Category: Education

Notes from Making Meaning in English by David Didau (2021)

Chapter 2: Problems in English

This chapter defines English as a “folk discipline” where its teachers have limited understanding of effective approaches. Didau dismisses “skills-based” teaching and, instead, proposes a “knowledge-based” approach. He also shows concern that students practise the wrong things. Much of the later part of the chapter involves examples of approaches to teaching aspects of English.

• Didau focuses on the issue that “we don’t have a codified body of knowledge of how to achieve these aims” of how English should be taught. He suggests that “English has become a folk discipline with craft knowledge passed down in individual departments without much recourse to empirical observation or evaluation.”

• Regular marking is identified as part of the “folk discipline” that Didau (citing Newbolt) consider “counterproductive” and praises systems for whole-class feedback.

• Didau draws attention to the “axiomatic beliefs” he views as misguided:

• The “skills-based” subject assumption. This is, he feels the cause of many problems in teaching English. Didau cites Michael Oakeshott in suggesting that only detail can be taught (not general principles). From this, Didau asserts: “We can’t teach skill; we can only teach knowledge”. He suggests that disadvantaged children are most failed by a “skills-based” approach:
  • “The students who seem most resistant to this type of teaching are, on average, the less advantaged. They fail to acquire the skills we teach not because they’re less able but because they’ve done a lot less reading. Because they don’t have as much relevant prior knowledge they sometimes seem to possess the equivalent of intellectual Teflon: new knowledge has little relevant to grip onto.”
  • Didau’s contention is that only knowledge can be taught: “Although students need to acquire a range of skills, we can only teach them knowledge. Different kinds of knowledge may be taught differently: some things you can explain, others you have to point out during practice, but as all this knowledge accumulates, it begins to chunk together. To start, each item of knowledge is known inflexibly but, through repetition and practice, items become increasingly flexible the more they cohere with other related knowledge. Knowledge becomes skill through application within the area in which we hope to become skilled.” He uses the example of teaching use of quotations to illustrate this.
  • Next, Didau explains how skills become tacit and cites Michael Polanyi suggesting that “proxies or maxims” can be articulated (but can’t be used to teach the skills). Didau: “Everything we know explicitly depends on a more tacit understanding.” What is essential is understanding that: The idea that skill can be imparted without the hard work of teaching all the requisite knowledge is an illusion born from being unable to remember how we went about acquiring our own expertise.”

• The practice assumption. “Practice makes permanent, not perfect” Didau asserts. He looks at children’s acquisition of reading skills and points out that “If students fail to automatise the ‘mechanical’ aspects of reading – decoding and word recognition – progress in reading stalls.” (I’m quite interested in Didau’s point about oral skills: “You might be persuaded that the best way to improve students’ reading comprehension is to teach oral comprehension skills but there is no evidence that this makes any difference to children’s reading skill. The best bet for improving comprehension is to spend more time reading.”).
  • Didau appears to argue that there aren’t such things as comprehension skills and goes on to claim that inference, analysis and evaluation can’t be practised. He uses an extract from Finnegan’s Wake to show how teaching “metacognitive strategies” (inference in this case) don’t work.
  • Instead, Didau argues that “All inferences depend on knowledge. Students may spend hours of lesson time successfully practising the skill of inference only to come completely unstuck when they encounter a text about which they know little. If we genuinely want children to become better at inferring, analysing, evaluating or any of the other so-called ‘skills’ on which success in English depends then they need to read much more widely, acquire a greater breadth of vocabulary and generally know more about the world around them. Being skilled is indistinguishable from being knowledgeable.”
  • He sees “strategies” rather than skills as having merit and gives the example of skimming and scanning. There’s a very good section where Didau explains how to teach skim and scan (involving identifying “head nouns”).
  • Didau also points out that students also ” have only a vague idea of what academic writing is supposed to look like – they know the sorts of words and phrases they should use – but they may have little understanding of the underlying content and therefore whatever they write is likely to be superficial at best and fatuous at worst.”
  • He has a term for the student writing – especially for exams – that is empty of significance “cargo cult writing”. Didau also suggest that students write less: “A radical-sounding suggestion for solving the stamina problem is for students to write less for longer.” There’s no point writing students writing essays if they can’t write a paragraph.
  • Citing Daist Christodoulou, Didau suggests that retrieval tasks (eg. Multiple-choice questions) based on texts builds knowledge and argues that: “instead of writing lengthy, summative paragraphs, time would be better spent in debating ideas and practising writing excellent sentences. Regularly writing analytical sentences about the content being studied demands that reasons are provided and consequences explained, and it provides excellent opportunities for expressing ideas clearly and succinctly.”
  • Another suggestion he makes is that the technical aspects of writing should be automised. He argues that teachers should not accept missing capital letters and that there should be “some sort of sanction” that encourages students to be accurate. He sees this as part of maintaining high expectations.

