehension section takes little notice of Wyndham's principles

of syllabus formulation. It provides a most comprehensive list of

matters of content, detail and teaching strategies. Even though

the Wyndham Report had listed one criterion for syllabus

construction to be to "understand better and appreciate more

fully (the) physical, mental or spiritual environment"36 there

is no mention of reading material beyond imaginative and

discursive literature.

Not only is this section dominated by content but it seems

to demand a great deal of the young first form student. Wyndham's

insistence that the needs and interests of students at appropriate

stages of their adolescent development should be considered in the

writing of syllabuses is ignored. Above all, this section

illustrates those features which Wyndham had criticised in earlier

syllabuses in secondary education - that they were "too detailed

and specific".37

(iii) Written Expression

The "Written Expression" section is much more like its 1953

predecessor than either of the Speaking and Reading sections

although, like the rest of the 1961 syllabus, the section is much

longer and more detailed than the 1953 statement. Perhaps because

of the conditions of haste, this is the only section not to list

some general aims at the outset. The Written Expression section

is very similar to the earlier 1953 syllabus but makes some

additions. The only deletion is the grammar component which

appears separately and, much more expansively, later in the

"Language" section. There was a new emphasis upon creative

writing. Here the Syllabus Committee was overlooking Yelland's

pointed failure to mention this aspect of English, and was

endorsing the English Association's submission on this matter.

Apart from this latter point, the emphasis is once again,

as it had been in the 1953 document, more upon form and style than

on the substance and content of what students were writing,

although substance and content were certainly not neglected.

There is a naive belief that the teachers of Form I will be

dealing with students who are virtually ignorant of the

fundamental processes in writing.

The aim here is to show pupils that thesentence is the basic unit of communicationby language.38

Only in the supplementary section for the brighter students is

there any recognition that the criterion for assessing the

effectiveness of writing should be one of "appropriate(ness) to

the context irrespective of questions of formal correctness".39

Once again the imposed need to add a supplementary prescription

for advanced level students had led to a curious hierarchical

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106

fragmentation of the subject English.

(iv) Language

The members of the Committee felt more uncomfortable about

the section on "Language" than about any other in the 1961

syllabus. The ambivalence and controversy about the role which

the teaching and learning of the Latinate grammatical system

should play continued from the previous period. Bowra recalls

that by 1961 the new developments in the theory and teaching of

language were beginning to be felt among some members of the

N.S.W. English teaching profession at primary, secondary and

tertiary levels.40 With the exception of Britton most of the

members were fairly ignorant of these developments.41 Bowra

invited Britton to write the section on this controversial area.

The latter declined because he felt that even he was not well

enough informed to outline adequately the new developments.42

Eventually Bowra himself undertook to write the section on

Language. There is evidence which suggests that Bowra personally

was in some sympathy with those who opposed the prominence that

had traditionally been ascribed to formal grammar.43 Indicative

of the ambivalence that Bowra felt about the role that traditional

grammar should play in the light of emerging theories about the

new grammars was the syllabus' opening statement on "Word Forms

and Relationships". While insisting upon the teaching of formal

grammar, the syllabus here directs that the grammatical terms

should be "established by descriptive and not by prescriptive

means".44. The distinction between "descriptive" and

"prescriptive" is analogous to the 1953 distinction between

'grammar for its own sake', which it rejected, and 'functional

grammar', which it endorsed. But from what the 1961 syllabus then

proceeds to prescribe, it became clear that in practice this 'new'

emphasis was to mean all the old grammar "treadmill" of parsing

and analysis, along with the application of such rules to

expression. The quantity of traditional grammatical theory

stipulated in the 1961 syllabus vastly exceeds that of its

predecessor As in all other sections discussed so far in this

chapter, the Language component shows scant consideration for

those Wyndham principles requiring syllabus designers to focus on

the needs and interests of children, and to reduce the size of

syllabuses by reducing quantities of detail.

The serious and arbitrary dislocation of English wrought by

the committee's having to divide up the syllabus according to the

three terms of the school year can be illustrated here. Language

usage was chopped up indiscriminately. For example, as far as

vocabulary is concerned, students in their first term were to look

only at the noun as subject, object and in the plural and

possessive forms. In terms two and three students were to

"progress" to common nouns, proper and collective nouns and to be

able to discuss their functions both in apposition and as

complements. The agreement of a verb with its subject, the finite

and infinitive forms and the transitive and intransitive functions

of verbs were to occupy first term. This was to be accelerated in

the second and third terms to cover past and future tenses,

recognition of auxiliary forms, present and past participles,

compound tenses specifically future, continuous present, and

continuous past. The syllabus ignores the facts that not only

would students have been using all these linguistic forms for

years in the primary school, but also that they would have been

reading material throughout those years, as well as in First Form,

which would not have been broken up into such term-by-term

taxonomies.

(v) Literature

Of all the sections the fifth, Literature, displays the

most marked difference from its 1953 predecessor and comes closest

of all to resembling the spirit of its 1971 sucessor. It is the

section of the 1961 formulation which underwent the most changes

between the first draft and the final document approved by the

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Board. It is the only section to take seriously the Wyndham

directives that syllabus committees should strive to make the work

interesting and appealing to students and to ensure that the

material would be appropriate to their needs and interests. It

also represents the first attempt anywhere in the whole syllabus

to have students move from beyond a concentration upon

comprehension of, and noting techniques used in, literature,

towards the encouragement of children's critical responses to the

substance of literature.

The first draft of the poetry statement had repeated the

1953 injunction to "give children an enjoyable experience of a

wide range of poetry"45 and to "develop in pupils an awareness

of the poet's intention".46 However the sub-committee decided

to go beyond these parameters derived from the earlier syllabus

and to add in the final draft "and a capacity to evaluate his

success".47 It will be recalled that the 1953 syllabus had

deliberately proscribed such an approach for fear of

"encourag(ing) artificiality".48 Clearly, the 1961 Literature

syllabus has moved to a new position. The committee also agreed

with Roderick's evidence, and so teachers were directed to include

Australian poetry in their First Form selection.

Another significant difference concerned student writing

in response to poetry. Both in its junior and senior sections

the 1953 syllabus on Literature had insisted that students should

not be encouraged to engage in extended written answers that

would go beyond the answering of sets of questions on specific

points.49 The first draft of the 1961 statement was almost

identical to its predecessor. However by the time the final draft

was presented to the Board an additional 'concession' had been

added: "but better pupils should be expected also to undertake the

longer written appreciation.50 Thus the 1961 syllabus for Form

I was demonstrating greater optimism about the capabilities of

students, albeit the better ones, than was found on this point in

either the junior or senior parts of the 1953 document.

On the question of students writing creatively or

imaginatively, the 1961 formulation deviated markedly from its

predecessor and followed the advice given by the English

Association. The 1953 syllabus had suggested that only "those

pupils who are naturally gifted" 51 should so write. This 1961

syllabus urges that all children should be so encouraged and in

doing so pointed towards a direction which the 1971 English

syllabus would endorse enthusiastically.52

The drama part of the Literature section, as in 1953, is

quite short. Not only is it the only part which demonstrates

Wyndham's principle of brevity and lack of detail, but it is the

only place in the syllabus where any overt reference is made to

Wyndham's exhortation to syllabus committees to "help (the

student) develop as a person". 53 Thus the first aim is

...to encourage participation in drama as ameans of liberating personality and ofdeveloping clear and confident expression.54

Similarly one finds in the drama statement the need expressed to

capture the student's interest. Unlike a number of other

sections, the one on Literature makes no effort to be specific

about supplementary work for the brighter Form I students. All

that is said is that "better pupils should be encouraged to do

more advanced work".55

The Form I syllabus lacked the coherent integrating

rationale of its 1953 predecessor. Most sections, with some

exceptions, failed to take notice of Wyndham's directives

concerning the formulation of syllabuses. This did not, however,

prevent the Board from approving the document. Except the drama,

and to a lesser extent the poetry, statements within Literature,

all sections were comprehensively longer and more detailed, both

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in the syllabus proper and in the Commentary, than the 1953

syllabus. Wyndham's remarks on this matter were utterly ignored.

FORMULATION OF THE ENGLISH SYLLABUS FOR FORMS II-IV, 1962

The Syllabus Committee reconvened on 15th August 1962 to

prepare the second stage - the formulation of the Forms II-IV part

of the syllabus. There was now added a most significant

complicating factor. Syllabus committees had been directed to

prepare the work for Forms II to IV at two levels, Advanced and

Ordinary. Bowra added a further complication by suggesting that

in drafting their material the sub-committees should provide for a

third, intermediate Credit level "for the better class of student

not taking the Advanced course.56

Bowra had assumed that the Form I and Forms II-IV

statements would be incorporated into a single document. The

Board decreed otherwise.57 Once again there was demonstrated

the curious anomaly whereby the Syllabus Committee which,

according to the Wyndham Report, was supposed to be encouraging

the decentralization of curriculum implementation by encouraging

flexible processes of implementation by teachers, being required

to operate under a Board which (from the very first meeting) had

made it clear to the English Syllabus Committee that it intended

exercising over it a most powerful centralized control.

The English Syllabus Committee again commenced by

expressing its unqualified opposition to a Board policy which had

had the effect of making it common practice in most schools for

Form I English to be reduced from eight to six periods a week.

The committee pointed out that the Form I syllabus had been drawn

up on the assumption that at least eight, preferably nine, periods

a week would be devoted to English. A strong motion deploring

this situation was sent to the Board.58 The Board virtually

ignored the committee by resolving at its very next meeting, to

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allow the teaching of foreign language subjects, not just

preliminary work in these subjects, to commence in second

term.59 Although the Board merely specified that the periods

were not to be taken from non-examinable subjects (English,Science, Mathematics and Social Science were the examinable core

subjects) it was obvious to the English Syllabus Committee that

the earlier precedent of usurping English periods for the

preparatory teaching of foreign languages would become the norm.

The Syllabus Committee was convinced that this decision would

severely inhibit the implementation of the Form I English

syllabus. It therefore sent a motion to the Board requesting it to

withdraw its decision "if a reduction in the English allocation is

intended".60 The Board considered this at its November 9th

meeting and maintained its decision resolutely. The teaching of

foreign languages would proceed and it would be at the expense of

English. 61

Subsequently the Board published a statement in the

December issue of the Education Gazette which was distributed to

all schools. This statement ignored the English Syllabus

Committee's argument that the Form I syllabus, with regard to its

content and format, had been constructed on the assumption that at

least eight and preferably nine periods a week would be devoted to

its implementation. The Board made it clear that it considered

that this English syllabus needed only six periods a week.62

The Syllabus Committee finally acknowledged defeat but reserved

its right to reopen the battle in the future for the restoration

of "the full nine (9) periods for the subject of English in

Form I".63 Thus, once again, on a very important issue of

syllabus content and its implementation the English Syllabus

Committee had been completely overruled by the Board.

The production of the Forms II-IV document became almost as

feverishly rushed a process as had been the construction of the

Form I statement. The committee was given a November 30th

deadline. By 22nd November the Poetry and Drama drafts had still

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not been presented to the full committee, despite intensive

day-long meetings of sub-committees and the full committee. The

final drafts were due to be reviewed at a meeting on the 28th

November, but the meeting was cancelled. Instead, Bowra received

the approval of the committee to co-opt his friend and fellow

English Teachers Group member F.J. Allsopp, English Master at

Sydney Boys High School (who was not a member of the committee) to

take a week's leave in order to review and rewrite, where

necessary, the drafts. They collectively rewrote it in order to

remove inconsistencies, clarify, and provide some stylistic

coherence for the document. The final document was presented to,

and approved by, the Board without amendment on 14th December.64

The committee laboured under an entirely new prescription

in formulating the Forms II-IV document. The Board had directed

all syllabus committees to segment their documents in the

following way. Advanced level was to challenge the top 25% of the

whole range of ability. Ordinary level was to cater for the

middle 50%. Within this latter category provision was to be made

for Credit level for those occupying the second quartile of the

whole ability range and Ordinary "Pass" would be the third

quartile or the lowest 16% of whole student population.65 The

"slow learning" group would have a separate "Activity Group"

curriculum designed for them, consideration of which lies beyond

the scope of this study.66

Because of the Board's stipulation, the syllabus had to be

stratified, at every stage, into three levels of work, Advanced,

Credit and Ordinary.67 This caused considerable consternation

within the committee and sub-committees as members tried to divide

up English accordingly. Bowra considered that this instruction

was the worst obstacle to confront his committee in devising this

syllabus.68 The ways in which this compartmentalizing was

implemented varied from section to section. The general comments

made earlier in this chapter about the failure of the Form I

syllabus to take heed of the Wyndham directives about syllabus

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construction, are even more pertinent to the very long

(thirty-nine foolscap pages) and highly detailed content-oriented

Forms II-IV syllabus. The general procedure was to incorporate

what had earlier been included in the Form I statement and then to

make additions.

(i) The Speaking of English

This section constituted the sole exception to the general

procedure just described. The Forms II-IV document was absolutely

identical to the Form I syllabus. No separate provisions are made

for the three levels.

(ii) Reading and Comprehension

The Forms II-IV document provides a wider definition of

reading material than had been the case in the predominantly

literary material stipulated in the Form I syllabus. Newspaper

articles and those dealing with "persuasion, propaganda,

biography, essay, verse and drama" were added to the material in

the Form I statement.69 The difficulties faced by Bowra's

committee in attempting to implement the Board's prescription of

the division of content and approach into three separate levels

are illustrated in this section. It also illustrates the

committee's characteristic practice of going into great length and

detail despite Wyndham's directives. Ten detailed aims are set

for Ordinary level students. The first three consist of a

rewording of the four aims stipulated in Form I. These stress the

comprehension of the writer's meaning, observation of techniques

and structural features, and awareness of the writer's

intentions. Then follows a vast array of aims: recognition of

fact, fiction, fantasy, opinion, bias, truth, falsehood, literal

and figurative speech; familiarity with simile, metaphor,

allusion, irony, wit, humour, rhetoric, mock heroic, humour,

pathos, satire as well as the differences between particular and

abstract terminology. In addition to this prescription for

Ordinary level students, those working at Credit and Advanced

level were to asked to give special attention to "allusion, irony,

satire, parody, wit, humour, rhetoric and the mock heroic". 70

The most significant decision made by the committee acting

under instructions to delineate these levels, was to exclude

from the syllabus for Ordinary level the following aim:

...the encouragement of clear and criticalthinking about argument, exposition andpersuasion71

and to prescribe it only for Credit and Advanced Level. The 1971

syllabus would incorporate this aim for all students. The 1962

decision follows the clearly established pattern of the 1953

syllabus of emphasising the attention to comprehension and the

observation of form and rather than urging the discriminating and

critical response. As in the Form I syllabus, the emphasis is

upon comprehension and recognition of, rather than response, to

what was being read.

