Oddments: Five unique texts on the current NSW HSC Prescriptions List

I've been working a bit on researching NSW's Prescribed Texts these past few years and, as we approach the current list's long journey into the night before the next round, I thought this might be a good time to look at some of the more unusual texts on the list.  I say 'unusual texts' but I should clarify that, when I say this, I'm not speaking about a text's subject matter or themes or genre as that's a little too subjective. I want to instead highlight the more textually-distinct outliers - the solitary text types and unusually-originated texts that stand out with a hard and firm point of difference. 

Go Back to Where You Came From

Oddity: The only television series option featured across Standard, Advanced, EAL/D, and Extension English.

Description: Go Back to Where You Came From is a carryover text from the previous 'Discovery' Prescriptions List. The television format presents a challenge to teachers as its runtime is essentially twice that of the average film - this can make it difficult to cover within a busy timeframe that also involves student selection of a related text and coverage of the 'Texts and Human Experiences' module. I taught this when it was part of 'Discovery' and, while I did find that students were able to easily engage with it, it felt like quite a slog to cover it properly alongside a related text and an Area of Study. This meant that I did not opt to explore the text as part of 'Texts and Human Experiences' when the opportunity later presented itself.

Contemporary Asian Australian Poets

Oddity: The only multi-poet anthology - between its presence in the Standard and EAL/D English syllabuses this selection includes works from eight different poets.

Description: Whilst the idea of covering so many different poets seems to pose a significant challenge in covering just as many differing contexts, it can actually force a synthesis of ideas as the teacher finds themselves bringing the texts together in service of the module 'Language, Identity, and Culture'. This conceptual underpinning can be a guiding light for students who might overwise struggle to unite separate poems together to support a thesis. It also helps that the poetry is accessible and provides a wide scope for students to make many different kinds of connections.

One Night the Moon

Oddity: A double oddity. One Night the Moon is the only prescribed text across Standard, Advanced, EAL/D, and Extension English that features characters breaking into song. It's also the only non-feature film (too long to be a short film, too short to be a feature film). 

Description: Rachel Perkins' collaboration with Paul Kelly is an achingly poignant depiction of the colonial violence and contradiction in Australia's past. It's also an unusual text outside of the English-teaching context because it's the only time singer-songwriter Paul Kelly has acted on screen. I haven't taught this text but I think it's relatively short length would allow for some useful drilling down into its finer aspects. 

'May the Pen Grace Your Page' by Luka Lesson, and 'Picture a Vacuum' by Kae Tempest

Oddity: Okay, so I'm cheating a little here as this is two texts, but I want to highlight these two as the only poetry performances to be found anywhere in the NSW Prescriptions List. 

Description: The inclusion of these slam poems carries an implication that they should be examined as multimodal performances rather than as written pieces. This is supported by the coding of each text as '(PP)' in the syllabus, meaning 'Performance Poetry' rather than 'Poetry'. The Craft of Writing supporting document from NESA also carries some textual information that suggests this too. This raises some uncomfortable questions about Craft of Writing - specifically the question of how students could be expected to model performance aspects of such a text when writing a piece under HSC examination conditions. 

Actually, I've been puzzled by the inclusion of poetry in Craft of Writing in general as the HSC Module C questions don't seem to allow students the option of composing poetry. But that's perhaps a discussion for another time.

Under Milk Wood

Oddity: The syllabus lists Under Milk Wood as a 'Drama' text but this is a reductive simplification. Over the years the text has been adapted for film, television, and as a stage drama, but its origins are as a radio play. The colour and shape of the text make the most sense in the audio-only format that it was written for. One suspects that the dwindling existence of radio drama led NESA to retroactively reclassify it as just 'Drama', but this does a disservice to the proud tradition of the radio play. 

Description: If you couldn't already tell from my championing of its radio play credentials, I am a big fan of this text. I first taught it because I needed it to make a pattern of study work and I wanted a text that wouldn't be too demanding in terms of having Advanced English students carve off more of their study time for reading. I taught it for these reasons and was very nervous because it is such an odd text and it's so far outside of the natural field of reference for most students in terms of the sorts of texts we usually look at it in English. Anyway, this class engaged with it as intended - by listening to the original Richard Burton-narrated radio dramatisation. We listened to it track-by-track, a few minutes per lesson, and broke the language down, enjoying Thomas's quirky turns of phrase and the games he plays with words. It ended up being one of my favourite thing to teach and quite a few students singled it out at the end of the year as their favorite of the texts we covered.