Compulsory Reading For English

(A Letter To The editor)

Angie Rendle-Short. Trowel & Sword. October 1971

Preamble: While reading last week’s article, “The Catcher In The Rye“, it may have occurred to some of our readers to wonder why this article was written in the first place; after all, it may have appeared to come out of left field as a topic not normally dealt with in the pages of Trowel & Sword; ie. commentary on a book considered by many as both secular and controversial. The answer is that it was probably written in response to the following “Letter To The Editor” by Dr. Angie Rendle-Short which appeared in the same edition of T&S. After commenting specifically on the letter written by Dr. Rendle-Short, Bill Deenick realised that regardless of the suitability or otherwise of including this book in the English curriculum, students were still expected to comment on it as part of their studies, hence the second article published last week designed to assist students in making sense of this piece of literature.

Compulsory Reading For English

Dear Sir, Would you kindly give me space in your correspondence column to draw the attention of the Christian public to a matter of great and urgent gravity. I refer to the selection of books prescribed for the compulsory subject of English in the Senior and Matriculation examinations. I write more particularly of the situation in Queensland, but I suspect similar conditions pertain in the other States

I personally was alerted some weeks ago through a letter written to the press by a senior student from a convent school. In this she movingly expressed her consternation at the subject matter of the books which the students were required to read. Her letter was shortly followed by another from the pen of a mother of six children, a Christian woman, who is presently sending a signed petition to the Queensland Minister for Education on the matter. This lady suggested to me that I should read the book – “The Catcher in the Rye” by Salinger. 

This book, to quote the head English teacher in one of our Brisbane secondary schools, “was once controversial but is now no longer so, and is accepted as suitable material for class study in English, and is used in Queensland as a set book in the Senior examination”.

I too am a mother of six children; I am middle aged and a medical practitioner. It is impossible for me to find adequate words to describe the sordidness, the polluting power of this document. It is given to young students disguised in the plausible clothing of educational respectability and with the tacit approval of their teacher. Now, I can understand such a publication being read by a psychiatrist or a social worker, etc., in order to evaluate the moral and social trend of the times in which we live; but to put such a book into the hands of adolescent children for examination purposes in what is their only compulsory subject English, and to make it the theme for class study, is, to my mind, nothing short of criminal. It is, truly, a sin of the blackest hue because it is making thousands of our “little ones to stumble”, and for many of them it could be the first steps on the downward path to depravity and vice.

Now, “The Catcher in the Rye” heads a substantial list of similar books, all tarred with the same brush, which are used as prescribed English reading. The cancer is very widespread, hard to pin point, and closely tied up with the controversial issues of censorship, authority, and the widening generation gap. But THE MINDS AND SOULS OF OUR CHILDREN ARE BEING DESTROYED. It would seem that the educators and politicians have failed them, and it now remains for us, the mothers and fathers to fight on.

I would earnestly urge parents to procure from their local municipal libraries the books listed and to check the books of their secondary school sons and daughters; to teach their younger primary school children that, sadly, their teachers can no longer be trusted, and with God’s help, to nurture in them a discerning mind and spirit. I would urge parents to unhesitatingly resist the notion that the schools have the last word as to the choice of books for English. English is the only compulsory subject. It is the parents who, in the final analysis are responsible before God for the spiritual, moral and mental welfare of the child. The school must be answerable to the parents.

Father hear us, we are praying, 
Hear the words our hearts are saying. 
We are praying for our children.
From the whirlpool that would suck them, 
From the treacherous quicksand pluck them, 
Father, hear us for our children.
Amy Carmichael.

Yours faithfully,
Angie Rendle-Short

Notes From The Editor:

I. Dr. Rendle Short is perfectly right: evangelical parents are often no longer in the position to trust the schools or the teachers to which they send their children. We are deeply grateful for what committed christians still (try to) do before the class, but in general the parents themselves or others will have to take over and help the christian teenager to evaluate the books they have to read.

Il. It is also true that the list of books for English reading is compiled without noticeable consideration of the non-christian or even anti-christian philosophy expressed in them. Yet, even if we had a christian high school we would still have to take notice of Lawrence, Camus and Salinger. We are faced with the abysmal failure of evangelical christendom the world over in the field of literature. We have so precious little to offer.

III. A fact is that thousands of boys and girls from evangelical homes have read, and will be reading for many years yet, The Catcher in the Rye. Very few of them are educated in a climate so relatively protected as e.g. a convent school provides. After six years at a Sydney suburban high school they are not likely to find Holden Caulfield’s language to be too far removed from reality either in profanity or in sexual licence. In fact many of them are faced with worse in language and in practice. We better face this fact realistically in the biblical sense of the word and we better try to help them live in the world (and to understand the world) without being of the world.

IV. To remove Salinger’s novel from the list of required or recommended reading would help very little so long as so many other books, possibly less rude and profane in language but equally (or worse) anti-christian in their basic philosophy will remain on it.What we need is an educational system that is based on a christian world and life view and that makes young people understand non-christian literature in its basic emptiness.

V. For myself I must honestly admit that I love Holden Caulfield as if he were my own son

JW. DEENICK

*It is a terrible condemnation of a church member that no one should ever suspect him of being one. 
*We do not become righteous by doing what is righteous, but having become righteous, we do what is righteous.
– Martin Luther.

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