Kevin Donnelly deplores the way great literature is being belittled and sidelined in the classroom.What do the works of Shakespeare and the television talent quest Australian Idol have in common? For most – especially Prime Minister John Howard, who argued recently that teaching of great literature is being destroyed by postmodernism and outcomes-based education – the answer is: nothing.Shakespeare’s works, as Harold Bloom argues in The Western Canon, represent literature at its most sublime and…