• Didau challenges a “clockwork curriculum” where there is “a mechanistic conception of English in which texts are in danger of being reduced to lists of facts to learn and retrieve.” He points out the need to teach historical information “judiciously” so that it is relevant. He identifies the scope of “essential context” as:
  • “the place the text we’re studying has in the wider literary conversation. Is it part of a particular tradition, or is it responding to other texts?”
  • “We should also consider what else a writer has written: is this text typical of their output? Can we see the development of particular themes throughout their oeuvre?”

• Didau is critical of knowledge organisers (“they suffer from being crammed with stuff that is unlikely to be particularly helpful”). He sees useful information for a knowledge organiser as being: historical context, stylistic features and terms, themes.

Notes from Making Meaning in English by David Didau (2021)

Chapter 1: What is English for?

This chapter presents the current state of English, drawing on its history as a school subject to explain how and why English seems “lost” as a school subject with teachers ignorant of its past and the triumph of pragmatism (functional) English over any progressive or idealistic aspirations for the subject. It’s effective in showing how confusing central government has been on teaching. (It’s interesting that Simon Gibbons or Margaret Mathieson aren’t in Didau’s bibliography as they present the history of English teaching from different perspectives other than official documentation, Arnold, Leavis and Holbrook. The history of English teaching is far richer and brimming with forgotten ideas and approaches than conveyed in this chapter.)

• Didau asks what does English seek to achieve? His view is that different ideas about English “have pulled the subject in a number of competing directions” which he believes make it difficult to be unified in a commonly-agreed purpose.

• Draws on George Sampson: “Yet it is in beauty and love and joy and laughter that we must find the way of speaking to the soul — the soul, that does not appear in the statistics and is therefore always left out of account.” Didau sees the tension between “pragmatism” and “soul” as being central to the purposes of English. Later in this chapter he refers to Sampson’s English for the English and the desire not to educate children as “tame and acquiescent ‘labour fodder’”.

• Points out that the debates about English are simplistically reduced to “traditional” and “progressive” (or the “pragmatic” and the “idealistic”).

• Didau presents his view of the purpose of English: it should “exist to enlarge and extend children’s capacity to think about the world”, “both recognise and value the many varieties of English but also induct students into the opportunities afforded by the mastery of standard English”, “the emphasis should be on written forms”, formal exams are “the fairest way to ensure disadvantaged children are not further disadvantaged”, “need both grammatical descriptions and metalinguistic knowledge in order to think flexibly about the use of English”, give children access to the canon, view the National Curriculum as a “minimum standard” and recognise ” although the subject derives from a dominant cultural identity, multicultural differences enrich and enlarge the English language and its literature”.

• Didau sees the idealistic approaches to teaching English “roundly defeated by the forces of pragmatism”.

• Didau comes across as dismissive of any progressive agenda for English at all: “Today some English teachers are more concerned with ‘developing radicalism’ than they are in overcoming the real injustice that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are disproportionately more likely to fail to learn to read and write fluently than their more affluent peers.”

