English Prescriptions 2019-23: A New Canon?

Not all the Prescribed Texts, but I'm working on it!

I like to be ready for things. There's a great quote from Abraham Lincoln that goes a little something like this (or exactly like this):

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe"

I've probably mentioned that quote on this blog before. In fact, I'm sure of it, but that doesn't make it any less true. I try to live my life by this quote as much as possible!

So whilst I don't know what year groups or versions of Stage 6 English I'll be teaching next year (or beyond), I've nonetheless decided to immerse myself in the new Prescriptions List in order to help prepare myself as much as I possibly can.

This will hopefully help my students, however, I am also motivated somewhat by self-interest as well. The new English Prescriptions for the NSW HSC are a canon, and I love canons.

A 'canon' should normally be preceded by 'the' as in 'the canon'. The use of the definitive article denotes that the canon is the official collection of texts. That said, the NSW HSC Prescriptions are, in the most postmodern sense, a canon. This is due to the fact that they are pegged for importance only between the years 2019-2023. It's a shifting canon (50% new compared to the previous list, apparently) but it still remains a canon of sorts as it is a list that the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) has deemed significant for the study of English. 

In my previous life as a film reviewer I made my way through various canons in an attempt to familiarise myself with the cornerstones of cinema. These canons (the lists from the annual publication 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die, the aggregated international online database They Shoot Pictures Don't They?, the fan-voted IMDB.com Top 250 films, and the Academy Awards' nomination lists) are fluid, growing, and ever-shifting. That said, in wrestling with their slippery nature I became increasingly film-literate. 

I like having the opportunity to do the same with literature, so I've taken the English Prescriptions as one roadmap of what NSW/Australian literati deem worth reading. Becoming familiar with these texts has been an alternatingly fun and harrowing journey as I am trying to keep in mind how each of these texts will relate to the students who are to study them.

Over the next few months (or year?) I will be posting an overview of the Prescriptions, module by module. The first of these will be the Common Module, which will be posted on this blog shortly. In looking at these Prescriptions I will be considering (with some reference to the selected 2019-2023 Annotations, 2015-20 Annotations, and 2009-2014 Annotations provided by NESA, where applicable):

• What the text is about.
• The relevance and applicability of the text for study by Stage 6 students.
• Discussion of the NESA annotations.
• My opinion of the actual text.

This should go without saying but I'll say it anyway: It will just be my opinion. I have no qualifications that set my opinion any higher than anyone else's and I would hope that this is understood with everything that I have previously posted on this blog anyway.

I also won't be setting out to lambast or destroy any of the texts. I usually find something of worth in every text. By reading all of these texts and writing about them here I am mostly clarifying, in my own mind, how I would approach them and which ones I would lean towards. 

Another caveat I should mention is that I am writing from the perspective of Western Sydney. I was born in Western Sydney, have lived all my life in Western Sydney, went to Western Sydney public schools, and currently teach in a Western Sydney public school. My students are intelligent and have the potential for great success but their context means that they learn in a mixed ability setting, with certain socio-economic concerns that inform their journeys to adulthood.

I think that's all I need to say before wading into the Prescriptions themselves. 

Watch this space!