(iii) Written Expression

The confusion created by the various sub-committees'

efforts to conform to the requirements of gradation according to

levels is further illustrated in the "Written Expression"

section. Whereas "Reading and Comprehension" divided its material

into two parts, Ordinary and Credit/Advanced, one finds here the

linking of Ordinary and Credit in one category and Advanced in the

other. Once again quite arbitrary choices are made. For example,

the "introduction of the noun phrase" is to occur in the sentence

construction of students at Ordinary and Credit levels between

Forms II and IV, whereas only Advanced students will attend to

adverbial, adjectival and noun clauses.72

On matters of

paragraphing, Ordinary and Credit levels are restricted to matters

of the effective opening and closing of paragraphs, logical

developments of argument and practice in the use of dialogue and

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quotations. Advanced students are to practise ways of using

details to develop argument, comparison and contrasts, use of

examples and anecdotes as well as the use of varying lengths of

paragraphs.

There are the occasional deviations from an intensive

preoccupation with matters of detail stratified into levels, and

the 1953 document's concentration on the comprehension and

expression of ideas. Thus, for example, the Forms II-IV syllabus

considerably expands the Form I statement concerning the need to

relate written expression to the child's development and need for

growth through self-expression.73 One can discern a moving

beyond the predominantly skills-based model of this 1961 syllabus

towards the personal growth oriented syllabus of 1971.

(iv) Language

The Language section takes a completely different approach

to the treatment of levels. It decrees that teachers are to

consider the whole section as defining the Ordinary level and to

use their own judgment here to expand this in "range and treatment

for the Credit and Advanced Levels".74

It proceeds with the normal pattern established in the

Forms II-IV syllabus of incorporating the material from Form I and

then adding to it. This produced the curious situation where

certain common forms of language usage were considered appropriate

for Forms II-IV but not for Form I. Thus, for example, the

"preposition" which had been considered too difficult for First

Form, although students would have been using it for years in

primary school, appears in the Forms II-IV document.

The comments made before75 concerning the Form I

syllabus' approach to the controversial issue of formal grammar

are apposite to a consideration of the 1962 statement. A most

imposing and highly detailed list of grammatical functions was

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prescribed to be mastered and understood. Yet the ambivalence

remained. The syllabus implies, despite the exhaustive list, that

less was being demanded of teachers and students than in former

times. Like the 1953 syllabus this document suggests that an

application of functional grammar, rather than a knowledge of

grammar for its own sake, was required. There is also a slight

movement away from claiming that a knowledge of grammar would lead

to better usage. Such grammatical knowledge, declares the

syllabus, "will assist in the study of usage and in the discussion

of problems of comprehension and communication".76 (the

underlining is the author's) Notwithstanding these disclaimers,

the quantity of detail of formal Latinate grammar required to be

assimilated at Ordinary level was imposing. It was a vastly more

comprehensive statement, covering three foolscap pages, than can

be found in any other N.S.W. syllabus this century.77

The 1962 Forms II-IV Syllabus retains the Form I syllabus'

statement that, while recognizing that some teachers might be

interested in experimenting with "the newer and more scientific

ways of describing English",78 teachers should nevertheless

retain the use of the terminology of traditional grammar. By 1968

sufficient pressure had built up within the Syllabus Committee, in

response to the new movements which will be described in Chapter

Eight, for the vast array of grammatical terms, which had covered

nearly four pages in the 1962 statement, to be replaced by a

simpler list. Teachers were also given the freedom to dispense

with grammatical terminology, if they so chose. While the new

statement considerably eased the amount of grammatical detail

required, it was still prescriptive. The 1971 syllabus would go

much further and prescribe absolutely "no knowledge about grammar

or structure",79 and retain the 1968 amendment's list as merely

a suggestion for those teachers who wished to use the teaching of

grammar in their classrooms.

(v) Literature

The same procedures adopted in all the earlier sections,

except the Speaking of English, which was unchanged from the Form

I syllabus, were followed in the construction of the Literature

section. The earlier material gathered in Form I is incorporated

in longer statements featuring great detail, and arbitrary

selections according to Levels and inconsistency in the grouping

of levels. The prose part packages Credit and Advanced together,

separate from Ordinary. It follows the 1953 pattern of

concentrating upon the need to observe features of the style

rather than the substance of the prose under study. On the other

hand Advanced, Credit and Ordinary levels are treated separately

in the poetry sub-section. The choice of poetry deemed suitable

for each level is arbitrary. Humorous and nonsense verse,

narrative, lyric, modern and biblical poetry are the types

selected for Ordinary. Credit students are to study these plus

poetry of "deeper emotional experience", to explore the "qualities

of the song lyric", the sonnet, the elegy and a selection of poems

around a theme. Advanced students are to write more widely, be

given a more intensive application of selected poems and be

exposed to a history of the development of English poetry.80

One can observe also here the commencement of another shift

away from the 1953 rationale towards what would become a major

emphasis of later syllabuses. The 1953 syllabus had insisted on

short written answers focusing on detail, when treating

literature. The 1962 Forms II-IV syllabus moves towards positions

which would be adopted in its 1971 successor: "pupils should be

encouraged to express sincere judgments at all times".81

While the Forms II-IV section on Written Expression adds

significantly to its Form I statement, and takes notice of the

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Wyndham directives on syllabus formulation by involving the

necessity for developing children's needs, interests and

experience in the learning process, the later Drama sub-section

completely removes the principal aim of its Form I counterpart

which had been

...to encourage participation in drama as ameans of liberating personality and ofdeveloping clear and confident expression.82

No reason is given for this remarkable deletion. The rest is very

similar to the Form I statement. The English Association's plea

for imaginative writing is retained. All students are to be

encouraged to write plays. This time the Credit and Ordinary

levels are bracketed together, with Advanced left on its own.

It is obvious that the 1961/2 syllabus and its 1953

predecessor emerged from very different backgrounds indeed. The

1953 document was produced by a self-selected elite group of

English teachers who believed there was a need to replace the 1944

statement with one which was based on a coherent rationale and

which would provide teachers with a comprehensive commentary.

That there was a need for a major revision of English was firmly

believed by the majority of those who held responsibility for

designing and authorising the English curriculum in N.S.W. The

1953 syllabus was welcomed by members of both the English Syllabus

Committee and the Board of Secondary School Studies as a response

to a crisis. It was suffused with the Newbolt concept of English,

although it did not so stridently insist upon the pre-eminence of

English within the secondary school curriculum.

The 1961/2 syllabus, on the other hand, represented clearly

a hastily prepared and uneven "new beginning" when compared to its

predecessor. The 1961 and 1962 sections of the latter syllabus

were prepared hastily; the former inordinately so. It was a

direct consequence of the great pressures imposed upon the

committee when drawing up the Form I document, that the unity of

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the 1953 syllabus was fragmented so badly into five separate

sections with very little coherence. They were produced by a

newly appointed English Syllabus Committee for Forms I-IV which

was required to draw up the documents within guidelines

established by the Secondary Schools Board. That Board exercised

much more power and control over its committee than had occurred

between the previous Committee and its Board. Yet neither the

1961/2 committee nor the Secondary Schools Board seems to have

taken much notice of the general curriculum principles, nor the

specific guidelines for syllabus construction, that had been laid

down in the Wyndham Report.

The major legacy of the completely new directives imposed

upon the English Syllabus Committee by the Board was the

sub-dividing of each of the sections of the Forms II-IV syllabus

into Advanced, Credit and Ordinary levels. This was the Board's

way of implementing the Wyndham Report's recommendations that

syllabuses should be flexible enough to permit a school to

provide different courses in the same subject "to allow for a

variety of standard of content".83 As well as having to resort

at times to quite arbitrary stratifications, the committee

eventually produced a syllabus marked by great inconsistency in

its approach to resolving the issue of levels. Thus there was no

effort to subdivide the "Speaking" section in any way which was

identical to the Form I syllabus. The "Reading and Comprehension"

section bracketed Credit and Advanced levels together as one layer

and treated Ordinary separately, while "Written Expression"

packaged together Ordinary and Credit in the same category and set

different goals for the Advanced level. The "Language" section

took a completely different approach by specifying that its vast

detail of content was being prescribed for Ordinary level and

leaving the decision to teachers as to what should be treated at

Credit and Advanced levels. Even within the one section of

Literature there were significant variations. There was the one

category of Credit and Advanced in prose and another for Ordinary

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whereas there were three separate sections for each of Ordinary,

Credit and Advanced for poetry.

The 1953 document assumed that its principles would be put

into effect by properly qualified and competent teachers assisted

by the expansively written Commentary. On the other hand the

1961/2 syllabus was prepared at a time when the Chairman of the

Committee and a number of its members, especially the inspectors

and departmental school teachers, were vividly aware of the

pressures being experienced by English teachers in over-crowded

classrooms. Bowra believed that too many of the teachers were

inadequately trained and unprepared for the kinds of

responsibility which the Wyndham scheme, if ideally implemented,

would have demanded.84 It was also a period of great

uncertainty at the outset of a restructured secondary education

system. Consequently it is not surprising that the documents were

filled with masses of detail and content.

Watson has under-estimated the degree of difference between

the 1961/2 and the 1953 syllabuses when he suggests that the

documents produced by the Bowra committee "did not depart

significantly from the lines laid down in the 1953 syllabus".85

He also claims that in its preamble the 1961/2 statement provided

a more coherent statement of a view which had been only groped

towards by its predecessor. The only sense in which this is true

is that concerning the supremacy of the place of English in the

curriculum. This issue had been only tentatively approached in

1953 but was powerfully asserted in 1961/2. While the 1961/2

syllabus was broader in its conception of English, it was this

same syllabus that was "groping". It demonstrated a loss of a

unifying, assured and integrating rationale. It would seem to be

more accurate to say that there are a number of signs, already

discussed earlier in this chapter, which show the formulation to

be moving gradually towards the emphasis upon personal growth

which was to be demonstrated later by the 1971 syllabus.

One of the features of the 1953 syllabus was its

confidence. It displayed a self-assurance about the importance of

the teaching of literature in secondary schools that was

characteristic of what Dixon has described as the "cultural

heritage" model. But it was not so much a question of

transmitting a cultural heritage, as of imparting standards of

literary taste, as described by Homer, through the reading,

assimilation and 'appreciation' of a body of content of 'great'

literature. What must be avoided, it declared, were the dangers

of artifice and insincerity. While that syllabus displayed some

minor hesitation about the efficacy of grammar, nevertheless it

assumed that if grammar rules were applied functionally, then such

doubts would be resolved.

The 1961/2 syllabus does not share such assuredness.

Because of the uncertainties associated with the commencement of a

new scheme and caused by the committee's anxiety about teachers,

the committee ignored Wyndham's directives and set out to be as

definite and detailed as possible. But such a plethora of detail

did not camouflage the uncertainty revealed within this syllabus.

The Language section reveals the committee's ambivalence about the

role that traditional grammar should play. There were some

differences of opinion within the Literature sub-committee. This

is shown in the differences already noted between the poetry and

prose sections, as well as the striking innovation in the Form I

Drama syllabus and its just as arbitrary disappearance in the

latter statement.

The roots of the 1953 document, it has been shown, can be

traced back to Newbolt English. The 1961/2 syllabus retained this

British tradition although it was severely modified by the

dislocation, fragmentation and stratification effected as a result

of the particular forces detailed in this chapter. In addition

there was a significant American influence in the "Reading and

Comprehension" section. Some of the arguments proposed in the

evidence submitted by the English Teachers' Group and English

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Teachers' Association were incorporated, while others were

ignored. Generally speaking, the principles enunciated by Yelland

in the relevant section of the Wyndham Report were adopted. On

the other hand, Wyndham's general and specific principles were

virtually ignored.

It has been noted that the charge has been levelled at the

Wyndham Scheme Forms I-IV English syllabus that it set back the

development of the subject in N.S.W. by a decade.86 Certainly

it transformed a coherently defined subject into five sections

lacking any adequate integrating principle. Whereas the 1953

syllabus had consistently returned to the central principle

enunciated in its preamble, the 1961/2 joint syllabus made no such

effort. Its "new beginning" involved, paradoxically, a

disintegration of its predecessor's coherence.

Yet it would be harsh to be too critical of Bowra's

committee. It was the N.S.W. government, which created the

situation in which Bowra and his colleagues found themselves, that

deserves censure. It was absurd that a syllabus committee should

be asked to construct, within a month, a syllabus which was not

only expected to take cognisance of a Report that had taken four

years to compile and which set out to revolutionize N.S.W.

secondary education, but which might also be expected to take into

account contemporary overseas developments in English curriculum

theory. In fact it did neither effectively.

Despite its obvious weaknesses, there was matter worthy of

admiration in Bowra's syllabus. The 1953 syllabus had seemed to

assume a rather elite clientele. One gets the impression that the

writers of that syllabus were more conscious of students in their

final two years of secondary education. After all, as Wyndham had

shown in his Report, of the school population for whom the 1953

syllabus was written, nearly half the students who had commenced

in first year had left before the end of the Intermediate (third)

year.87 However the 1961/2 syllabus had to cater for a school

population which, under the Wyndham Scheme, was to be assumed

would all persevere from First Form to Fourth Form. That this

kind of student retention did not occur immediately. 88 in no way

eased the task of the Bowra committee.

There were some specific initiatives in the 1961/2

syllabus. Drama had received a boost from the syllabus. Creative

and imaginative writing was no longer to be considered the

exclusive preserve of the academically gifted. It was now

recognised that for a large proportion of students the effective

teaching of reading must go well beyond the mere distribution of

books and the order to "read!". The need for remediation was

emphasised. The teaching of poetry was given strong impetus,

especially in the First Form syllabus which urged teachers to

select material that would take account of, and arouse the

interest and enthusiasm within, students.

If the 1953 syllabus had anticipated some of the features

of Dixon's cultural heritage model supported by characteristics of

his skills-based model, one could say that the 1961/2 syllabus had

turned its attentions principally to emphasising the teaching and

learning of skills, allied to vestiges of the cultural heritage

elements of the 1953 syllabus; although in both cases Homer's

"literary taste" model is as relevant as Dixon's. At the same

time there is some little evidence of what would later emerge in

the personal growth model.

Perhaps the most significant feature of the Bowra syllabus

for Form I and Forms II-IV was that it contained its own built-in

principles of self-destruction. It demonstrated just enough

evidence of a more progressive conception of English to enable,

even encourage, some English teachers to discover its

limitations; to see that it did not go far enough. Once the

Dartmouth influences made their impact upon N.S.W., under the

influence of the vigorously growing English Teachers Association,

then the full inadequacies of the 1961/2 joint syllabus would

123

become apparent. Perhaps the Bowra syllabus ultimately enabled a

later Syllabus Committee and significantly placed individuals in

the N.S.W. English teaching profession to see the very

shortcomings of such a definition of English for secondary school

students. Thus the Bowra syllabus acted as a catalyst to

processes which would eventually produce, in the 1971 syllabus, a

most dramatic revision, indeed reformation, of the English

curriculum in N.S.W.

