Educationreview

As a country, we might want to think of ourselves as many-degrees removed from the atrocities that occurred during the Frontier Wars, the women who fought for the most basic of human rights ,and members pf the LGTBIQ* group, whose activities and lifestyles still sit uncomfortably with many around the world.But like all Western, liberal nations, however, orthodox ideas, characters and themes become vapid, old and eventually lose their allure. Empires cannot last forever. What readers are then searching for is that kaleidoscope of new worlds, characters and voices that represent them.This was the mission of University of Melbourne academics Alex Bacalja and Lauren Bliss. In terms of diversity, the research pair’s 10-year analysis of text lists from the Senior Victorian English Curriculum leaves a lot to be desired.After analysing 360 texts , the researchers could only find two print-based texts by Indigenous writers – one being Larissa Behrendt’s novel, Home. What about a poetry collection from Ali Cobby Eckerm