Learning Goal:

1. Including BIG IDEAS and LEUNIG – Writing the Main Body better (Part 2) Learning Goal: Make your connection to Leunig’s ‘big ideas’ obvious in your writing.

2. Criteria Understanding of complex ideas and/or arguments relevant to the chosen Context and presented in selected text/s What does this mean? How the hell do you make sure you’re doing it?

3. Criteria in practice Make sure the assessors can see the link between your writing and some of Leunig’s complex ideas about reality. This is why, in your planning, it is important to go to Leunig straight after you unpack the prompt. Remember the template in your text book?

4. ‘Look gang, this context is massive so I’ve got a few ideas for you. Don’t be overwhelmed. Let me help you.’

5. Once you have consulted Leunig, decide whether you will draw on his ideas… • Explictly • Eg. In Leunig’s essay, ‘Mania posing as passion’ he recounts a time a stranger entered his yard… He does this to illustrate that what we call madness may in fact be sanity. OR • Implicitly • Ithought to myself, ‘Am I going crazy? Or am I just the only sane one here?’

6. Either way… • Nail your point! • The wood is your reader’s brain. • The nail is your point. • It’s an ANALOGY.

7. Paragraph Analysis- One of yours… With that being said there were a handful of people who chose to defy the dominant reality and challenge it. Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist who saved Jewish people by saying that they were ‘cheap labour’ and ‘essential to the war effort’, avoiding them from certain death in concentration camps. By the time the war was over and Jewish people were no longer persecuted he had saved over a thousand of them. The few people that challenge the dominant reality often do it for the benefit of society.

8. This was good but… They could have added more to the story of how he didn’t conform. How was he able to achieve this? Why did he do it? And importantly, how the hell does this connect with Leunig’s ideas. Let’s really hit them over the head with it.

9. Implicit Leunig With that being said there were a handful of people who chose to defy the dominant reality and challenge it. Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist who saved Jewish people by saying that they were ‘cheap labour’ and ‘essential to the war effort’, avoiding them from certain death in concentration camps by having them work in his factory.By the time the war was over and Jewish people were no longer persecuted he had saved over a thousand of them. The few people that challenge the dominant reality often do it for the benefit of society. As an insider in the Nazi party, Schindler was privy to the cruelty toward Jews. He was not just a suit confined to his office, he had also seen the raids on Jewish ghettos in Krakow and could not turn a blind eye to the cruelty he had seen. It is surprising that a person who was an insider, involved politically in the Nazi party would engage emotionally with the Jews. Isn’t it those who are part of the machine who, golden pen in hand, sign off on such cruelties as concentration camps, war, detention centres? Certain individuals are able to step out of their place in the machine and find some kind of humanityand Schindler was one of those men. He had faced the truth of violence and used his power to challenge it subversively.

10. Or the explicit mention… With that being said there were a handful of people who chose to defy the dominant reality and challenge it. Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist who saved Jewish people by saying that they were ‘cheap labour’ and ‘essential to the war effort’, avoiding them from certain death in concentration camps by having them work in his factory. By the time the war was over and Jewish people were no longer persecuted he had saved over a thousand of them. The few people that challenge the dominant reality often do it for the benefit of society. As an insider in the Nazi party, Schindler was privy to the cruelty toward Jews. He was not just a suit confined to his office, he had also seen the raids on Jewish ghettos in Krakow and could not turn a blind eye to the cruelty he had seen. It is surprising that a person who was an insider, involved politically in the Nazi party would engage emotionally with the Jews. I am reminded here of Michael Leunig’s idea that people need to acknowledge violence and cruelty in our society. He argues that the ‘respected gentlemen in the fine suit’ are too desensitised to violence as they lack real experience in war. He calls this a ‘unique modern cruelty’. Leunig would probably have admired Schindler for his ability to face the truth despite his position of power in society.

11. Try marking this… Kurt Hummel from the T.V. series Glee shows how difficult it is to go against the pressures that society places on you. Being a teenager at a public school in America, he has to hide his sexuality from society because of the repercussions he would face if he openly admitted to being gay. He faces the pressure of having to act like everyone else, even trying out for the football team, just so nobody would suspect anything. Kurt represents the people who are targeted by peer pressure to fit in to everyone’s idea of the ‘ideal person’. Individuality isn’t appreciated and Kurt has to lose his individuality just so that he can be considered normal. Where’s the knowledge of the context? Where’s the knowledge of the text’s ideas?

12. What ideas do you have for this person? You don’t have to know ‘Glee’ to help out.

13. What does this paragraph need? A specific example from a key scene A clear link to Leunig’s ideas.

14. How might these help? ‘In school we may learn the line ‘unto thine own self be true’, but we also learn about the disaster we invite when this advice from Shakespeare is put into practice’. OR ‘See the man. His hair is going grey; he must soak it in chemical pigment or be cast into the abyss.’

15. Now you… Choose a paragraph from your writing. Draft your paragraph to ensure that it has an implicit or explicit reference to a ‘big idea’ from Leunig. If you are writing creatively your references will always be implicit so you have more of a challenge.