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CHAPTER SIX

BEGINNING THE SEARCH FOR A NEW DEFINITION OF

SENIOR SCHOOL ENGLISH UNDER THE WYNDHAM PLAN

125

The introduction of the Higher School Certificate

curriculum for the final two years of secondary education

generated a "series of new beginnings", as various forces, notably

within the University of Sydney, struggled to establish an

appropriate definition of English for fifth and sixth form

students. The issue which dominated the period prior to, during

and after the formulation of the first Higher School Certificate

(H.S.C.) English syllabus was the following: how should English

as a compulsory subject be defined and how should this find

expression in a syllabus? The period covered in this and the next

chapter was wracked with controversy and power struggles chiefly

between the Board of Senior School Studies, which was responsible

for the construction and examination of all syllabuses for Forms V

and VI, and the universities in N.S.W. - but principally the

University of Sydney. Chapter Seven will examine the significance

of the tensions within the English Department of the University of

Sydney in the construction of the syllabus.

THE POWER OF, AND CONTROL EXERCISED BY, THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

OVER N.S.W. SECONDARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM IN GENERAL AND ENGLISH IN

PARTICULAR

The University of Sydney had exercised a dominating

influence over the secondary school curriculum in N.S.W.

throughout the century. The influence of universities on

secondary school curriculum throughout that time has been strongly

criticised.1 According to the Knibbs-Turner 1902 Royal

Commission Report into primary and secondary education in 1902,

the only factor which gave unity to N.S.W. secondary

education was a

...common endeavour to meet the requirementsof the Public Examinations held by theUniversity and the matriculation standard ofthat University.2

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The strong adherence of the University of Sydney, in collaboration

with the University of N.S.W., to what it considered to be its

matriculation standard, was to effect a most serious distortion

of the 1965 syllabus prior to and during its implementation in

schools.

One of the consequences of the Knibbs-Turner Report was the

major reorganization of the N.S.W. Department of Education and the

appointment of Peter Board as Director of Education in 1905. One

of Board's most firmly held convictions, which half a century

later one of his successors Dr. H.S. Wyndham was to propound with

great vigour, was that the University's matriculation requirements

should not determine the curriculum of all children attending

N.S.W. secondary schools. Board insisted that the university was

"not necessarily an authority on the highest form of education

represented by the secondary school"3 even though in 1911 the

Senate of the University had declared that it was indeed the

"highest authority in the state on matters of education".4

Until 1911, the University prepared and marked all secondary

school public examinations.

One of the consequences of the 1912 University Amendment

Act was that the university forfeited its power to be the sole

examining body of secondary education. An eight person Board of

Examiners was established consisting of four representatives each

from the University and the N.S.W. government's Department of

Public Instruction. Matriculation would still be determined by

the student's passing at the Leaving Certificate examination in

those subjects decreed by the University. The government would

be given representation on the University Senate. In practical

terms, however, all that had been achieved was that the Leaving

Certificate examination would replace the University's

matriculation examination as the measure used by the University

for its matriculation purposes. The Board of Examiners was

dissolved under the 1936 Act of Parliament which established the

Board of Secondary School Studies. Nevertheless the power of the

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Universities was still very strong. Chief Examiners in all

subjects were university appointees, normally professors. Until

1950 the Leaving Certificate English paper was marked exclusively

by members of the English Department at the University of Sydney.

Under Mitchell, from 1950 onwards, there was a gradual diminution

of exclusive university control as some teachers were invited to

join the marking team. Mitchell consulted with teachers prior to

commencing the marking operation in order to seek their guidance

on the fairness of the questions set. By 1960 there were fifty-

one academics and thirty-two school teachers appointed to be

markers of the Leaving Certificate.5

In his delineation of the "academic" and the "piecemeal"

traditions in the history of education in Australia, Connell has

argued strongly that universities have exercised most powerful

"one way arrangements...from the top down".6

More recently

Hellyer has questioned whether

...the academic orientation of generalsecondary education stemmed from "universitydomination" as was popularly supposed - anidea fostered by the Wyndham Report - orwhether perhaps it was due more to theconservative attitude of the responsibleofficers of the Education Department.?

In defending the latter alternative, Hellyer points to the fact

that, under the 1936 Act, the Universities did not have a majority

in the Board of Secondary Schools Studies. What Hellyer overlooks

is the possibility of power blocs being established within the

fourteen-person committee. A.W. Stephens, who was to succeed

Price as Director of Secondary Education, had been appointed as a

Departmental officer to the Board in August 19538 and remained a

member until when that Board was replaced by the Secondary Schools

Board and the Board of Senior School Studies. On both of these

later Boards he sat as Deputy Chairman. During his years on the

Board of Secondary School Studies Stephens had observed that

representatives of the non-departmental schools would quite

regularly vote in a bloc with the University nominees.9 Later,

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129

as Deputy Chairman of the Board of Senior school Studies, Stephens

was dismayed to find that at Board meetings the endeavours of

himself, his Deputy Director of Secondary Education, Yelland and

Wyndham to implement the spirit of the Wyndham Report concerning

the fifth and sixth forms curriculum, were constantly being

defeated. Stephens declared that he was later informed by one of

those involved that, unbeknown to the Departmental officers, the

University professors and private school members on the Board were

caucusing before each meeting to discuss the agenda in order to

vote as a bloc and so frustrate any proposals which, in the view

of the university representatives, might not be to the advantage

of their institutions.10 It is Stephens' strong conviction that

T.G. Room, Challis Professor of Mathematics, and R.B. Farrell,

Professor of German at the University of Sydney, were prominent

members of this bloc.11

. It will be shown that Farrell, as Dean

of the Faculty of Arts, was to do much to frustrate Wyndham's

concept of levels in the Higher School Certificate curriculum,

especially concerning Second and Third levels in English.

Well before the passing of the 1961 Act of Parliament which

legislatively enacted the Wyndham Scheme, the Professorial Board

of the University of Sydney had expressed its belief that the new

six year system would lead to declining standards and warned the

Minister that the selection and quality of matriculants must not

be put in jeopardy.12 No reasons were given to suggest why the

Professorial Board should assume that six years of secondary

education would produce students who would be inferior to those

who had left school after only five years. The Committee of

Enquiry had assumed that, although the vast majority of students

would persevere at secondary school until Fourth Form, only about

one in four would then continue on to forms Five and Six. Of

these, it was believed that probably less than 50% would proceed

immediately to the universities in the following year.13

Wyndham has been criticised for severely under-estimating the

proportion and number of students who would proceed to the Higher

130

School Certificate Examination and admits that he did

under-estimate these figures.14 In a report he prepared in 1959

for the Board of Secondary School Studies, Wyndham had predicted

that if his scheme were implemented it would result in a

"reduction in the number of candidates at the Higher School

Certificate Examination" compared to the current Leaving

Certificate enrolments.15 His projections were not challenged

by the Board. Furthermore a series of seminars conducted in 1958

by the University of New England's Department of Adult Education

had arrived at an identical conclusion.16 However by 1967, when

the first H.S.C. students were entering the employment

market-place, various employing authorities, who previously had

demanded only Intermediate Certificate pre-requisites, began to

insist upon the Higher School Certificate instead.17 Wyndham

had always assumed that such bodies would have recognised the

School Certificate to be the equivalent of, indeed superior to,

the former Intermediate Certificate.18

CHALLENGING THE ROLE OF LITERARY STUDIES IN A COMPULSORY ENGLISH

SYLLABUS

In the years prior to the promulgation of the H.S.C.

English syllabus in 1965, a spirited debate took place as to what

should constitute a compulsory English syllabus in the Higher

School Certificate curriculum. The English teaching profession

engaged publicly in this debate in a way not seen before in

N.S.W. The basic controversy was whether, and if so to what

extent, the study of literature should constitute a significant

component of a syllabus in English as a compulsory subject for

students in fifth and sixth forms. The 1953 syllabus, in the

Newbolt tradition, had just assumed not only that literature must

occupy a place in the English syllabus, but that it should hold a

pre-eminent position. The 1961/2 syllabus agreed and went

further. Indeed it stated that literature studies should be

pre-eminent, not merely in the English syllabus, but in the

secondary education curriculum generally. The public attack

131

against such assumptions was led by T.G. Hunter, Professor of

Chemical Engineering at the University of Sydney.

In 1962 Hunter had directed his second year chemical

engineering class to write a letter of application for a job, in

reply to an advertisement offering industrial appointments to

graduate chemical engineers. He was alarmed at what he termed the

illiteracy he found. Of the native born Australian students in

his class he found that "62% were obviously illiterate".19

Hunter publicised his findings and subsequently publicly attacked

English teaching, the English syllabus and English teachers.

Later he was invited to address a monthly meeting of the English

Teachers Association on 20th September 1962. It proved to be a

lively confrontation.20 Hunter argued that it was pretentious

to force students to study literature of high quality when they

could not even write properly. In 1963 Hunter published the

findings of his literacy experiment and renewed his attack on

English in the Atomic Energy Commission journal. Hunter's remedy

for what he perceived to be a most serious situation was to

propose something similar to the situation prevailing at that time

in Victoria where all students were required to undertake an

English Expression course as a compulsory subject and where only

those who so chose would undertake the subject "English

Literature". Hunter insisted that the study of English Literature

should be excised from the compulsory subject "English" which

should consist of practice in written and spoken composition,

comprehension, and language skills so as to produce students who

would be literate.

In June 1963 a special "Subject Area - English" committee

was constituted by the Board of Senior School Studies on an

interim basis prior to the establishment of a properly constituted

and fully representative English Syllabus Committee. The Syllabus

Committee was not established until July 1964. The Subject Area -

English committee was asked to propose some broad guidelines

132

within which the later Syllabus Committee should operate. 21

This committee met only twice, on the 3rd and 19th of July 1963,

and agreed upon the following matters. English should be a

compulsory subject for the Higher School Certificate. The

syllabus should not be one merely in "Expression" but should be a

course "with a substantial literary component".22 Such

literature should not only be worthwhile in itself but should be

chosen with a realistic appraisal of the abilities and interests

of the candidates at "the basic level".23 This reflected the

general aims of the Wyndham Report concerning syllabuses as

discussed in Chapters Four and Five. On this fundamental issue of

the role of literature, the chairman of the committee, G.H.

Russell (who was Mitchell's successor as McCaughey Professor of

Early English Literature and Language), recorded his formal

dissent24 and supported the policy that had been advocated by

Hunter. Russell insisted that there should be a "separate and

distinct" paper, which he described as "Expression and

Comprehension", that would be similar to the third level course

proposed later by the committee but without the literature

component, and would perhaps be set at two levels.25 This

debate was to rage for the next twelve months and was to be

compounded by the matriculation controversy.

The committee recommended that the syllabus be constructed

and examined at three levels in such a way as to permit "transfers

from one level to another to be made". 26 Once again one notes

the re-echo of the Wyndham Report. While the emphasis on the

Third Level course should be upon expression and comprehension,

these features must not be divorced from the study of literature.

Examinations at this level were not to require the display of

"critical abilities beyond a fairly elementary level".27 Second

Level was to prescribe a course in "English Language and

Literature" at a suitably intensive level. Students at this level

were to be presumed already to have that command of the language

in its comprehension and expression which would be expected of

133

third level. First Level would be for students of the highest

ability. The committee recommended that the First Level reading

list should incorporate some of the Second Level texts but that

the course would be considerably more demanding in quantity and

quality than Second Level. As far as the "Language" component of

a future syllabus was concerned, the committee was quite unclear.

Finally, it was recommended that pupils attempting a higher level

who failed to achieve a pass at this level should be permitted to

be awarded a conceded pass at an appropriate lower level, although

not necessarily so if their examination performance was too poor

even for that.28

The two professional organisations of English teachers, the

English Teachers' Association and the English Teachers' Group, now

entered the debate and both staunchly supported what had been the

majority decision of the Subject Area - English Committee on the

major issue of controversy concerning the role that the study of

literature should or should not play in a compulsory English

course containing three levels. Both bodies made submissions to

the Board of Senior School Studies and requested that these be

passed on to the English Syllabus Committee when it was

established.

By 1963 the English Teachers' Association was in its third

year. Its establishment and development will be explored in some

detail in Chapter Eight. A dramatic increase in the size of its

membership had been stimulated by teachers' anxieties about what

changes they might have to make in the wake of the Wyndham Scheme

and their concomitant need and desire to overcome that isolation

which they had suffered for so long. For many years English

teachers in the senior section of the school had been teaching for

a Leaving Certificate Examination which, apart from the extra

expression question, added in 1940,29 and the additional

Expression paper since 1953,30 had hardly changed in the half a

century since the reorganization of secondary education in 1911.

134

W.G. Priest, the English Master at Normanhurst Boys High

School, was elected by the English Teachers Association to convene

a sub-committee to prepare a submission to the Board of Senior

School Studies. The resulting document was endorsed by the

Council of the English Teachers Association on 15th August 1963

and sent to the Board on the 27th. The statement opened with a

resounding rejection of any proposal that would seek to "exclude

the study of English Literature from the English Syllabus".31

Any such move would be "a negation of the principles underlying

secondary education".32 This was the position that had been

adopted by the 1953 syllabus and to an even greater extent argued

in the evidence submitted to the Wyndham Committee of Enquiry by

the Board of Secondary School Studies, the English Teachers' Group

and the English Association.33 It was the position adopted by

Yelland in the Wyndham Report and enunciated by the preamble of

the 1961 and 1962 joint syllabus for Forms I - IV. It was the

fundamental tenet of the Newbolt Report and of what might be

termed the Arnoldian tradition. For all such people and

organizations, any proposal ' to exclude literature, such as was

being made by Hunter and, as will be shown later, his university

allies, was quite heretical.

The English Teachers' Association submission insisted that

there should not be three levels, as had been proposed in the

Subject Area-English document, but only two: Ordinary and

Advanced. For Ordinary Level three Shakespearean plays should be

read over the two years as well as a sufficient number of other

plays to provide students with a broad feeling for the history of

drama. A minimum of four poets selected from a reasonably wide

choice, three novels and selections from other prose forms should

be studied. Texts should be prescribed only in sixth form, not in

fifth form. At advanced level a greater number of texts should be

studied and there should be ten periods a week compared to eight

in Ordinary.

135

The second section of the Association's submission dealt

with "Expression" . For Ordinary Level the document summarised

those matters that had been set out in the 1953 syllabus such as

letter writing, composition, comprehension, précis, exercises in

clear thinking and vocabulary enhancement. English must be

permitted to retain "its primacy...in Senior School Studies

and students should receive from the course those skills which

would enable them "to undertake further studies and to assume

social responsibilities".35 It insisted that "the stated aim of

the (Ordinary) syllabus (should) be to develop the students powers

of independent thought and creative self-expression".36 It was

assumed that students at Advanced level would not need such a

course, which would be replaced by a "Language Study" that would

include such matters as studies of the "elements of vocabulary",

the "elements of clear thinking", concepts necessary for a "full

appreciation of tone and style" and a history of the English

language.37

At Ordinary Level, the Association urged that there be two

three-hour examination papers and only two categories of award.