• In response to English being “lost”, Didau points out that teachers should know the history of their subject. He goes on to give a brief overview of the history of English as a school subject (though almost exclusively restricted to official reports and documentation):
  • Matthew Arnold’s reports as inspector of schools
  • The 1870 Education Act (and presents the standards)
  • The 1921 Newbolt Report: “Many practices that have become the norm today began life in the Newbolt Report through such recommendations as the idea that children should be taught to speak standard English using phonetics; that children should be practised, not only in the art of speaking and reading, but also in the art of listening; the centrality of oral work as the foundation on which proficiency in the writing of English is based; and that exams should focus on English as a means of communication rather than on grammatical analysis and spelling. The report also recommended the reading and acting of plays, and that the teaching of literature should include reading aloud and dramatic performances.”
  • F.R. Leavis and Cambridge English: “Leavis was opposed to the Victorian idea that appreciation of literature should be “the direct expression of simple emotions”14 and instead saw the purpose of studying literature as developing students’ intellectual and imaginative faculties in order to make critical judgements. Leavis argued that appreciation of literature led to a growth of intelligence and sensibility that marked the educated out from a debased majority, corrupted by the evils of democratic industrial society.”
  • (When presenting Leavis’ views, Didau appears to argue that English doesn’t have a civilising influence, drawing on Steiners’ critique of High Culture post-Holocaust: “One of the big claims for studying English – that it makes us more empathetic, more rounded human beings – falters in the face of such damning evidence.”)
  • Bullock Report (A Language for Life) and its recommendations about learning about language. Didau dips into the “grammar wars” and the difference between descriptive and prescriptive. He also points out that: “Bullock had no meaningful advice for English teachers about what to do in the classroom.”
  • David Holbrook: “Holbrook was less interested in promoting a national lit-erary culture where people read and know books, but was concerned with English as a mechanism for populating society with people who think, reflect and use language as a means to explore identity and the wider world.
  • The Kingman Report.
  • The Cox Report and The National Curriculum: “The Cox Report decided that it was impossible to specify exactly what the subject should be composed of, and instead settled for offering guiding principles to help teachers make better decisions. Cox saw the danger of polarised views on what English teaching should be and consequently the National Curriculum for English was always intended as a compromise between extreme positions.”
  • OFSTED between 2009 and 2012 (“These reports sum up the orthodoxy on English teaching throughout the first decade of the 21st century”). Didau shows how OFSTED played a confusing role in English. He points out that methods of teaching were perceived as more important that what was taught. The result of OFSTED’s role was: “In other words, as there was (and still is) no established consensus on what English was or should be, it was incumbent on English departments to work this out for themselves, presumably with help from their pupils. In this shared vision, anything “inappropriate or dull” should be swapped out for what is relevant and exciting. In the best schools, pupils were “stimulated” and teaching “engaged all the senses.” Rather than establishing a curriculum founded on subject expertise and the underlying concepts that open up the subject, effective departments were considered to be those that continually reinvented themselves with whatever was new and exciting.” (Didau particularly emphasises how OFSTED positively praised active, engaging and fun lessons during this period.)
  • OFSTED recently (which has “altered sharply”). No lesson gradings, no judgements on “Teaching and Learning”, “a new appreciation of evidence from cognitive science has led to an acknowledgement that children need to learn knowledge”.
  • Gove’s reforms. The 2015 “knowledge-rich” curriculum which marks a “clear change of intent” and “By the time we reach 2015, however, there is a growing concern to ensure that teachers of English deliver what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called ‘cultural capital,’ to provide a common, ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum to all students.”

• Didau asks six questions about the nature of the English curriculum involving subject knowledge, falling into rote learning, how assessments and progress are judged, what skills are needed and connections with other subjects.

• Among Didau’s answer to the question of what is English for is that it’s more than just adding knowledge. It’s “an attempt to confront young people with something beautiful, moving and profound” plus ” we should also value children’s ability to think critically and creatively”. He ends the chapter echoing George Sampson.

Notes from Making Meaning in English by David Didau (2021)

Introduction

David Didau offers a third way that appears to reconcile the traditional and progressive strains within English teaching. He notes how English does not have an agreed body of knowledge or purpose. Didau believes that changes to the academic study of English have impacted badly on it as as school discipline as has a loss of agency (and conviction) by its teachers. His proposition is that English should be reimagined and its focus on teaching children how to determine significance.

• Didau begins be pointing out that “The anxiety that there’s something rotten in the state of English seems as old as the subject itself.” Then goes on to explain how English has altered while he was a teacher: from one which taught creativity and empathy, attainment targets and drilling to, recently, building stores of knowledge about literature and grammar.

• Didau asks: “in the rush to reinvent the subject as ‘knowledge-rich’ there’s a risk that self-expression, empathy and meaning may be thrown out along with the admittedly filthy bathwater.”

• He discusses the nature of English as a school subject: “unlike most other school subjects English does not consist of an agreed, settled body of knowledge. We take our guidance from examination boards. We dwell on the detailed knowledge of a very few canonical texts and attempt to teach and assess a generic set of skills in the forlorn hope that this will equip young people for the vicissitudes they will face in life. But if this is not enough, if our students need more direction in navigating an uncertain world, we are often unprepared to guide them in making meaning.”

• “At some point” Didau argues in the last 50 years, academic English altered and “the pendulum swung too far” in favour of presenting all discourse as having equal worth which he admits “enlivened and enriched” English but “eroded” our subject’s self-understanding.

• He sees this change in the nature of the academic study of English as affecting those teaching English: “As English teachers we were left not just lacking expertise, but lacking conviction. Until recently, discussions about what to teach were sidelined by injunctions on how to teach. The curriculum became the business of exam boards and quangos; English teachers were shut out of the debate. Now, with a renewed focus on the curriculum, we are often unsure where to start or how to proceed. If we have been trying to build on a foundation of uncertainty we shouldn’t be surprised if the resulting structure is rickety.”

• His fear is that “English is in danger of becoming a clockwork version of itself with children learning lists of quotations and tables of techniques but with little sense of how to use these facts to create meaning.”

