George Pell on Year 12 English

Entering the ring; Catholic archbishop George Pell. Critical literacy, an offspring of that great philosophical evil, relativism, is sweeping through our schools. By questioning the literary canon, by analysing the meanings embedded in the world's 'great texts', we're opening up young minds to the evils of the "dictatorship of relativism". This evil has already fostered the decaying of society over the last 50 year. We've seen it in ridiculous notions such as gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia, and stem-cell research. Young people are doing crazy things, like questioning the constructs of masculinity, femininity, the nuclear family, sexuality. Oops, did I say 'constructs'? Pell claims that students are awash in narratives "about sad and dysfunctional individuals and shattered families", and that we should return to the classic narratives about stable people and relationships... like, umm... Cain and Abel! Oedipus! Macbeth!

Australia's most influential Catholic railed against the threat of a "dictatorship of relativism", which he explained as a "self-obsessed, overly materialist, ethics-lite minority" that had not only led to the decline in the study of history and English literature but the devaluation of heterosexual marriage.

Greg Houghton, president of the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English, responds;

"It is irritating to hear that kids aren't learning the classics at school when you know they are," he said. "The reality is blogs, websites and text messaging are part of kids' world today and will be part of their working lives so it is important that we teach them about those too."