These should be A or B. Similarly there should be two three hour

examinations at Advanced Level with the awards of Pass, Second

class Honours, and First class Honours. The submission, while

recommending that teachers be given some freedom of choice in the

selection of texts, also urged the Board to direct its Syllabus

Committee to retain the 1953 innovation of providing teachers with

a Commentary to amplify the syllabus.

This policy later received enthusiastic official

endorsement at the Association's Annual General Meeting held in

conjunction with the Annual Conference in February 1964. The

Conference authorised the Council of the Association to send a

resolution to all those people who would be responsible for the

formulation of the Higher School Certificate Syllabus. The

resolution demanded that literature must be studied by all

students in fifth and sixth forms and deplored any "separation of

Language from Literature".38

The resolution was passed

unanimously.

At its Annual Conference at Cranbrook College on the 13th

and 14th of September 1963, a fortnight after the English

Teachers' Association report had been sent to the Board, the

English Teachers' Group discussed what should constitute the new

H.S.C. English syllabus. Its recommendations were sent both to

the Board and to Wyndham, in his capacity as Director-General of

Education, on the 9th of October. In a covering letter the

honorary secretary pointed out that, while in the past there had

often been divergence of opinion within the Group on matters of

literature and the teaching of English, the members were on this

occasion unanimous in deploring the suggestions that had been

publicised in the press and elsewhere, that the future H.S.C.

English syllabus

...should not include English Literature as acompulsory study (and) that the onlycompulsory English subject should be EnglishLanguage or Expression.J9

The Group submission appended a copy of a paper delivered at the

Conference by C.A. Bell, English Master of Melbourne Grammar

School, who had ridiculed the Victorian practice of having a

compulsory English Expression course for all students and an

additional optional subject called English Literature.

The Group's document was very similar in tone and argument

to, though shorter than, the English Teachers' Association's

document. Language and literature studies must be integrated.

The selection of texts should not only afford students

"satisfaction and delight" but also "encourage them to write

themselves".40 Such a suggestion had not appeared in the

Group's earlier evidence to the Committee of Enquiry. Due

attention, argued the Group, should be paid to Australian

Literature. As in the 1953 document and in the Group's submission

136

137

to the Wyndham Enquiry, the emphasis was still upon the

transmission of literary taste and the familiarising of students

with knowledge about literary genres. The guiding principle must

be one of inculcating in students the proper "appreciation" of

literature.41 As had the English Teachers' Association, the

Group strongly recommended that there be not three but only two

levels of English for the Higher School Certificate.

While the two professional English teacher associations

were vigorously supporting the majority recommendation of the

Subject Area-English Committee, which had firmly rejected any

notion that literature should be excluded from a compulsory H.S.C.

English syllabus, Hunter was receiving strong support for the

general position he was arguing, from the Matriculation Committee

of the University of Sydney's Professorial Board. This is

demonstrated by a letter sent by Professor W.M. O'Neill, Chairman

of the Professorial Board, to Wyndham as Chairman of the Board of

Senior School Studies in September 1963, only a few weeks after

the Cranbrook College Conference. Prior to sending this letter,

O'Neill had authorised a delegation of Professors Room, Farrell

(both of whom were on the Board) and Russell to meet with Wyndham

in order to explain to him the current state of opinion within the

Matriculation Committee concerning the Higher School Certificate.

In his letter O'Neill said that after having consulted with

the three Professors of English, Russell, Wilkes and S.L. Goldberg(who had just arrived to take up his appointment to the Challis

Chair in English Literature), the members of the Matriculation

Committee had made some recommendations. The committee believed

that there was much to be said against making English a compulsory

subject because of its substantial literary content which, said

O'Neill, was "not within the range of all who may properly be

admitted to a university".42

138

Furthermore, alleged O'Neill, despite the "deplorably low

standard of a 'B' pass in the present Leaving Certificate", 43 a

lot of potentially able university students were being prevented

from going up to university because of a failure in English which

automatically disqualified them from matriculating. O'Neill

argued that it was not fair to students who did not have a

literary flair. Students with only limited talents in literature,

but who had abilities and interests in other areas such as

mathematics, science, languages and so on, could better prepare

themselves for future university studies if they were not forced

to "use up" one of their maximum number of subjects by taking

English, a subject for which they had "little aptitude". 44The

Matriculation Committee was calling for a matriculation formula of

five full subjects plus a subject which

...would be meant to test students' abilitiesto express themselves and also to write withunderstanding both imaginative and discursivewriting. This paper should be in our viewseparate and distinct from English at any ofthe three levels contemplated for thatsubject.45

The difference between the point of view expressed by both English

teachers' groups and the University's Matriculation Committee was

clear. The English Teachers' Group and the English Teachers'

Association (the latter's membership was by then around 400)

believed that the study of English literature, including

Australian literature, should be part of the curriculum of every

student completing the final two years of a six year secondary

education programme. The Matriculation Committee believed that,

since English Literature was but one of many University subjects,

those students who were not going to pursue such a subject at

University should not be forced to study it as part of their

matriculation qualifications. There was a way out of this

impasse, as Professor Goldberg was to suggest later. This was for

the University to make Third Level English its minimum

matriculation requirement, as far as English was concerned.

Unfortunately the University chose, later in 1965, to adopt a far

139

more restrictive matriculation formula which not only ignored this

alternative, but also served to emasculate Third Level English and

to harm seriously, if not permanently, the very intentions of the

English Syllabus Committee in designing that course.

In the final few months immediately prior to the

establishment of a Syllabus Committee to draw up the H.S.C.

syllabus, public debate raged over this issue of what should

constitute the content of a compulsory English syllabus for Higher

School Certificate. The anonymous author of a leading article in

the Sydney Morning Herald in February 1964 indicated that Hunter

had the support of some of his University of Sydney colleagues,

notably the three professors of English.46 Extensive and

vigorous correspondence followed in the Letters to the Editor.

W.S. Parkinson, President of the English Teachers' Association,

strongly supported the Association's policy concerning

literature. He rejected Hunter's claim that improved standards of

literacy would be produced merely by a concentration upon discrete

formal exercises and the answering of comprehension questions set

on prose passages. "English teaching" he insisted "must always

draw its life from literature".47

Hunter quickly responded with a spirited attack on "the

inefficiency of the teachers of English in our N.S.W.

schools".48 The secretary of the English Teachers Association,

Keith Heckenberg, took up the defence by matching Hunter's

aggressive tone. Heckenberg did not deny that some errors of

grammar, spelling and vocabulary could be found in the written

work of pupils who had completed their secondary schooling. He

asserted however that the responsibilities of English teaching

went well beyond such matters, and concluded satirically:

...so long as the student can spell "acid" anduse "whose" correctly, what does it matterthat his only response to King Lear andParadise Lost is a clownish grin and an idiotstare? Our ways are not Professor Hunter'sways. The methods we employ are not perfect.

140

They are merely a fair sampling of the mostacceptable and recognised of the methodsavailable in the English-speaking world.49

Hunter replied almost immediately with the most bitter

criticism made during the controversy:

How can children whose standard of educationis so low that their writings label them asignorant and shambling hillbillies benefitfrom teaching in the appreciation ofliterature, prose, drama, and poetry. Howlong must this educational farce continue?"

Employers soon joined in. What followed was a reiteration of

the kinds of allegations made by witnesses both to the Newbolt

Committee in 1921 and, according to Yelland's section of the Wyndham

Report, to the Wyndham Committee of Enquiry 1953-7. Just as in 1921

and 1953-1957, now again in 1964 some employers appealed back to

some mythical golden age when apparently all employees wrote

flawless and lucid prose. They proceeded to compare this apparently

halcyon era with the contemporary situation of presumed deplorable

literacy.51

What such critics never appeared to consider was the

possibility, indeed the very real probability, that their employees

and students had really been force-fed in their schooling a very

heavy diet of "traditional" grammar lessons and vast slabs of short

comprehension passages and questions, and that this approach was

continuing to produce the same unsatisfactory results that had been

the subject of complaints for at least half a century. Such critics

seemed never to consider that the low standards they invariably

discovered may have been the product of such an approach rather than

the effect of its presumed demise. While the study of the methods

of implementation of syllabuses is not an aim of this research, it

would seem to be true that in the decades prior to and up to at

least 1964, the method of English teaching had been dominated by

generations of isolated teachers who were heavily reliant on

textbooks crammed with grammatical exercises and bland summaries of

literary works and had been controlled by a fairly predictable

141

public examination system which seemed to reward the cramming of

details of knowledge about grammar and plot summaries.52

Others, besides the members of the English Teachers'

Association Council, took issue with Hunter and his supporters.

While Professor H.J. Oliver of the University of N.S.W. supported

the claim that standards were falling, he could not agree with

Hunter that the situation would be redeemed by deleting the

reading and study of literature:

Students cannot study English in the abstract- they have to comprehend or expresssomething, and why not English literature?53

He was adamant that future scientists and engineers needed to be

introduced

...to the culture of (the) community, to thehumanities. If they are not introduced to itthrough English they never will.54

Miss B. White, President of the Secondary Teachers' Association of

N.S.W. and a member of the Board of Senior School Studies, publicly

opposed Hunter and his colleagues by declaring that she

and her teacher colleagues on the Board felt that

...any senior schools course which did notinclude English literature would not beeducation at al1.55

This controversy persisted until the H.S.C. Syllabus Committee met

for the first time in 1964.

* * *

In the period immediately prior to the construction of the

1965 H.S.C. English syllabus, a major axiom of Newbolt's

definition of English was questioned and threatened. Indeed the

development of English syllabuses in N.S.W. was most seriously

jolted by a "new beginning" generated by the introduction of the

H.S.C. The English Teachers' Association, the English Teachers'

Group and people such as Professor Oliver and Miss White supported

the Newbolt axiom that the study of English Literature must occupy

the place of central importance in the school curriculum. This

definition of English can be traced back to Arnold, Sidgwick,

Sampson, and the members of the Newbolt Report It was retained in

the later British reports of Newsome, Spens, Crowther and Norwood,

and had found expression in N.S.W. in the 1953 and 1961/2

syllabuses. The principles embodied in these reports and

syllabuses, which had gone unchallenged publicly for so long, were

now under serious challenge. On the eve of the first meeting of

the inaugural H.S.C. English Syllabus Committee it appeared that

there was a substantial body of academic opinion clearly opposed

to the view that the study of English literature should be at the

very core of compulsory English subject for all students

proceeding through to fifth and sixth forms. According to the

Sydney Morning Herald report,56 all three English professors at

the University of Sydney held this view. One of these, G.H.

Russell, had already, as Chairman of the Subject Area-English

Committee, clearly expressed his dissent from the position adopted

by his colleagues on that body. That majority position had later

been vigorously endorsed by both English teaching associations.

Of the remaining two professors, S.L. Goldberg was to exercise an

important influence as a member of the H.S.C. English Syllabus

Committee, while the other, G.A. Wilkes, would become its Chairman.

While the issue of the role that Literature should play in

any H.S.C. English syllabus had preoccupied the debate leading up

to the establishment of the Syllabus Committee, little attention

had been paid to what kind of studies of English Language should

be included in such a new syllabus. The Subject Area-English

Committee had been quite vague about this. This matter would

become the subject of considerable controversy almost from the

inception of the Syllabus Committee's preparation of the 1965

syllabus in July 1964, until the very end of the period under

review in 1976.

142

The H.S.C. English Syllabus Committee was thus faced with

the task of producing a new definition of English appropriate to

the circumstances associated with the reorganised system of

secondary education in N.S.W. at the Fifth and Sixth Form levels.

How it resolved these issues and under what pressures the syllabus

was formulated and later distorted because of changes to the

nature of the candidacy for whom the three levels were prepared,

will be the subject of Chapter Seven.

143

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE 1965 SYLLABUS FOR FORMS V-VI:THE POWER EXERCISED BY,

AND WITHIN, THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY IN SHAPING A NEW

DEFINITION OF ENGLISH FOR N.S.W. SECONDARY EDUCATION

144

The formulation and evaluation of the first Higher School

Certificate English syllabus of 1965 was marked by controversy,

dissent and struggles for power. The period 1963-1969 commenced

and concluded with controversy. At the centre of most of that

controversy was the University of Sydney, seeking to continue to

maintain that power which it had always exercised over the N.S.W.

secondary schools curriculum - especially that pertaining to the

final years of schooling. While the university seems to have been

happy to have forfeited control of the junior secondary school

curriculum, through its greatly reduced membership on the

Secondary Schools' Board, it had clung to its power in the

establishment of the Higher School Certificate scheme; the

University enjoyed strong representation on the Board of Senior

School Studies.

The H.S.C. English Syllabus Committee met for the first

time on 23rd July 1964 and elected G.A. Wilkes, Professor of

Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, as its

Chairman. The committee was dominated by academics; there were

nine, including four professors, from tertiary institutions.1

The English Teachers' Association and the English Teachers' Group

were heavily represented, although not formally as members of

their respective organizations. Three members of the Council of

the English Teachers' Association were on the committee, as well

as four prominent members of the English Teachers' Group.2 One

member, Britton, was a member of both organisations. Thus there

was a strong phalanx of committee members who were in favour of

retaining literature in any compulsory H.S.C. English course.

The Board had passed on to Wilkes the submissions of the

English Teachers' Group and the English Teachers' Association.

Wilkes, Russell and Goldberg, the three Professors of English at

the University of Sydney, had all agreed strongly with the

suggestion made in those submissions, that there should be not

three but only two H.S.C. courses in English.3 Wilkes and his

145

professorial colleagues in the English Department were given to

understand, however, that the Board was quite inflexible on that

decision.4

The task of the committee was to draw up a syllabus of

"courses in English at three levels, viz. First Level, Second

Level and Third Level".5

At this meeting Wilkes accepted

Wyndham's fundamental premise that the major portion of the H.S.C.

candidates would be capable of undertaking, and would be

proceeding to, tertiary studies. It was to cater for the kinds of

objections raised by Professor T.G. Hunter, that Wyndham hoped

Third Level English would operate. Third Level, it was planned,

would offer to those students who were intent on pursuing tertiary

studies, other than in English, or whose abilities lay in other

"non-literary" areas, a comprehensive course in English which

would include some literature. The Board's definition of third

level also recognised that some H.S.C. students would not continue

on to tertiary studies.

In view of the bitter controversy which was later to

erupt, it is of critical importance to examine closely the

directive given to the English Syllabus Committee within which

it was to frame the Second Level course. That directive was as

follows:

Second Level on the general assumption that allstudents taking this level in the senior yearshave attained a good knowledge of the content andcompetence in the use of techniques at least atOrdinary Level Credit standard in the subject atthe School Certificate Examination, and furtherto design the syllabuses to cover a content andreach a standard that might be expected to becovered and reached by a pupil of the presentLeaving Certificate 'A' pass quality after 6years of secondary schooling.6

Wilkes thus informed his committee that the Second Level

course was to be designed for candidates equivalent to those who

would have gained an A pass in that subject in the Leaving

146

147

Certificate examination. This was roughly 27% of the total

candidature, said Wilkes.7 Approximately 5% to 5.5% of the

total candidature had attempted English Honours during the 1950's

and the early 1960's up to the first H.S.C. 8 Thus Wilkes, who

as an examiner of the Leaving Certificate would have been well

aware of these statistics, was by implication, confirming that it

was expected that in the vicinity of 67% of all candidates would

be attempting Third Level. Wilkes was later to alter his position

and would argue, along with the majority of his professorial

colleagues at the University of Sydney, in favour of a

matriculation formula which would virtually force the majority of

this 67% to reject Third Level English and to undertake the Second

Level course which, by definition, was prepared for candidates

intending to pursue tertiary studies in English. This was to lead

to a serious mismatch between the courses designed for, and taken

by, different sections of the H.S.C. candidature. Wilkes told his

colleagues on the committee that, as a result of the Board's

definition, Second Level English would exact "a standard higher

than (the) present Leaving Certificate English".9 First Level

would be the equivalent of the Leaving Certificate Honours course.