• His argument becomes that there is a “third way” between teaching “skills” and what he calls the “technocratic grip of the knowledge organiser” and quotes Arthur Applebee (and the idea of the English curriculum as conversation) saying that what needs to be taught in English is “knowledge of a tradition that involves both knowing and doing”.

• At the end of the Introduction, Didau sees the role of the English teacher as enabling students to “enlarge and extend” meanings in literature and language.

• “The aim is to reimagine English as a subject concerned primarily with significance… to reconceive the curriculum as a place where old and new ideas clash, where the canon is wrestled with, and where students are given the intellectual wherewithal to impose their own judgements and meanings on what we lay before them.”

“How many rich kids are there in your Year 10 bottom set?” asks Phil Beadle at one point in The Fascist Painting. He doesn’t need to present a reciprocal question about Eton or other public school. For teachers aware of the social inequities of the school system in the UK, Beadle’s explosive argument about the purposes of state education, drawing on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu as well as his own experiences as a classroom teacher is incredibly insightful and refreshing. In places it’s challenging – especially when Beadle explains Kantian aesthetics or bluntly dismisses the positive influence of sport in schools – but the value of the book lies in the way it voices an alternative approach. It’s a breath of fresh air for teachers like me who want schools to overcome the hyper-normal mentality that they are politically neutral and that that by focusing everything on the attainment of a handful of GCSE grades we’re somehow contributing to a vague sense of social mobility.

Those who are the poorest, most disadvantaged in society benefit the least from school. For the Right, it’s because these children come from communities where “culture” and “knowledge” are absent supposedly. These children, the Right would argue, lack the desire for self-improvement that’s associated through an advancement of “cultural capital”. It’s no surprise that in neoliberal Britain, the acquisition of “culture” is seen in starkly economic terms. The origins of the current push for the dissemination of “cultural capital” are, as Beadle points out, found in the (ongoing) Govean Revolution that seeks to import the traditions and cultural practices of the dominant monied classes in English society into state schools. (Beadle is far too forgiving here about the influence ED Hirsch has had in my opinion.) By the end of the book – which draws its title from Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, a painting admired by the Nazis as exemplifying the fascist mindset – it’s clear that Beadle sees “cultural capital” as part of a darkly totalitarian agenda to strengthen ideological control over the working class. To teach oppression.

Using Bourdieu’s concepts of culture and its complex relationship with social structures, Beadle stridently examines the manner that cultural ideas are introduced into state schools. Cultural capital, he points out, is not morally neutral and is rather a means that the ruling ideas of society are legitimised. It’s a “veiled mechanism” through which systemised inequality is perpetuated. Schools and the curriculum play a fundamental role in this. (No wonder politicians like Halfron and Johnson use terms like “signed in blood” and “Big Bang” to insist on a mass return to schools in early March during a pandemic where England suffers the worst record of contagion and death in the world. It’s more than a need to get kids back to school so that parents can get back to work. It’s an awareness that prolonged break from schools is a prolonged break from the dissemination of the ideas and control of their dominant culture.)

Beadle spends the first part of the book reflecting on the origin of the phrase “the best which has been thought or said” and there’s some (perhaps correct) character assassination of Matthew Arnold at play. Beadle refers to T.S. Eliot and Anthony Harrison who present Arnold as second-rate, “insider” and deliberate obfuscator. Beadle notes that Culture and Anarchy, the collection of essays from which the phrase “the best which has been thought and said” is drawn is unreadable (it’s “borderline incomprehensible”). Beadle describes the backdrop of the collection as the “anarchy” of the period leading to the 1867 Reform Act, where urban working class men were given the vote and quotes John Storey’s claims that Arnold believed that “In Short, education would bring to the working class a ‘culture’ that would in turn remove the temptations of trade unionism, political agitation and cheap entertainment. In short, culture would remove popular culture.” Arnoldian culture uses mass education as a means of ensuring working class “subordination, deference and exploitation” and equates cultural power of culture with the power of the state.

Beadle believes – and has argued elsewhere – that those in OFSTED have confused “cultural capital” with “cultural literacy”. He rightly points out that Hirsch’s cultural literacy has been interpreted as a form of cultural recognition rather than rich experience and understanding. His view it that Hirsch tends to see mainstream culture as morally neutral when it is far from the case. Mainstream culture is itself a form of legitimisation where (largely) what is popular is considered good. Beadle is particularly effective at pointing out that it is who chooses the content of the cultural knowledge that is crucial. Beadle treats Hirsch far too gently, even when pointing out where Hirsch misrepresents Bourdieu’s impact on French educational reforms. (The difference between cultural recognition and actual cultural knowledge is valid and we see it for example in practice where knowledge organisers remain required in many schools and used as quizzing for rote learning.)

