Session Information
17 SES 03, Parallel Paper Session
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
The school subject, English, was once informed by more ambitious social and cultural aims than is the case today. English teachers themselves once led curriculum change. Now the teaching of English to the majority of students is both increasingly differentiated and directed from the centre. But in the post-war period, a group of teachers in the UK forged a set of principles and practices that aimed to connect English to their pupils’ social realities within a common offer. Social class was the central concern. After the war, when the curriculum reflected inherited, ungenerous assumptions about social class and education, and when certain educationists and intellectuals aimed to restore class-based hegemonies, a new generation of progressive and radical English teachers, intent on transforming the larger society, struggled to bridge the divide between the school subject, English, and the communities it served. What was called the ‘New English’ (Shayer 1972) was largely the product of teacher-led innovation in a small number of secondary schools led by teachers at a new kind of institution. Confusingly, the term ‘New English’ (Doyle, 1989) has also been used to characterise an earlier version of the subject which carried nationalist and imperialist assumptions about the centrality of Standard English and the English literary canon. This old ‘New English’ was promoted by the English Association after the Great War and was codified by the Newbolt Report (1921).
In this paper I report findings from a major three-year project, now nearing its conclusion, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and entitled Social Change and English, 1945-1965. The chief aim of the project is to produce a history of the transformation in English language and literature teaching in three London secondary schools. On the evidence available to us at the start of the project it appeared that all three schools had major influence on the way the subject developed in our period. However, the picture that is emerging suggests that two, Walworth and Minchenden, were influential, but that one, Hackney Downs, was not. The rediscovery of the working classes in Britain’s run-down towns and cities as well as the post-war desire for a fairer, more equal society (manifested in the new welfare state), fostered an educational ideal of English for all – a unified syllabus taking adequate account of all children’s backgrounds, perceived needs and interests and that recognised the importance of their heritage languages and cultures from perspectives of learning as well as politics. But, this ideal was inflected differently in contrasting institutions, and no single, authoritative version of the subject, English, emerged with universal backing. Nevertheless, as analysis of our case studies will show, by the end of our period (1965) a cadre of ‘New New English’ teachers regarded themselves not just as teachers, but as agents of social change. The immediate post-war period is often presented as a moribund era, over-reliant upon textbooks containing dry-as-dust exercises. I contend that it was also marked by remarkable innovations in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment associated with the ideal of English for all.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Aldrich, Richard (2003) ‘The three duties of the historian of education’, History of Education 32(2): 133-143. Barnes, Douglas, Dorothy Barnes and Stephen Clarke (1984) Versions of English. London: Heinemann. Cunningham, Peter and Philip Gardner (2004) Becoming Teachers. Texts and Testimonies 1907-1950. London: Woburn. Doyle, Brian (1989) English and Englishness. New York: Routledge. Hardcastle, J L ‘Four Photographs in an English Course Book: A Study in the Visual Archaeology of Urban Schooling’, Changing English, Vol.15 No.1 March 2008, pp. 3 -24. McCulloch, Gary and William Richardson (2000) Historical Research in Educational Settings. Buckingham: Open University Press. Medway, P and Kingwell, P ‘A curriculum in its place: English teaching in one school 1946 -1963’ in History of Education Vol. 39 No.6 November 2010 pp.749-765 Shayer, David (1972) The Teaching of English in Schools, 1900-70. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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