Bowra's committee had been burdened with the problem of

being given too little time to prepare a syllabus. Wilkes'

committee did not have this difficulty. Its work commenced in

1964. The first group of students would not reach Year Eleven

until 1966. However there were considerable tensions between

Wilkes' committee and the Board of Senior School Studies. To put

it perhaps too simply, one can say that, whereas Bowra's committee

generally lost its battles with the Secondary Schools Board, the

H.S.C. English Syllabus Committee generally won its battles with

the Board of Senior School Studies. The problems associated with

attempting to categorise an English syllabus according to three

reasonably distinct levels had severely inhibited Bowra's

committee.10 The Board of Senior School Studies ordered the

English Syllabus Committee to devise its syllabus so that each

level "must be separate and self-contained".11 It rejected as

spurious any notion that "the first level syllabus may incorporate

148

the second level".12 The English Syllabus Committee decided to

ignore this edict completely, as far as First and Second Levels

were concerned. Apart from the quantity of set texts and a few

extra qualitative exhortations in the first level course, both

courses are identical.

No effort whatever was made to draw up a H.S.C. syllabus

which would take heed of the Forms I - IV syllabus. The academics

on the H.S.C. committee were of the opinion that the H.S.C.

syllabus should be drawn up independently and should have a

"top-down"13 influence upon the junior English Syllabus

Committee rather than vice versa.14 Never, between 1964 and

1976, was there a single joint meeting of, or official

collaboration at any sub-committee level between, the two Syllabus

Committees. Only one person, Little, was a member of both

inaugural Syllabus Committees.

That there was no infrastructure to enforce such

co-operation and collaboration, was the direct consequence of the

neglect of Wyndham, his deputy Yelland and Stephens as Director of

Secondary Education, to anticipate the dangers that could result

from failure to establish communication structures between both

statutory bodies. The N.S.W. government should also be criticised

for failing to legislate for adequate provision to be made to

avoid discontinuity and to foster continuity between the junior

and secondary school curricula. While acknowledging that he was

somewhat remiss in not forseeing what he terms "the dangers of

divergence", Wyndham explains that his attention had been focused

rather on how to overturn a system which, as he saw it,

perpetuated the "idiocy" whereby boys' and girls' choice of

curriculum in first year high school had been pre-determined by

what they thought, or were told, they would do in their final

year.15 Wyndham, Yelland and Stephens were so preoccupied with

the multifarious problems of getting the whole system operating,

that they postponed any considerations of less pressing immediate

149

concern.16 Stephens assumed that "later on" such links would be

established.17 They never were. The two Syllabus Committees

drew up their different syllabuses for secondary education, which

constituted their definitions of English, in isolation from each

other. The final draft of the H.S.C. English syllabus was

considered by the Board at its 5th May, 1965 meeting and, with

minor editorial changes, was approved.

As will be shown later in this chapter, there was a quite

dramatic swing in this syllabus away from an emphasis upon

treating literary studies as an assimilation of content and an

inculcation of literary taste (which had characterised the

"senior" secondary Literature section of the 1953 syllabus) and

towards an emphasis upon the development of the honest personal

response to the text by the student through sensitive and

discriminating reading. The Challis Professor of English

Literature at the University of Sydney, S.L. Goldberg, played a

leading role in the drafting of the literature sections of all

three courses at the sub-committee and committee stages.18

During his short term as occupant of the Challis Chair, Goldberg

engaged in an intense and, at times, bitter struggle within the

English Department.19 A strong, though not a blindly dogmatic

follower of the critical theories of F.R. Leavis, Goldberg laid

siege both within the Department and within the schools through

his membership of the Syllabus Committee, to what he saw to be the

prevailing emphasis upon acquiring merely knowledge about

literature, literary genres, and forms. He sought to change this

emphasis towards one of stressing students' direct engagement with

the text and a wrestling with the values enacted in the

literature. What Goldberg objected to particularly, in the kind

of English produced by the 1953 syllabus

and the Leaving Certificate Examination, was

...the assumption that literary study is, atits most "advanced", a professionalspecialism; and the assumption that one canbe "objective" by merely presenting the"facts" and avoiding any interpretation ofthem.2°

In developing his view of the role which literature should play

not merely in tertiary, but in secondary education as well,

Goldberg had been strongly influenced by Leavis' Education and

the University and Culture and Environment, co-authored by

Leavis and Denys Thompson. Leavis had claimed that a proper

training in English literature cultivates "a sensitiveness and

precision of response and a delicate integrity of

intelligence".21

Absolutely critical to both Leavis' and

Goldberg's theories concerning the teaching of literature, was an

insistence upon the need for personal critical response and

judgment.

The kind of work advocated entails, in itsirreplaceable discipline, a most independent'and responsible exercise of intelligence andjudgment on the part of the student.22

S.J. Ball has shown how the conception of English developed

by the "Cambridge School of English" had emerged from Newbolt

English and had been propagated throughout the secondary school

system in England from the 1940's by English teachers, many of

whom had been taught by Leavis and his followers. Denys Thompson,

one of Leavis' most prominent school teacher supporters,

exercised a strong influence on English teaching through his

editorship of Use of English. Goldberg was the principal agent in

introducing into the N.S.W. H.S.C. English curriculum, the

"Cambridge School of English" approach.

While Goldberg was attempting what he, and others, saw to

be major changes within the University's English Department and to

the senior school English curriculum in N.S.W., the members of the

English staff at Sydney Teachers' College, notably S.E. Lee, were

pursuing a similar thrust in literary studies, perhaps more under

the influence of the American "New Criticism" than specifically

150

that of Leavis.23

Echoing the spirit of those who constructed

the literature sections of the H.S.C. syllabus, Lee had denounced

the past practices of merely teaching 'content', of drilling facts

about 'life and times' and of juggling with literary terminology.

Very succinctly, in an address to his Diploma in Education English

method students, Lee caught what will be shown to be the spirit of

the 1965 syllabus' rationale concerning literature.

What are we teaching? Surely sensitivity anddiscrimination; the capacity to respondfreshly, honestly, sensibly, feelingly,relevantly to texts of literary quality...Most of all of course, we want (students)responding to the words on the pagethemselves ... not submissive uncritical,.literal minds experiencing the work at secondhand as it comes to them filtered through theintegrating mind of the teacher and crib.24

Wilkes showed clearly that he was in accord with these emphases

which characterized the new syllabus and vigorously championed

such an approach later when assisting teachers in the

implementation of the syllabus.25

The formulation of the

literature components of the various courses was agreed to with

little dissent.

While the literature sections met with little dissent

within the committee, the same cannot be said of the language

component. The English Language 'department' at the University of

Sydney constituted one section of the whole English department,

the majority of whose members were devoted principally to the

teaching of, and research in, literature. The Language staff was

about one-third of the whole staff. Not infrequently, there had

been tensions between the two sections of the department.26

The

situation was severely exacerbated with the arrival of Goldberg as

Challis Professor of English Literature. In line with the attack

made by the Cambridge School of English upon the Oxford English

tradition of concentrating upon philology and literary

scholarship, Goldberg was convinced, and he let his convictions be

known, that most of the academic pursuits of the Language

department were of only dubious relevance to the proper pursuits

of "English" in secondary schools and within university English27

151

Departments.

152

Goldberg was determined to defeat whatever efforts the

Language department might make to have any of its academic areas

of study incorporated in the H.S.C. English syllabus. He was

certain that any study of language, as distinct from the reading

of, discussing and writing about literature, should have no

place in such a syllabus.28 He also argued that the examining

of any such language course would lead inevitably to the

learning-off-by-rote of vast slabs of information which would be

totally in contradiction to the spirit of the literature component

in the syllabus.29 On the other hand Bernard, a leading

protagonist for language studies and co-author of the draft

language course presented to the committee by Gunn, but who

himself was not on the committee, equally vigorously held' the view

that the knowledge of one's native language was a most relevant

area of scientific investigation which should not be witheld from

senior students. He was adamant that language should be studied

in the same way, and for the same reasons, that school students

were required to study appropriate bodies of other scientific

knowledge in such areas as physics, chemistry or geography.30

Whereas the early drafts of the Literature component of the

courses met with little resistance, the Language early drafts were

not enthusiastically received by the committee. Having chaired

the Subject-Area English Committee and having felt that any

subsequent Syllabus Committee would accept that earlier

committee's recommendation that an H.S.C. syllabus should go

beyond matters of expression to studying the nature of language

itself, Professor G.H. Russell had approached . two junior

colleagues, Arthur Delbridge and John Bernard, and asked them to

draw up a syllabus in linguistics, which would be suitable for

students in sixth form at first level. Such a syllabus, said

Russell, would involve some of what was included in their current

First Year English Language course, which dealt with the growth,

structure and history of the English language.31 Bernard and

Delbridge constructed such a document by drawing heavily upon

Sledd's A Short Introduction to English Grammar and their own

153

First Year syllabus.32 Russell then gave this document to Gunn,

who was the Language department's representative on the Syllabus

Committee, prior to Russell's going on leave.33 Britton also

submitted a short proposal for Language study at First Level.

As soon as these documents were tabled at the first

meeting, Goldberg commenced an attack which, while not successful

in abolishing language studies, certainly crippled them. Despite

later utopian appeals to the contrary in the syllabus, little

attempt was made to integrate literary and language studies. Any

consideration of the ways and means whereby the two strands

(emanating originally from two sections within the one English

Department) might be effectively integrated, was regularly

deferred by the committee. The language protagonists were

outnumbered and defeated. The Minutes of every meeting from the

first until the last prior to the transmission of the final

document to the Board, record the difficulties encountered during

consideration of the drafts of the Language sections of First and

Second Level courses. Goldberg succeeding in banning such studies

from Third Level altogether.

The final drafts of the language sections of the courses

were approved, after many discussions and disagreements, on April

2nd, 1965. Second Level students could choose only two of the

five part integrated syllabus originally proposed by Gunn and

prepared by Delbridge and Bernard. First level students could

choose an additional one section. Bernard argues, and Goldberg

agrees, that this effectively destroyed the whole purpose of his

submission which had been to present the study of the English

language in a coherent and integrated way.34 Thus there was

created, in late 1964 and early 1965, an entirely new component

within an English syllabus in N.S.W. The scientific study of the

language entered the Senior English curriculum in Year eleven,

1966. It would disappear by 1976 after a decade of controversy

and confusion.

154

ANALYSIS OF 1965 H.S.C. ENGLISH SYLLABUS IN COMPARISON WITH THE

EARLIER SYLLABUSES

While the Wyndham Report, in its discussions of the Forms

I-IV curriculum, had issued a number of general aims, a series of

specific principles to be implemented in the construction of

syllabuses and some directives concerning English in particular,

there were only four quite non-specific suggestions made

concerning H.S.C. studies. In its comments the Report

acknowledged that, in establishing the curriculum, the Board of

Senior School Studies would have to consider university

matriculation requirements. Nevertheless, it argued, such

consideration should not be allowed to dominate the Senior School

curriculum. The Report indicates clearly that the Committee of

Enquiry believed that the vast majority of such students

proceeding to H.S.C. would be of matriculable quality.

The most obvious structural difference between the 1965

H.S.C. syllabus and the 1953 document which it was replacing, was

in its provision concerning "levels". The earlier document had

specified junior and senior secondary English studies in its Part

C Literature, The only recognition of a "level" difference was in

its separate Honours section.

(i) Third Level Course

The Third Level course, as Wilkes had implied at the first

meeting when he discussed the proportion of students who should

undertake Second Level, was originally intended for the majority

of H.S.C. students. Goldberg certainly assumed that this would be

the case. Like Hunter, he could see no reason for difficult

literary studies to "be shoved down the throats"35 of those

seeking to go to university but who intended becoming engineers,

scientists, architects and so on. But, unlike Hunter, he believed

that such students should read some literature, and he believed

that the Third Level course would be ideal for such future

tertiary students. Indeed Goldberg always assumed that36 it

would be a pass in English at least at Third Level, not second

Level, which the universities would insist upon as a matriculation

pre-requisite. On the other hand, Gunn adopted the stance which

would eventually be adopted by the universities concerning Second

and Third Levels and assumed that the Second Level course would

embrace all students who, under the former system, would have been

awarded A's and B's at the Leaving Certificate.37

As will be

shown later, a number of his university colleagues38

thought

likewise, even though Wyndham's directives were clear and had been

tabled at the first syllabus committee meeting.

Conforming to Wyndham's general advice to compilers of

junior secondary syllabuses, the Third Level H.S.C. syllabus on

literature is short. In setting out the aims of the course, the

committee quite obviously sought to satisfy the proponents both of

Hunter's criticisms, and the English Teachers' Association's and

English Teachers' Group's insistence that literature must be

retained within a compulsory English course.

The Third Level course is an integratedcourse in the reading, writing, and speakingof English. Each element in it involves allthese activities in varying degrees; readingissues naturally into discussion, writingconsolidates what has been gained fromreading. The objectives of the course are todevelop students' ability to understand andrespond to good literature within the rangeof their competence and in oral and writtenexpression.39

Compared with the 1953 preamble, this Introduction makes no

reference to the expression and comprehension of thought as being

the central integrating force, although the emphasis is heavily

upon the need for integration across the whole range of English

communication skills. It represents a succinct rephrasing of

Section A, Section B and Section C of that former syllabus but

contains a new emphasis upon developing not only an understanding

of, but also a response to, literature. The aims are considerably

less socially and culturally ambitious than those of the 1961/2

syllabus, which had sought to enhance, through English, social

155

co-operation and the spreading of the cultural values which, it

assumed, should distinguish a civilized society.