By using the term cultural capital, OFSTED misunderstands Bourdieu’s “willed oxymoron”, Beadle argues. Pairing “culture” with “capital” Bourdieu draws out the unseen relationships between these two concepts. Beadle views OFSTED as quoting a concept created to satirise what it is they think they mean. Beadle goes on to examine Bourdieu’s concept of “misrecognition” and, further, identifies school as “the chief site of symbolic violence” – a place where ruling ideas are legitimised.

Behind apparently neutral “cultural capital” is the legitimising of qualities that the ruling class want working class children to acquire: “honour, loyalty, allegiance and, above all, obedience”. It’s a culture based on a mindset which believes that what has endured is worthwhile without any analysis of how and why this culture has endured.

Beadle also examines what “culture” actually signifies. For Raymond Williams, “Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English Language.” For Bourdieu it is the “supreme fetish”. Beadle draws on this in order to show how the acquisition of culture is seen as providing means of becoming upwardly mobile. However, in order to mobilise yourself upwardly, you have to submit to the game of culture and the class structure it upholds. I found his explanation of Bourdieu’s concept of “obsequium” clarifying: those at the bottom of the order have a respect of the order deeply programmed into them.

Additionally, Beadle explores the definition of “capital” and how the mainstream, dominant ideology presented by the ruling class, state and mass media is legitimised as being THE only valid ideology and that cultural hegemony is a tool in which to manipulate society’s beliefs. (Perhaps anyone who questions this should ask why anti-capitalist views are now proscribed in English state schools.) Cultural competence itself is a symbol of economic value.

Bourdieu’s concept of Habitus is explained, too. Beadle insists that class heritage does not need to be rewritten to develop habits of self-cultivation. The wealthy can afford to spend the (money) time on self-improvement (embodied cultural capital). He also raises the spectre of the Matthew Effect in culture and states clearly that “Education cannot heal society” or reverse the Matthew Effect of cultural capital. Cultural capital also carries markers of origin.

One of the strengths of The Fascist Painting is in how Beadle shows how the education system reproduces the economic system. He asks a simple question to show this: does your local school have the same prestige as attending one of the great public schools? Elite institutions are filled with confident members of the economic elite. The education system is a “huge classificatory machine” that forms the basis of the social order.

Later in the book Beadle looks at “disinterestedness” as an ideological tool. There’s some incredibly interesting chapters on Art and Music and Beadle shows how the dominant classes establish a denial of the physical world (and, of course, its social realities) through Art. Eventually, he discusses Kantian notions of the sublime and how it manifests in the “pure gaze” (which is itself another ideological mechanism for establishing domination).

Throughout, the Fascist Painting explodes with ideas and incredibly enlightening observations. For instance, Beadle shows how ideas of character education have their origins in the public schools of the rich and today are used to contrast with the need to teach working class children “resilience” (he argues that working class children are already pretty resilient). He’s rightly dismissive of the promotion of so-called social mobility agendas as a “Trojan horse” distracting us from the causes of inequality. He also calls for “Sport should be disentangled from its place in schools”. His arguments about sport seem to me to be sound – but it could be argued that sport, even if you take into account its commodified and nature – brings a great deal of joy to children. Beadle also makes a great deal of sense when explaining why working class children don’t read.

Beadle’s message in the book isn’t to reject and work against “cultural capital” being taught in schools. Instead, it’s how to use the methods and tools of the dominant class’ oppression to reveal the nature of oppression: “What is required is training in the rules of the game”.

Beadle’s vision is that:

“Schools should be about emancipating young people, not teaching them the validity of the blunt instruments that are used to control them. Or is that the real function of school? To introduce you to things that will stop you questioning the things they are introducing you to?”

Simply, the task “is to develop [students’] sympathies with political movements and ideas that aim to help them to lead lives less marked by poverty, inequality and lack of opportunity”. The purpose of education is to reveal the existence of the dominant culture, show the tools of domination so that the working class can use them to defend itself.

Towards the end of the book, Beadle presents his manifesto. It rejects the Kantian (what strikes me more as Nietzchien!) notions of “disinterestedness” that dominates current dominant culture and schooling. Beadle examines the nature of the class nature of “disinterestedness” throughout the book. In terms of the school curriculum, this is what he advocates:

“Here is your manifesto: the arts civilise everyone who has contact with them. What is required is a redrawing and a quiet politicisation of the arts curriculum in which the thinking is more critical and acknowledges that there is no such thing as a ‘view from nowhere’, as well as the introduction of more elements of legitimate culture that do not currently appear in state schools.”

Essentially, the actions of this manifesto would be:

1) respect existing working class culture
2) expand the arts
3) then introduce ruling class culture.

