The Struggle with Cultural Consecration in English: Turning Towards Youth Literacies

Abstract

This paper explores the continued cultural consecration of narrow forms of knowledge and literate practice in senior Australian English curricula. Despite the prevalence of Personal Growth approaches to English throughout Australia in the latter decades of the Twentieth century, the analysis of curricula reveals a contradiction between stated goals of access and relevance and the impact they have on producing a hierarchical English curriculum. Bourdieu’s work on fields of cultural production is employed to analyse the processes and power structures that define and explain how knowledge becomes available for study. The second part of this paper inquires into the range of discourses, practices and texts associated with ‘youth literacies’, those fluid, hybrid, diverse, and multiple ways that young people engage in the world using a wide array of digital, multimodal media, and how these might challenge consecrated forms of knowledge and knowing.