Like its 1961/2 junior secondary counterpart, the senior

Third Level syllabus describes a broader scope of subject matter

in its definition of Reading than had its 1953 predecessor. But,

more than either of these earlier formulations, the Third Level

course, like the two other H.S.C. courses, places its emphasis

heavily upon encouraging students to engage in honest personal

response to the text under consideration. On the other hand, the

stress in the 1953 syllabus had been upon form rather than

substance. What had been required in the 1953 syllabus had been

the understanding and detailing of literary features. It had

tended to put more emphasis upon having students understand the

meaning of what was written and detailing the technical ways in

which writers achieve their effects as well as of having students

acquire literary taste, rather than on an encouragement of

students to respond sensitively and critically to literature. The

1965 syllabus, in all its three courses, places overwhelming

emphasis upon the insistence that students be encouraged to

respond honestly and intelligently to the text as a whole before

them, rather than providing a detailed analysis of formal literary

features. In short, the new syllabus rejects the approach

which Goldsberg had criticised as mere knowledge about

literature.°

The treatment envisaged is...one of carefulreading and thoughtful general interpretationand evaluation rather than of exhaustivedetailed analysis.41

This was not the only new emphasis. The syllabus also

moves significantly away from that Newbolt spirit which had

enshrined English as the most important subject in the curriculum

and the propagator of, if not a cultural heritage, at least a

cultural apostolate. There is nothing to be found in the 1965

syllabus of that notion of literature being provided as a

spiritual food for the sustenance of a cultured civilization based

156

on 'taste' and a 'balanced diet'. The opposition of Professors

Wilkes and, more especially, Goldberg to imposing any such

'literary taste' model of English teaching was resolute42 and

obviously their colleagues on the committee supported this change

of direction. The quasi-religious cadences of the English

Teachers' Group's impassioned, almost evangelical evidence

presented to the Committee of Enquiry, with its insistence that

the study of English literature would provide the salvation of an

aberrant world, are not present. The writers of the 1965 syllabus

were not, however, replacing such positivism with permissiveness.

Teachers are directed to generate

...free discussion of the work, bringing tolight and helping to formulate variousreactions, interpretations andevaluations.43

Different from the tone of the 1953, and even of the 1961/2

documents, where teachers were expected to pass on to their

students the orthodoxy of a literary taste model in the

Australian context (as described by Homer), teachers in the 1965

syllabus are urged not to impose their own views or to shape

reactions of students into "some supposedly othodox pattern".44

The 1965 statement on Third (as well as the other Levels) is far

more optimistic in its expectations of how students are able to

respond to literature. The 1953 syllabus had directed

specifically that written response to literature be limited to the

form of students' writing only short answers to direct and

specific questions asked by the teacher.45

One of the most important specific changes throughout the

whole syllabus is that the teaching of poetry was made compulsory

in all courses. The specimen examination papers and the actual

H.S.0 examination papers would later enforce this provision, which

had been the subject of considerable debate at least since the

1940's.46 This prescription was to lead to strong, but

unsuccessful, opposition.47 Whereas the 1953 Part C Literature

157

158

required teachers to approach poetry as an art form and to discuss

poetic form, such matters do not appear in the 1965 Third Level

course. Its emphasis is upon reading and responding to Australian

and contemporary poetry, while specifically discouraging the

historical analysis of poetry and the learning about poetic

techniques (such as scansion and figures of speech) for their own

sake.

The 1965 Third Level course displays a most relaxed

approach to prescribing suitable material. For example, the only

criteria to be used for selection of General Prose texts are the

"interest of their context and the arguments and issues they may

raise."48 Such characteristics were not stipulated within the

parameters of the 1953 'taste' approach to the study of literature

in the senior years. While the drama section shares the 1953 and

1961/2 insistence upon students approaching drama as drama, and

not merely as literature, the 1965 formulation does not follow the

lead of the 1953 statement in urging students to write their own

plays. Indeed the 1965 syllabus as a whole appears to be scarcely

aware of the role that creative or imaginative writing might play

in an English syllabus.

The 1965 Third Level course does incorporate the three

basic elements of the 1953 document viz Expression, Comprehension

and Literature, but not in any equally distributed way. There are

only four short paragraphs on "Comprehension". What acts as a

coherent principle is not the comprehension and expression of

thought but rather the comprehension of, and honest, sensitive and

articulated response to, meaning, whether it be in a literary or

non-literary context.

The word "grammar" does not appear in the short

"Expression" part of the Third Level course. The syllabus lists

some details that would need attention in the task of improving

students' expression but they are considerably fewer in number

than those which can be found in the 1953 and, especially, the

1961/2 statements. Great emphasis is placed, as in both the First

and Second Level courses, upon steering teachers and students away

from assumptions that there is an orthodox "'rightness' or

'wrongness" of response which must then be regurgitated in

examinations.49

(ii) Second Level Course

The Second Level statement, which is much longer than the

Third Level, demonstrates an ambivalence about what the

relationship between Language and Literature should be. At the

outset it is declared that there should be no rigid division

between the two and that one should illuminate the other; but

from then on the syllabus suggests very few ways in which such

interrelationship might or should take place.

In defining the aims of the Second Level Literature course,

similarities and differences between Third and Second Levels are

made immediately clear. Both share a common aim of developing and

refining individual response to literature. As in Third Level,

students are to be encouraged to see that there is no one "right"

approach and that a response that is "honest, perceptive and

firmly based upon the text, establishes its own right".50

But

the emphasis in Second Level is much more intensively literary

critical. It is assumed that candidates would, in general, be

intending to pursue English at the tertiary level. Students

are

...to develop (the) ability to recognise,describe and assess qualities of thought andfeeling expressed in various forms ofliterature (and) to develop an understandingof the literature of other ages.51

Fifth Form students are to read widely and not just to absorb

"mere information about" such matters as the "Augustan age" or

"the development of the ode".52

This is a constant theme

throughout the Second Level course syllabus. The focus must be

sharply upon the individual literary work. Any acquaintance with

literary genres and historical periods "should be (merely) a

by-product of (the) specific literary works".53

Thus the Second

Level course, like Third Level, expresses a significantly

159

different approach to literature from its 1953 predecessor. The

latter had concentrated upon the inculcation of literary taste,

the comprehension of the works of literature, and upon

appreciating the means used by writers to achieve their ends. In

its section on poetry, the Second Level course lays down the

fundamental principles which determine the approach to be taken to

literature at First and Second Levels.

The response to the literature being read must be the

student's own, based upon his or her own experience of the work

and not be merely a repetition of "supposedly 'acceptable' views

about it".54

The response must be based upon the text and not

be an unsubstantiated assertion of opinion, or consist merely of

technical features such as metre and alliteration. In addition,

the element of critical judgment is introduced. Students must be

able to distinguish between

...a trivial work however 'effective',however successful in doing what the author'intended', and one meaningful in itscapacity to enlarge and vivify hisexperience.55

This represents a significant innovation in N.S.W. English

syllabuses.

The 1965 syllabus retains the headings "Syllabus" and

"Commentary" of its 1953 predecessor but no real distinction is

maintained. Some attempts are made to suggest some practical

teaching guidelines. In doing so, it is assumed that teachers

would be familiar with the kinds of distinctions that are made in

this syllabus but which had not appeared in 1953. For example,

teachers are presumed to be familiar with the distinctions assumed

within the following passage in which attention is focused upon

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161

...the actually experienced rhythms of poetry(as distinct from the mechancial metre) to...the imagery (as distinct from detached imagesthat might be catalogued, and figures like"similes" and "metaphors"). Again studentsmight explore the structure of a poem asdistinct from mechanical "forms" and"genres".56

There is a strong Leavisite flavour in these and other injunctions

such as "students (are to) come to see that the way something is

expressed ultimately determines what is being said". 57 The word

"central" as in the expression "the really central questions"58

is used in the way frequently used by Goldberg and other

Leavisites at that time at the University of Sydney. Similarly,

in the novel section one finds that typically Leavisite insistence

upon the distinction between describing characters as having life

within the terms of the novel, and as possessing resemblance to

'real life' figures.59

Whereas the 1953 statement had approved of the use of the

terms "plot" "character" and "setting", the 1965 formulation warns

against any concentration upon such isolated features which might

detract from what it considers to be the more important

consideration of how the interrelationship between these and other

factors contribute to the total meaning of the work. The young

teachers who had studied under Goldberg during the brief Leavisite

reign 1963-1966 and/or had come under the influence of the members

of the English Department at Sydney Teachers' College, (especially

that of S.E. Lee) would have been familiar with this approach,

which was markedly different from that of 1953. Many others were

to seek assistance, in the implementation of this new approach to

literature teaching, through the English Teachers' Association,

which itself was so strongly influenced by members of the Sydney

Teachers' College English staff.

The drama section of the 1965 syllabus for Second Level

incorporates the 1953 directive to treat plays as drama and not

162

just as novels. The 1961 Form I and 1962 Forms II-IV syllabuses

had retained the spirit and most of the substance of the 1953

document and had gone further to expand the definition of drama in

secondary education, both in content and form. As is common

throughout the whole syllabus, little or no attention is given to

imaginative writing. The 1953 syllabus had urged that all

students be encouraged to write plays. As in the Third Level

course, this is ignored in Second Level, even though the 1961/2

syllabus had strengthened the 1953 statement.

There are two major aims of the Language component. The

first is similar to what had been presented in the 1953 and 1961/2

syllabuses. Students must develop "skill in the use,

understanding and appreciation of English in its varied

forms".60. It is assumed that, as students were attempting

Second Level, they would have already achieved competence in basic

skills. The second aim adds a new dimension altogether. The

course was "to establish some knowledge of the growth and

structure of the English Language".61 This had been first

officially proposed in the report of the Subject Area-English

committee. Five topics were to be covered over the two years of

Fifth and Sixth forms. The first three, Comprehension, Usage and

Composition, were to address the first aim, while the second was

to be met by a study of the Structure of English, and the

Vocabulary of English.

The "Comprehension" section merely repeats more succinctly

what had been stipulated in the 1953 and 1961/2 statements. H.S.0

students are directed to examine the notion of appropriateness as

the critical factor in describing and evaluating "Usage".

Adherence to, and deviations from, "Standard English" are to be

explored. The syllabus moves away from the comparatively more

prescriptive nature of the 1953 document towards the more

descriptive emphasis that linguists had been pursuing since Fries'

seminal work in 1952.62 What underpins this syllabus' approach

to usage was the work of such linguists as Gurrey,63

Hayakawa,64 Potter,

65 and Quirk.

66 Thus the science of

linguistics, which had expanded rapidly since 1953, contributed a

significantly to the 1965 syllabus.

163

Section 3, "Composition", does not, on the other hand, add

anything to the earlier 1953 statement. The 1953 statement had

included very little about creative and imaginative writing. The

1961/2 syllabus had moderately encouraged this form of written

expression. The 1965 Second Level course entirely ignores it. The

only forms of writing noted are "written reports, summaries,

presentation of cases, and critical evaluations". 67 Hence the

syllabus committee was ignoring the major contemporary

developments in the area of English in Education which were then

occurring in Britain and the United States, and were being

advocated and disseminated through the English Teachers'

Association of N.S.W.68 This ignorance, or rejection, of the

"new English" would characterize the decisions of the H.S.C.

English Syllabus Committee from 1964 until the end of the period

examined in this thesis. By 1964, for example, when the 1965

syllabus was being drafted, the moves towards emphasising the

importance of creative writing were beginning to emerge and to be

popularised in NSW through the publications of the English

Teachers Association. According to the H.S.0 English Syllabus

Committee's definition of English, however, written composition in

fifth and sixth forms was to be exclusively discursive.

Section 4 "The Structure of English" and Section 5 "The

Vocabulary of English" formed originally the first two of the five

sections of the Bernard-Delbridge submission, which had presented

a comprehensive senior school language syllabus. Both sections

were based heavily on the equivalent parts of the Language

component of the First Year English course at the University of

Sydney in which Gunn, Bernard and Delbridge all lectured and

tutored.69 Reference is made to terms and concepts outlined in

the University's English I Language syllabus such as elision,

intrusion, substitution and assimilation.70 First year English

students at the University of Sydney undertook a study of

phonetics. The Structure of English section of the syllabus

suggests that second level H.S.C. English students would profit

from being able to use phonetic notation. It does not, however,

prescribe any theoretical study of phonetics. For the first time

in a N.S.W. English syllabus for secondary education, specific

reference is made to terms used in transformational grammar.

164

The same general comments can be made about Section 5

"Vocabulary of English". The section was packed with material

covered in the First Year English course in Language at the

University of Sydney and treated in the University textbooks like

Baugh's monumental History of the English Language71 A thorough

historical study of the influences shaping the evolution of

English vocabulary was detailed. While teachers were assured in

the Commentary that there was no need to enter into "unnecessary

semantic complexities",72 the sheer bulk and novelty of this

Language study innovation was to alarm large numbers of teachers,

especially those who had not had the benefit of recent university

studies.

(i) First Level Course

Despite the Board's orders forbidding the

courses within a syllabus, most of the First Level

is absolutely identical to Second Level. The only

where additional material is provided in First

occasional exhortation that First Level students

overlapping of

course syllabus

differences are

Level and the

must cover the

aims more broadly and deeply. While the members of the committee

conceived of it consistently as the equivalent of the Leaving

Certificate Honours Course, the First Level Course was vastly more

comprehensive and intensive than the 1953 Honours syllabus, which

had consisted of but a few paragraphs. This syllabus defines

First Level work as covering a larger area in a more deep and

complex way than that of Second Level. Furthermore, First Level

students should be distinguished by their

...ability to perceive and explore criticalissues raised in a particular work whileretaining a close grasp of the textitself...73

Goldberg's influence can be seen once again in the syllabus'

insistence on First Level students undertaking the close study of

unseen poems. This had not been stipulated in the 1953

syllabus. While most of the unseen poetry should be of good

quality, "the development of discrimination may be assisted by

the occasional inclusion of poor or uneven work".74

When he

assumed the Chair at the University of Sydney, Goldberg placed

165

great emphasis upon such practical criticism exercises for all

students enrolled in the English Honours school. He modelled his

approach on that of Leavis and, especially, I.A. Richards. 75

The Language section of the First Level course follows the

same general principles of greater quantity, breadth and depth.

To the five topics of Second Level are added the three other

components of the Delbridge-Bernard proposal: "Words and

Meanings", "Changes in Syntax and Usage" and "Descriptions of

Modern English Structure". It had been the Language academics'

intention that all three would be incorporated into the First

Level course. Goldberg gained sufficient support to defeat this

in committee, and so students had to choose only one of these

three areas. All three topics once again borrowed heavily from

the English I university course.76 As in the Second Level

course, the First Level statement concludes by seeking to reassure

teachers that the approach to be taken should be practical rather

than theoretical. This would have been of little solace to the

vast majority of English teachers who had been preparing Leaving

Certificate students for years without having the need to know any

of this new linguistic material.

It can be seen, therefore, that both the literature and

language components of the 1965 syllabus for H.S.C. incorporated

substantial changes to the 1953 document. The influence of the

English Department at the University of Sydney had been most

powerful. The Chairman of the committee, Professor A.G. Wilkes,

had told his English staff colleagues that the H.S.C. syllabus,

bibliography and reading lists meant that much of what had

been usually covered in the English I course at the university

would now be handed over to the schools.77

An example of the power of the University can be seen in

the Bibliography for English Language Syllabus issued as a

supplement to the syllabus. Most of the forty-five titles listed

were either textbooks or standard reference books used in Language

166

courses at the University of Sydney. That there was a huge demand

for textbooks to assist teachers with all this new linguistic

material, soon became obvious. Within twelve months three such

textbooks, designed specifically for H.S.C. studies,

appeared.78 Rapidly, as would become obvious later in the

H.S.C. examinations, the syllabus became, in classrooms, the

memorizing and cramming of appropriate slabs of one or more of

these textbooks.