His “cultural curriculum” would be one that essentially uses the structure of The Fascist Painting (this book) as a map. Bourdieu is to be taught, too, though Beadle admits this would likely be a unit in an English or History scheme of work. (There’s a great deal of humour throughout even here where his idealistic remapping of the curriculum is brought down to Earth. He’s a teacher. We’ve all been there.)

There’s a fundamental role for a teacher other than a neutral mechanical conduit of “knowledge” (I guess in the way that teaching’s currently framed in the Rosenshine or Cognitive Load models): “We do this by devoting ourselves and our students to discovering the intentions hidden behind the objects and actions of those who seek to dominate us. We do not succeed in emancipating our students by becoming the dominators ourselves. Cultural capital gives us a fighting chance at giving our students the tools they need for their own fight against the many oppressions and oppressors they will experience in their lives – in time present as much as in time future.”

Beadle’s advice to working class children is a quote from John Lydon: “Get smart, read as much as you can and find out who’s using you.”

Here and there are things Beadle presents that surprised me and seem at odds with the tenor of the book. For instance, Beadle says that he supported Gove’s “toughing up of qualifications”. Beadle believes: “this was long overdue and entirely correct”. Though he acknowledges it comes with its own form of bigotry. Surely an examination system that classifies children so brutally isn’t something to be “toughened up”! Rather, shouldn’t the current exam system be replaced by one in which cramming, private tuition and a place in a grammar or public school doesn’t assist you in getting the best grades (this is aside from the fact that students attending public schools are allowed to take exams accepted by universities that are prohibited for state schools students)? Beadle also commends the teaching of Aristotelian rhetoric and texts like abridged versions of Classical Greek texts as virtues. Aristotelian rhetoric seems to be another guise of approaches like explicitly teaching the fronted adverbial in a formulaic way and, while I’m sure that these scaffolds of discourse can be useful, I don’t think they fundamentally alter the issues with the way English is taught in schools. I’m also hesitant about the use of contemporary (pop) culture in the seemingly uncritical way that Beadle proposes. [I’ve taught poetry paired with pop songs for years but I wouldn’t want to suggest that Stormzy, Beyoncé or Taylor Swift has an equivalent artistry with Shakespeare, Blake or even Matthew Arnold himself.] I’m not even sure teaching Ancient Greek texts is progressive when there’s a greater body of world literature to draw from.

These are minor criticisms of what is a significant educational book.

The Fascist Painting is an explosive and challenging alternative approach to delivering “cultural capital” in schools. It draws attention to the nature of the dominant culture and its role in the legitimisation of social inequality. Beadle offers a manifesto for schools for delivering “cultural capital” in a way that reveals the tools and methods of its use and re-tooling it for the working class.

Notes from English and Its Teachers by Simon Gibbons (2017)

In this chapter Gibbons presents the changes to English during the period of the 20 years-long Conservative government. His starting point is the 1988 Kingman Report and the introduction of the National Curriculum, the first attempt at prescribing the context of English teaching. It was a centrally-driven, top-down reform. This is the period where English teachers’ influence over policy waned and there developed a growing sense of deprofessionalisation. It saw the removal of 100% coursework and the introduction of national testing at 14.

• Introduction of the National Curriculum in late 1980s and subsequent action saw the “progressive, personal growth model of English” come under attack from both Left and Right. The relentless pressure caused fundamental changes to the way English was “framed” and taught. Those resisting change were marginalised.
• “The dual weapons of curriculum and assessment, reinforced by an increasingly oppressive accountability framework manifested in school league tables, perfomance targets and Ofsted inspection, threatened for many English teachers what they considered to be the good practice that had evolved through previous decades.”
• ▾ THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM FOR ENGLISH
  • Callaghan’s Ruskin College speech in 1976 seen as the “starting pistol” for “the long race towards the first National Curriculum”.
  • Abolition of the Schools Council in 1982.
  • “where there was a focus on education in the early years ofThatcher’s administration it was predominantly on
    advancing policies that would serve to bring the market into education, and to lessen the influence and scope of the Local Education Authorities”
  • Not until 1988 Education Act that “the spotlight was shone directly on curriculum”
  • In mid-1980s, HMI published Curriculum Matters papers (“forerunners to the National Curriculum”). Gibbons claims these were “in many ways strikingly imaginative in their approach to curriculum” and that the ideas were “in no way at odds with the kind of progressive, child-centred model of English that, for many, had by the mid-1980s assumed the place of an orthodox approach to the teaching of the subject”. Points out that one pamphlet regarded English as an “art”.
  • English from 5-16 had an “open and democratic tone”.
  • English 5-16: “In terms of the development of a National Curriculum for English, then, this
    was no bad starting point. The pupil was being placed at the very centre of learn­ing in the subject, the complexity of the discipline was acknowledged and there was a strong sense of consultation and communication in the development of what
    might at some point become policy. As the National Curriculum became a reality, however, this democratic spirit seemed to be steadily eroded; relatively quickly
    policymakers seemed to realise that, in terms of English at least, dialogue with the profession would be unlikely to lead to consensus, and it would be even less likely to lead to an agreement on the kind of version of the subject that successive Conservative governments apparently wanted – a back-to-basics approach that would reverse the perceived, but never really evidenced, fall in standards which, it
    was alleged by those on the right of the political spectrum, accompanied the introduction of progressive methods from the 1960s and was a product of comprehensivisation.”
• 
  ▾ THE KINGMAN REPORT
  • Sir John Kingman chaired report committee. Kingman was a mathematician. President of the Royal Statistical Society. Committee did consult widely. ▾ Kingman report’s recommendations included:
  • training of all new teachers in knowledge about language
  • all NQTs should engage in a language study relevant to their subject specialism
  • called for establishment of a National Language Project (came to fruition in LINC).
  • Department of Education’s response was to call report “interesting”.
  • NATE welcomed report but saw its conception of language as inadequate. Also challenged the prescriptive view of language teaching (citing no evidence). [Stubbs says that there is little evidence that direct language teaching improves children’s English.] NATE concerned that study of language for its own sake in a crowded curriculum would prevent children developing competence as language users.
• 
  ▾ COX’S NATIONAL CURRICULUM (1988)
  • Kingman Report “quickly superseded” by English for Ages 5-16, the first version of the NC.
  • Statutory orders drafted by committee led by Prof Brian Cox (one of the key authors of Black Papers).
  • Suggests that Cox had some sympathies for progressive education. “it was clear from English for Ages 5-16 that Cox’s view on English showed some real appreciation of the complexities of tire subject and of varying perspectives held by the profession on the aims of English and what it should be to children”. ▾ Cox encapsulated complexities of aims of English as “views” which became “Cox’s model”:
    • personal growth
    • cross-curricular
    • adult needs
    • cultural heritage
    • cultural analysis
  • Shakespeare given only statutory place
  • Document was a mix of prescription and descriptive. “It invited English teachers to consider these debates and in doing so reassured them that there was not an attempt to simplify the complexity of the subject”.
  • “In fact, Cox considered that the ideas on teaching English from Bullock, Kingman and his own curriculum could be seen as ‘an organic growth’ (Cox, 1995, p. 190). If that were indeed true then Cox’s curriculum would rightly be looked on as progressive and, to a large extent, in tune with the progressive ideas about English that had been evolving over theprevious three decades.”
  • “many English teachers now view the Cox curriculum as a humane and principled attempt to set out both an inclusive rationale for English and a broad and balanced subject content, with many italicised sections of the document offering helpful guidance to support the statutory orders”
  • Harold Rosen – Teaching London Kids (magazine) – opposed to “this” National Curriculum.
  • NATE welcomed aspectes of English 5-16, particularly how it handled standard English – but criticised circumscribing performance in English with a linear scale of levels. “The progressive view of English adopted as NATE’s orthodoxy viewed the English curriculum as recursive, a spiral curriculum where children continually return to key ideas and concepts and deepening understanding.”
  • “In a sense, that Cox’s curriculum was widely
    welcomed by the profession may have been as much due to a sense of relief at what it wasn’t as a celebration of what it was, and the affinity’ to Cox’s view of English was no doubt heightened by subsequent events – the passing of time and future curriculum rewrites certainly influenced many English teachers’ judgement of Cox and his curriculum.”
• 
  ▾ PASCALL’S THE CASE FOR REVISING THE ORDER (1992)
  • Policymakers quickly revised the English orders.