If teachers found the Language bibliography and syllabus a

daunting prospect, both quantitatively and qualitatively, their

difficulties were compounded when the prescribed texts were

released for the literature component of the new syllabus at all

three levels. The H.S.C. lists were far more demanding in both

quantity and quality than those which had preceded them in the

Leaving Certificate examinations of the 1953 syllabus. This can

be illustrated by comparing the texts prescribed for the 1965

Leaving Certificate with those set for the first H.S.C.

examination in 1967.

The vast majority, approximately 95%,79 of Leaving

Certificate students, had undertaken the pass course in English.

Only three texts were prescribed for the Leaving Certificate

English examination. For example, in 1965 Julius Caesar was the

compulsory Shakespearean text. Teachers selected one book of

essays.80 Three other texts were supposed to be read but the

format of the examination papers enabled students to read only two

of these. Indeed, if teachers were prepared to teach poetry, they

could avoid the other genres altogether by designing some prepared

answers on poetry and answering both questions on the poetry.

Thus it was possible for students to pass the Leaving Certificate

examination without having read a novel or any play except the

compulsory Shakespeare. If this latter option were not taken, the

1965 Leaving Certificate students could read either Vance Palmer's

The Passage or Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus. The

second category offered a choice between Modern Short Stories or

Fire on the Snow. The third of the categories, from which

students elected to do two, was poetry, which consisted of the

anthology The Poet's World or the Australian anthology edited by

Wallace-Crabbe, Six Voices. Approximately twenty poems were set

within each. Thus students had to answer only four questions.

The Third Level English H.S.C. course was clearly more

demanding than this. For example, in 1967 one play had to be

studied from a selection of Othello, Major Barbara, Winterset,

Death of a Salesman, and The One Day of the Year. The

Shakespearean text was more difficult and all the other plays were

more demanding literary works than the plays set for the 1965

Leaving Certificate examination. Poetry had to be studied and

would be examined. Several anthologies of modern poetry were

suggested. No limitation on the number of poems to be studied was

imposed. Two novels were to be chosen from Galsworthy's The Man

of Property, Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Salinger's Catcher in

the Rye. The books of essays were replaced by Horne's The Lucky

Country and Scott's Topics and Opinions, one of which was to be

studied.

The comparison between the standards set by the 1953

English syllabus and its 1965 successor becomes more striking when

one considers the Second Level prescriptions. According to the

Board's regulations, such students were the equivalent of those

gaining A's at the Leaving Certificate examination. It must be

stressed that the student good enough to gain an "A" at the

Leaving Certificate was required only to study the quantity and

quality of literature at the "pass" level. The gap opens even

wider when one realizes, for reasons which will be discussed

later, that it would be Second Level in which the vast majority of

students would enrol.

Second Level students had to study many more texts, and

texts of greater complexity, in their final year of secondary

schooling, than had been the case for the students at Leaving

Certificate. Such Second Level candidates had to read three

novels, three plays, and study three poets. The texts prescribed

closely resembled the then contemporary English I or English II

reading lists at the University of Sydney - Chaucer, Donne, Pope,

Hopkins, Eliot, Judith Wright, Tess of the d'Urbervilles,

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168

Huckleberry Finn, Sons and Lovers, The Power and the Glory, The

Horse's Mouth, King Lear, Othello, Oedipus Rex, Saint Joan, Murder

in the Cathedral, The Crucible, and Look Back in Anger. Every

work could be found in the University of Sydney's list of

prescribed texts for its undergraduate courses in English in the

years 1964-1966. In addition to all this heavy increase in the

quantity and quality of literature which had to be responded to

honestly, personally and in a critically sensitive way, students

also had to study the language topics.

First Level was even more demanding. From within a reading

list similar to, but broader than, Second Level, students had to

read at least four poets, four novels, two Shakespearean plays and

two other plays.The specimen examination papers' format made clear

that students would have to study in depth at least two novels,

two plays and two poets both for First and Second Levels. Honours

students in the Leaving Certificate, on the other hand, had needed

to prepare only two or three topics for their examination. In

addition to all this literature, the First Level students had to

select one more language topic as well as the three required for

Second Level. Thus, the quality and quantity of the prescribed

literary texts, at all three levels, were more demanding than the

equivalent requirements of the Leaving Certificate system.

Some of the selected texts raised controversies the like of

which had not arisen before under the 1953 syllabus. Letters from

individuals and organizations denounced certain titles. For

example, the Headmasters' Association (of non-Roman Catholic

Independent schools) believed that "the books chosen for Third

Level fiction were unsuitable for girls".81 Criticisms were

received most commonly about Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and

Men,82 Sons and Lovers and The One Day of the Year.

83

Patiently, as he did with all complaints which eventually found

their way to him, Wilkes pointed out that not one of these works

was compulsory and that the attacks did not warrant the texts

being banned. Despite the criticisms, the committee never agreed

to delete a text and the Board always accepted these decisions.

169

THE MATRICULATION CONTROVERSY

Before the 1965 syllabus had a chance to come into effect

(in Year Eleven in 1966 and Year Twelve in 1967), the very basis

of the syllabus came under severe threat. The Board of Senior

School Studies had laid down clear guidelines about the nature of

the candidacy for which each of the three courses was to be

prepared. As has been shown already, it is clear that, from its

very first meeting, the English Syllabus Committee had accepted

the Board's definition of Second Level in terms of Leaving

Certificate candidates who would have gained "A" passes.84 At

least one member of the Committee, Goldberg, had always assumed

that the universities in N.S.W. would look upon at least Third

Level English as part of the minimum matriculation formula.85

The Wyndham Report's recommendations for restructuring the senior

section of secondary education were based on the assumption that

the vast majority of students proceeding to sixth form would be of

matriculable quality. It would be the result of a joint decision

on matriculation requirements made by both the Universities of

Sydney and N.S.W., that a most serious distortion of the aims and

objectives of the English syllabus in particular, and the Wyndham

scheme in general, would occur.

As early as October 1963 there had been ominous signs even

before the English Committee had first met. The University of

N.S.W. had proposed initially that, in order to matriculate, a

student must pass all five subjects at Second Level. The Chairman

of the Headmasters' Conference of the Independent Schools of

Australia's N.S.W. Branch expressed to Wyndham his organisation's

dismay at this decision. He insisted that even greater cramming

would be encouraged than had existed before under the Leaving

Certificate regulations.86

It was the culmination of a five year campaign by the

universities when, on 5th October 1965, the University of Sydney's

Senate formally approved a joint matriculation formula linking it

170

with the second largest university, that of the University of

N.S.W. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the decision was

unanimous.87 Wyndham was in London at the time. All

universities in N.S.W., except Macquarie University, decided to

adopt this formula. Macquarie University was later to abandon

levels pre-requisites and to rely solely upon the aggregate

mark.88 In order to matriculate to all universities, except

Macquarie, students would need to pass in five subjects, one of

which must be English. At least four of these must be taken at

First or Second Levels. The H.S.C. system permitted students to

enrol at higher levels and be credited with a conceded pass at a

lower level, rather than necessarily fail the subject outright, if

they performed poorly in the examination. Since English was a

compulsory subject, any student would be severely endangering his

or her chances of matriculating, if he or she enrolled forthwith

in Third Level English and all other subjects at Second Level or

First Levels, because one important mistake could mean a conceded

Third Level in one of these other subjects and, therefore,

automatic failure to matriculate. Consequently, that vast bulk of

students wishing to pursue careers in areas not demanding tertiary

studies of English - such as Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics,

Medicine, Architecture, Geography, the Biological Sciences - and

who the syllabus committee had envisaged would be the kinds of

students enrolling in Third Level English, were now pressurized

into undertaking the Second Level English course which, on the

contrary, had been designed specifically for those intending to

pursue the study of English at the tertiary level.

It is necessary to examine the evolution of the

matriculation controversy in some detail. Not only did it

demonstrate the intense power struggle between the universities,

(especially the University of Sydney) and Wyndham as both Director

General of Education and Chairman of the Board of Senior School

Studies, but it also had the most serious short and long term

effects upon the assumptions underpinning the 1965 English

171

syllabus and its progress towards what would become its 1974/6

reformulation.

Wyndham had led the fight against the joint matriculation

decision. He argued that such matriculation standards would

represent a major raising of entry standards and would grievously

distort all the Board's Second Level courses,89 but especially

English.90 Late in 1964, one year prior to the final decision,

Professor O'Neill, Chairman of the Professorial Board, had

informed Wyndham, (in a confidential report), that the

University's matriculation committee had arrived at that policy

which was ratified nearly one year later. It had reached its

decision, O'Neill informed Wyndham, because the committee feared

that, as a result of the introduction of the Higher School

Certificate, there would be a decline in student standards.91

Wyndham replied that he found this to be an amazing charge. After

all, he pointed out, there had been on syllabus committees a

predominance of academics who surely would have ensured the

retention of high standards. Seven of the nineteen Board members

were university professors. All twenty-four syllabus committees

were chaired by professors or senior university staff. There were

one hundred and twenty-one members of university staffs on all

syllabus committees.92

Throughout the ensuing controversy a number of university

professors displayed an ignorance of the Wyndham scheme.

Constantly they assumed, for example, that there would be a

homogeneous stratification of three classes of students. They

conceived of First Level students as being the equivalent of the

Leaving Honours calibre. Second Level, it was supposed, would

define a candidature equivalent to that of the pass students of

the Leaving Certificate, while the Third Level candidature,

according to such academics, would be entirely incapable of

matriculating to university.93 As has been stressed already,

the definition of Levels provided by the Board was fundamentally

different. It was the Board's policy and Wyndham's firm

conviction that the majority of H.S.C. students were to be

considered of matriculable ability and syllabus committees were to

draw up syllabuses accordingly. Therefore students could elect to

enrol in First and Second Level in those subjects which would be

relevant to their future tertiary studies and at Third Level in

those which they intended terminating at the H.S.C. Wyndham did

not claim that all H.S.C. students would be capable of

matriculation - but the university authorities generally failed

either to understand or to accept these distinctions. Professor

Russell, for example, shared the mistaken view that students were

to be graded comprehensively in three general stratifications of

First, Second and Third Levels.94

Many years later, when

presented with the relevant documents, he agreed that his

conception had been erroneous.95

Dr P. Mellor, Professor of

Chemistry at the University of N.S.W., was one academic who

understood the Board's definition of levels.96

He cited a

senior member of the Mathematics Syllabus Committee who had

declared to a university audience that the Third Level Mathematics

course had been designed for students who would not be capable of

undertaking tertiary studies of any kind. 97 A member of

Mellor's own Science Syllabus Committee had told him that he

believed that the Second Level Science syllabus was designed for

the non-specialist.98 Though in the minority, Wyndham was not

the lone member of the University of Sydney's Senate who believed

that the University of Sydney's matriculation committee was in

ignorance of the Board's definition of Second Level in terms of an

A pass at the Leaving Certificate, and that the Senate itself

clearly misunderstood the Board's edict on Levels.99

Time and time again during the months leading up to the

final decision Wyndham reiterated his arguments that

Second Level, in view of the Board of SeniorSchool Studies, denotes study in Forms V andVI of a scope and standard which shouldreasonably be expected of a student intendingto continue the study of the subject inquestion at any tertiary institution,including the university. 100

172

The Board, he insisted,

...never considered that it would benecessary for a student entering a universityto have studied at "Second" level subjectswhich he would not be continuing to study atthe university.101

He reminded his colleagues on the University Senate that

...in terms of the end result and in anattempt to relate the anticipated standard toa standard with which syllabus committeeswill have been familiar, the Board hasdefined a syllabus at "Second Level" ascovering and reaching a "standard that mightbe expected to be covered and reached by apupil of the present Leaving Certificate Apass quality after six years of secondaryschooling".102

He wrote to Mellor that he was

...depressed by the extent to which peopleimmediately assume that Third Level in anysubject denotes a student of low ability.They all overlook the fact that students inFifth and Sixth Forms are reasonably selectin comparison with the whole range of theirschool generation; they also overl000k thefact that the most able student overall islikely to present a quite irregular profileof special scholastic aptitudes andinterests' .103

It has already been shown that even the Third Level English

course and the sets of prescribed texts were at least as

demanding, if not more so, than the previous pass syllabus and

prescribed texts in quality and quantity.104

Second Level was

considerably more difficult than the Leaving Certificate 1953

syllabus. Previously a student need gain only a "B" in English as

part of a matriculation package, which could be as low as 2 A's

and 4 B's, or sometimes worse, in the Leaving Certificate

173

Examination. Now he or she would be strategically foolish not to

attempt the much more difficult Second Level course designed for

the student equivalent of those gaining an A in the old Leaving

Certificate. According to the definitions given clearly to the

syllabus committees by the Board, the new matriculation formula

meant that, using the equivalence defined by the Board, a student

would have to gain the equivalent of four Leaving Certificate

Honours or A results and one B, in order to matriculate.

Actually, it was even more difficult than that comparison suggests

because under the Leaving Certificate regulations, "A" passes

could be awarded to students gaining a certain number of marks in

a pass course. However, the Second Level course demanded two

years of study in a syllabus .pitched at the old "A" level

throughout. Yet Vice-Chancellor Roberts, of the University of

Sydney, asserted that

...we do not believe however that ourrequirements involve any substantial changein the standards to be obtained bymatriculants.1°5

Wyndham vigorously attacked the matriculation formula;

particularly for what it would mean for English. He prophesied,

accurately as it turned out, that it would lead to the virtual

disappearance of the Third Level English syllabus in many

schools.106 Just as accurately, he predicted that the English

syllabus would become distorted because of the dislocation of the

candidature for whom it was originally designed.

In order to achieve the safety from the pointof view of Matriculation, of the possibilityof a conceded "Third Level" pass, youthswhose abilities point to a future in scienceor in science-based studies, will demand tobe admitted to a course which is deliberatelydesigned to meet the needs and challenge theabilities of students who intend to continuetheir studies of literature and languagebeyond the secondary schoo1.1"

174

Wyndham saw himself reliving the fate of Peter Board who, half a

century before, had attempted to break the university's control

over secondary education but with only limited success. 108

By September 1965 Wyndham was becoming alarmed that,

despite his efforts, the Senate of the University of Sydney was

moving inexorably towards adopting the matriculation committee's

recommendations of 1963. For various reasons, Wyndham was unable

to be present at the three final decisive meetings of the Senate

in August, September and October. Had he been able to attend

these meetings, perhaps Wyndham would have been able to prevent

the Senate from making the decision which it finally made.