  • National Curriculum English: The Case for Revising the Order (1992). Gibbons describes it as “a curious read”. “There are clear messages in the document about the areas of English Cox was deemed to have failed in properly forefronting; the teaching of initial reading and the specification of named literary figures featured, but once again attention to grammar and Standard English remained the strongest areas of criticism.”
  • Brian Cox – Cox on the Battle for the English Curriculum (1995).
  • Cox pointed out that ministers gave key positions in the NCC and SEAC to supporters of conservative thinking on education (John Marenbon, Sheila Lawlor and John Marks – members of the Centre for Policy Studies). Gibbons points out that Cox is not unbiased in his accounts and attempts to salvage his own reputation and legacy.
  • David Pascall, “a chemical engineer” oversaw drafting of new orders.
  • “The contrast between the Pascall and the Cox curricula was stark; the earlier document highlighted the complexities and ambiguities of the subject, whereas the latter offered certainties, perhaps most wonderfully encapsulated in the heavily value-laden
    and deeply questionable assertion ‘Standard English is characterised by the correct use of vocabulary and grammar’”.
  • Pascall’s view was more in tune with ministers: a back-to-basics approach to reading and writing, speaking and listening.
• 
  ▾ THE DEARING REVIEW (1993)
  • Consultation process suggested that English teachers were largely satisfied with Cox version of NC.
  • “The changes it generated were minimal – the
    most notable was probably the simplifying ofthe writing attainment target so that the proposed separate strands for ‘grammar’, ’spelling’ and ‘punctuation’ were
    removed. Embedding the technical elements of written English into a broader notion of written composition was a welcome reversal, but the final draft was not
    so vastly different from Pascall’s. However, the knowledge that things could have been worse may have muted the protests that resulted on its publication.”
  • 1995 version of NC was slimmed down. No introductory paragraph on the purposes or aims of the subject.
  • Now a prescribed list of authors introduced.
  • Subject associations claimed that their views were not being listened to. A cosmetic exercise.
  • According to Cox only one practising English teacher on the SCAA English consultative committee. (There were others: advisors and head teachers.)
  • The “givens” of the revised NC were: grammar/standard English, literary canon, Shakespeare and bilingualism.
  • Chris Woodhead denied there had been ministerial interference in the final order (anonymously authored).
  • “Despite the apparent lack of enthusiasm for the curriculum rewrite, and despite the many objections to the new programmes of study, there was no particular
    protest as the orders were phased in during the mid-1990s. This may have been because English teachers considered that they would be able to sustain good practice in spite ofstatutory orders, or it may have been an indication ofthe erosion of the
    profession’s belief that any power it had to influence the direction of policy was being steadily eroded.
• 
  ▾ LANGUAGE IN THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM PROJECT
  • “The story of the LINC project is perhaps the most astonishing example of the Conservative government’s
    attempt to control the teaching of English language in schools, and a striking example of their failure to do this in the face of an English teaching community
    that – whilst it may not have been intentionally subversive – was not going to accept any simple approach to the teaching of grammar and Standard English.”
  • LINC set up under the direct control of the DfE and materials to exemplify the Kingman model of language.
  • “The grand plan, however, failed spectacularly.”
  • John Richmond – Unstable Materials (English and Media Magazine): mistakes: appointment of Ron Carter and to allow LEAs to have a say in the appointment of experts to lead LINC work (resulting in a “ragbag of people of the worst sort”).
  • LINC materials split into two sections covering topics like: early language, the process of writing, accent dialogue and standard English and multiculturalism.
  • “The materials offered a comprehensive and complex view of language and its forms, and it’s certain that a teacher engaging with them would have their own subject knowledge for teaching enhanced. Sadly, the majority of English teachers did not have the opportunity to access the LINC project training. Despite revisions made by Ron Carter, the government took the decision not to publish the final LINC materials, and further than that it refused to
    waive its copyright, thus meaning that interested commercial publishers would not be at liberty to run with the material.”
  • DfE did allow the LINC material to be used in-service education.
• 
  ▾ ASSESSMENT BATTLES
  • “it was assessment that brought English teachers and the policymakers into direct conflict in the 1990s”
  • 100% coursework removed in 1994.
  • National testing for students at 14 was due to be introduced in 1993. Ken Baker set up the Task Group on Assessment (TGAT) in 1987 chaired by Paul Black.
  • TGAT report in 1987 stressed need for national testing to be predominately formative. Warned against using data for league tables.
  • English tests Anthology was a significant issue. “Clearly significant numbers of English teachers felt this imposition of a hand-picked collection of texts was an affront to their own professionalism, and that it had the potential to very radically change the nature of classroom practice and the curriculum.”
  • Gibbons says that the Anthology was something “a particular type of educated conservative thought it would be good for children to read”
  • Testing of Shakespeare through focus on s single scene and levelling children’s achievement also contributed to English teachers’ anger.
  • LATE led campaign. Brian Cox claimed: “teaching to get high marks in the SATs will be bad teaching”.
  • Unions took over campaign and called for boycott on grounds of workload. John Hickman argues this was a mistake.
  • Boycott’s effects: Anthology disappeared, John Marenbon chair of SEAC resigned.
  • Boycott viewed as a short-lived victory by English teachers.
  • “The boycott of Key Stage 3 testing demonstrated English teachers could still
    wield some collective power. This would not be allowed to happen again. The LATE-inspired campaign to boycott the SATs remains, however, the last teacher-led
    movement to effectively cause a change in policy. For that, if for nothing else, it should be celebrated.”

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