Wyndham reiterated that Second Level syllabuses had

been specifically constructed,

...to cover a content and reach a standardthat might be expected to be covered andreached by a pupil of the present LeavingCertificate "A" pass quality after six yearsof secondary schooling.109

Elsewhere Wyndham was pungent in his criticism of the

universities, apart from Macquarie University which had not agreed

to the University of Sydney-University of N.S.W.

matriculation formula:

The syllabuses were presented in due course,for the approval of the Board. Not onesyllabus committee reported that it had doneother than follow the instruction and none ofthe seven professorial members of the Boarditself evinced any doubt in the matter. TheBoard therefore approved the syllabuses ingood faith.Yet I am now told that a secondlevel pass is the equivalent only of a good"B" at the Leaving Certificate Examination.Quite plainly someone is not telling thetruth.110

The decision of the joint committees of the University of

Sydney and the University of N.S.W. was published in September

1965 and ratified by both Senates in October. Heated controversy

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176

ensued in the press. In a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald the

chairmen of the two universities' matriculation committees,

Professors Vowels and O'Neill, claimed that the Second Level

syllabuses were equivalent in standard to the Leaving Certificate

pass syllabuses.111

As far as English was concerned this has

already been shown in this Chapter to be a false statement. The

Second Level syllabus was significantly more demanding than the

1953 syllabus had been. Furthermore, these two academic leaders

alleged that two thirds of all students would attempt First or

Second Levels. It was clear from Wilkes' opening remarks at his

first H.S.C. Syllabus Committee

such figures.112

It is also

published addresses by Wilkes,

Syllabus Committee had designed

meeting that he did not accept

clear from public and later

Goldberg and others, that the

the Third Level course for the

majority of students presenting for the Higher School

Certificate .113

Goldberg declared publicly that, as far as the subject

English was concerned, he firmly disagreed with what O'Neill.

Vowels and others like Professor Hirschorn, were claiming.114

He argued strongly that it would be to violate both the spirit and

the letter of the English syllabus to apply a matriculation

formula which would enforce the majority of students to take the

Second Level course. He supported the argument that Wyndham had

put to the Senate concerning Third Level English. Goldberg

repeated the case which he had put to his colleagues on the

Professorial Board.

Level 3 English is of matriculation standardfor the vast majority of students who do notwant to study English at university. Indeedfor a great many such students I would thinkLevel 3 - since it is specifically designedfor them - is actually a better subject thanLevel 2.115

Goldberg's trenchant criticism of a situation created by

the universities, whereby large numbers of students would be

pressured into "taking a course that is really inappropriate to

their interests, talents and practical need", 116 had re-echoed

Wilkes' own warnings in August in his address to the English

Teachers' Association. Yet six weeks after Goldberg's letter

Wilkes, along with his professorial colleagues Room, Farrell and

J.M. Ward, signed a letter which publicly and resolutely supported

the universities' matriculation formula. The statement appeared

in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Ward, as Chairman of the Modern History Syllabus Committee,

had, at the outset, contradicted the Board's definition of Second

Level in drawing up that syllabus. He had decreed

that

...Second Level would provide for part of thestudents of "B" quality at the presentLeaving Certificate examination as well asthose of "A" quality who did not elect totake First Level. 117

Such a decision clearly contradicted the plainly and simply

expressed definition of Second Level issued by the Board. It was

Ward's interpretation, (with a slight variation) which the letter

of the three professors adopted. The professors claimed that the

Second Level syllabuses had been

...written for candidates of the qualitylikely to be awarded an "A" pass, but thisdoes not mean that all other candidatesfail. 118

While this is an interesting criterion, it is plainly not the one

succinctly delineated by the Board. The definition of Second

Level, as encompassing a range from the brilliant A to the

competent B, was the professors' own new definition. Furthermore

the three professors displayed a serious distortion of the aims of

Third Level. Each of these professors was a chairman of an H.S.C.

syllabus committee: Mathematics (Room), German (Farrell) Modern

History (Ward) and English (Wilkes). All had been

177

...instructed to frame the syllabus for (a)Third Level on the assumption that allstudents have attained a reasonabilecompetence in the use of techniques atOrdinary Level Pass standard in the subjectat the School Certificate Examination.119

Yet the professors defined Third Level as catering for

...the student who might fail or score a low"B" on the present Leaving Certificate, byproviding a worthwhile course on which hewill be able to write an examination paperwhich both gives him a sense of achievementand satisfies the examiners.12°

The letter of the three professors repeated the fallacy that the

Board had catered for three comprehensive layers of students. The

professors did not acknowledge that, within a generally very able

homogeneous H.S.C. candidature, students individually could elect

to do certain subjects at different levels according to their

needs, interests and future careers.

Wyndham wrote a sharp reply pointing out, quite validly,

that the Levels guidelines had been given to syllabus committee

chairmen in 1964 and syllabuses had been drawn up accordingly but

that now over twelve months later, these chairmen were inventing

new definitions.121

In his capacity as chairman of the English

syllabus committee, Professor Wilkes wrote a letter later in

November to the Secretary of the Board of Senior School Studies.

In this letter Wilkes showed that, by now, he had changed from the

position which he had taken at the first syllabus committee

meeting.

I should like to reiterate my opinion that asthe "B" pass in the Leaving covers a range ofachievement from one mark off an "A" to onemark off failure, I should expect the upperbracket of the "B" candidate to take SecondLevel, and the lower bracket to takeThird.122

178

The question that arises inevitably is this: why had Wilkes

altered his original position of acceptance of the Board's

definition of Second Level? It would appear to be impossible to

provide any comprehensive or conclusive answer to this question.

A number of possibilities could be considered. Any one of these

or a combination of various factors, might provide the most valid

answer. For example, it could be that prior to, during, or after

consultation with his professorial colleagues, Wilkes decided that

the original formulation was inadequate and should be replaced by

the one indicated in his November letter to the Secretary of the

Board of Senior School Studies. The tension then existing within

the Department of English at the University of Sydney between

those forces and personalities associated, on one side with

Wilkes, and on the other with Goldberg123

may, or may not, have

been significant. It has already been shown that, as far as

H.S.C. English was concerned, Goldberg had publicly supported

Wyndham's position on Second and Third levels. It was this

position, as far as H.S.C. syllabuses generally were concerned,

that was repudiated in the letter of the four professors. Wilkes

had now publicly aligned himself with such powerful university

figures as Farrell (Dean of Arts) Room and Ward in opposing what

the university authorities believed to be a serious threat to

their future academic standards. Wyndham was perceived by such

figures as spear-heading an attack on such standards. Wyndham, on

the other hand, believed that what he considered to be the

university's improper degree of control over secondary education

should be weakened. Perhaps there were other factors involved -

perhaps there were not. Whatever, and however complex, is the

correct answer to the question under consideration, one thing is

clear. The Chairman of the H.S.C. English Syllabus Committee had

publicly expressed his rejection of the original definition of

Second Level which had been devised by the Board of Secondary

School Studies and, upon which foundation, the English Syllabus

Committee had been directed to construct its Second Level course.

The matriculation decision was fiercely opposed by the

English Teachers' Association, whose members saw it as having a

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180

demoralising impact upon the Third Level syllabus. By the annual

general meeting of July 1966 there were over 700 members. At that

meeting the following resolutions were passed:

1. That the Department of Education berequested to make a statistical survey of theeffect of Matriculation requirements on thechoice of levels of study in Fifth FormEnglish and other subjects and to publish theresult of the survey.

2. That the Minister for Education be askedto convene a meeting of all interestedparties to examine the situation and to seeksome way out of the present impasse betweenthe demands of education and thematriculation requirements.

3. That this Association publicise widelyamong the schools and in the press, themerits of Level III English as a coursedesigned to serve the needs of the vastmajority of people in their daily lives.124

In September the N.S.W. Catholic Secondary Schools Association

officially endorsed the E.T.A.'s resolutions.125

In the same

month the E.T.A. Council sent letters to Parents and Citizens

Associations in government schools and Parents and Friends

Associations in Roman Catholic schools for distribution to

parents, urging them to encourage their children to select the

English course most appropriate to their needs, interests and

abilities and not to be stampeded into Second Level.126 The

Secretary of the E.T.A., Helen Woodhouse, wrote "in sheer

desperation" to Wilkes in February 1966 predicting that many

non-government schools would, like the one in which she was

employed (Tara, a Church of England school), have no students

enrolling in Third Level because of the matriculation

policy.127 She was right. Wilkes was later to discover, to his

astonishment, that in seventy-six government and non-government

schools in N.S.W. there had not been a single student taking the

Third Level course.128

At the 1965 E.T.A. Conference Yelland, as Director of

Secondary Education, (having succeeded the retired A.W. Stephens),

had expressed his grave fears of the consequences of the

181

matriculation decision upon Second and Third Levels. 129 W.G.

Priest, who in 1963 had convened that E.T.A. sub-committee which

made recommendations to the Board as to what should constitute the

H.S.C. syllabus, subsequently wrote a bitter letter to Yelland.

He accused the universities of perpetrating "little less than a

crime" upon the English syllabus.130

At his Normanhurst Boys

High School, 94% of all students had enrolled in First and Second

Levels. This was almost exactly the same proportion that had

attempted Pass English at the Leaving Certificate over the

previous decade.131

Priest claimed that this was a ridiculous

situation because only a tiny proportion of Leaving Certificate

students had ever attempted English Honours, and only a small

proportion had gained A's. Yet these were supposed to be the

equivalent standards used by the English Syllabus Committee in

designing the two courses. The only way, according to Priest,

that the vast bulk of the 94% could pass Second Level would be

through intensive cramming. This, he declared, would be a

"terrible injustice" to the students and to the syllabus

itself.132

Yelland sent this letter on to Wilkes and in an

accompanying letter indicated that he believed there was "a

considerable degree of concurrence...(and)...much disquiet"133

among English teachers about the consequences of the matriculation

decision. Yelland informed Wilkes that, while he had advised

school Principals to encourage pupils to select their English

courses according to their own interests and abilities, he felt

sure he was fighting a losing battle.

The English staff at Priest's school sent a telegram to

Wyndham urging him to dispute the matriculation decision. The

Headmaster, T. Pearson, sent a covering note of support. In his

official reply Wyndham confirmed that it had become "tragically

common" for the overwhelming majority of students to enrol in

Second Level English.134

In an unofficial note to Pearson

Wyndham lamented rather angrily that, for over a year, he had been

battling the universities on his own with virtually no "visible

support from any group of teachers".135

In his official reply

he reminded the staff that the universities had always jealously

guarded their academic autonomy and that no government had

challenged "or was likely to challenge" their prerogatives.136

He made clear his own frustration, both with the universities and

with the teaching profession, for what he considered had been

teachers' lack of support for his campaign against the

universities.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of all this public and

private controversy is that there is no record of it having ever

been discussed within the English Syllabus Committee itself even

though the effect of the matriculation decision was to distort

most seriously the English curriculum. The Second Level course,

designed for a minority, would become the syllabus for the

overwhelming majority of all H.S.C. students. The candidacy for

Third Level would be significantly less diverse than that which

had been envisaged when it was designed by the committee.

Nevertheless, such distortions produced not a word of protest in

the Minutes of the discussions and decisions of the committee.

Perhaps it is significant that Professor S.L. Goldberg, the one

academic on the Syllabus Committee who had publicly attacked the

matriculation decision for its effects upon the English syllabus

and its implementation, and who had argued vigorously for the

incorporation of Third Level English in the matriculation formula,

had resigned from the committee on August 8th 1966.

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE 1965 SYLLABUS AS EXPRESSED IN THE 1966

SPECIMEN H.S.C. EXAMINATION PAPERS

The preparation, in 1966, of Specimen H.S.C. Examination

Papers in order to guide teachers and students in the

interpretation of the syllabus with respect to its examining

clarified a number of issues. First, it was obvious that the

utopian hope expressed in the syllabus, that language and

literature should be treated in an integrated way, was not going

to be the subject of examination. On the contrary, both aspects

were to be examined separately. Students in First and Second

Levels would be forced to answer questions on the three literary

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genres of drama, novel and poetry. Unlike what had occurred in

the Leaving Certificate examination, whole genres could not be

omitted. The Specimen Papers contained the direction that the

questions were not to be interpreted as fixing stereotype patterns.

The most obvious feature of the Specimen Papers was that

they confirmed the judgment, already made earlier in this chapter,

that the H.S.C. English curriculum was considerably more demanding

than its predecessor. They also sought successfully to implement

the aims and objectives of the respective courses. The Leaving

Certificate Honours questions had generally concentrated only upon

mechanical features, such as stylistics and technique, without

going as far as the H.S.C. questions in striving to engage the

student in a pursuit of meaning and to elicit well argued personal

and critical responses to that meaning. In this way the questions

accurately reflected the different emphases of both syllabuses.

The Leaving Certificate examination papers did not, of course,

deal with the theory of language. This was a major addition of

the 1965 H.S.C. syllabus. The difference between the spirit of

the literature and the language sections of the H.S.C. syllabus,

was apparent in the Specimen Papers. While all literature

questions invited critical response, only two of the nine H.S.C.

language questions required students to enter into critical

discussion of certain issues. The other seven were all

content-oriented and closed-ended questions which tested students'

retention of 'facts' rather than, as in the literature sections,

their powers of critical evaluation and argument.

A comparison between the 1966 Leaving Certificate Pass

examination papers and the 1966 Specimen H.S.C. Papers for Second

Level shows the latter to be clearly more demanding than the

former. The H.S.C. questions required greater depth of student

understanding and response. The differences between the two

syllabuses' directives concerning reading and comprehension were

fairly expressed by the respective sections of the examination

papers. The language questions on the Second Level paper, though

fewer in number, were identical to those on the First Level

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paper. This was but a further demonstration of the similarity

between the two courses and of the English syllabus committee's

refusal to obey the Board's strictures forbidding overlapping

between levels. The Board raised no objection. It formally

approved the Specimen Papers before they were distributed to

schools.

The literature questions on the 1966 Leaving Certificate

paper had not only focused on "poetic qualities" and techniques

but, like earlier Leaving Certificate papers, had encouraged what

the then President of the Australian Association for the Teaching

of English, and member of the H.S.C. syllabus committee, Professor

Leonie Kramer, had condemned as the two voices of dishonesty and

illogicality.

We still perpetuate the most appallingfallacies and cling devotedly to unexaminedassumptions. We make sweepinggeneralizations about comedy, tragedy,satire, irony, the novel of ideas, thesincerity of poetry, the use of imagery, andthe function of metaphor to students whoserelatively little experience of literaturemakes it impossible for them to make sense ofsuch terms.

The study of literature seems to inspire inmany students the habits of name-dropping andpretence. How often do we not find themmaking such statements as this: "The Power and the Glory is without doubt the greatestnovel of the 20th century" when theirknowledge of the novels of the twentiethcentury is limited to three other books. Or"Eighteenth century poetry is characterisedby lack of interest in landscape" when theyhave read 4 poems by Keats.137

The Second Level H.S.C. literature questions were quite

devoid of the kinds of pretentiousness referred to by Kramer, and

were very similar to the First Level questions. The emphasis in

the H.S.C. syllabus upon considering the impact, meaning and

response to a literary work as a whole, is especially demonstrated

by the Specimen Paper questions on the novel and drama.138

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