Category: Education

Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975)

Chapter 6 – The Newbolt Report and English for the English

This Chapter presents the 1921 Newbolt Report‘s dissatisfaction with the classical curriculum and its failure to “humanise” more than a privileged few. The Report and George Sampson’s English for the English strengthened the idea that English in schools had the unique power to improve character and change society. Both the Newbolt committee and Sampson saw liberal culture, self-development through art and the native language as being provided for the whole nation through English. It was made clear that English was defined as the curriculum’s centrally humanising element and its teachers as cultural missionaries.

• The Newbolt Report and George Sampson’s English for the English are “landmarks” on any survey of the subjects development over last 150 years.
  • Both express anxieties about treatment of it as a subject and certainties about its value.
  • Both influenced later development of English as a subject.
  • Mathieson: “Most of all, they anticipate future prescriptions about the qualities which seem desirable in the subject s teachers.”
  • Repeated the Victorian demands for “apostles” and “missionaries” which required special people as its teachers.
• Mathieson places the Newbolt Report and Sampson in historical context: desire for improvements in living conditions, post-WW1 appreciation of the general low level of standard education.
• H.A.L. Fisher, President of the Board of Education, expressed his unease about the division between public and elementary schools’ curricula (between humanising subjects and severely practical).
• Fisher (in 1921): “The proposition for which I am contending is that youth is the period of life specially set apart for education. I venture to plead for a state of society in which learning comes first and earning comes second among the obligations of youth, not for one class only, but for all young people. At present the rich learn and the poor earn.”
• Background to the 1921 Report:
  • A national sense of inferiority to Europe in education.
  • Rising demand for secondary school places.
  • General feeling reform was necessary.
• Between 1918-19 four committees set up to report on teaching of science, modern languages, classics and English.
• The English committee was chaired by Sir Henry Newbolt and included: Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, J.H. Fowler and Caroline Spurgeon as well as inspectors, principals and heads of schools.
• The 1921 Report:
  • In its opening pages: “The inadequate conception of the teaching of English in this country is not a separate defect which can be separately remedied It is due to a more far-reaching failure—the failure to conceive the full mean­ ing and possibilities of national education as a whole, and that failure again is due to a misunderstanding of the educational values to be found in the different regions of mental activity, and especially to an underestimate of the importance of English language and literature.”
  • The Report drew attention to the social division in education: that there were two different kinds of education (for rich and poor) – this “widened the mental distances between classes in England”.
  • One of the main goals was the achievement of greater social unity. Improved teaching of English in all schools is the means of doing this. Mathieson: “it is not surprising that the Report has made an important contribution to the subject’s ideology of social and individual improvement”.
  • The committee did not want to undervalue the study of the classics and admitted that the study of the classics offered finest education but did not provide a means of bridging the gulfs between classes.
  • The transfer of classical curriculum’s teaching methods had already had disastrous effects on English and had actually held back liberal education.
  • They saw the teaching of English literature as a means of creating a “bond of sympathy between the members of a human society” more successfully than the classics had done.
  • Mathieson: “Literature in schools could, more than any other study, achieve the education of the whole child because of its deliberate and beneficial irrelevance to him as a future wage-earner. ‘The literature lesson’, the Committee says, ‘is no mechanical matter’; it consists ‘not in the imparting of in­ formation, but in the introduction of the student to great minds and new forms of experience.”
  • Committee expected “a general raising” of society’s cultural level and its capacity to respond to great works of art. It reported that it had uncovered national philistinism and distrust of art. Children’s experience of literature might do much to raise country’s level of cultural appreciation.
  • Teaching of literature often referred to as “missionary work” (19th century mood of moral earnestness).
  • Mathieson: “The Report states that the teachers of English should have the kind of qualities which are more usually found in the charismatic preacher.”
  • The Report asserts that: “The ambassadors of poetry must be humble, they must learn to call nothing common or unclean—not even the local dialect, the clatter of the factory, or the smoky pall of industrial centres.”
  • The Report also identified the distrust with which working class people treated literature (“merely as an ornament, a polite accomplishment, a subject to be despised by really virile men”). The report identified this as a “morbid condition of the body politic”.
• George Sampson (1925?): “I am prepared to maintain, and indeed, do maintain, without reserva­tion and perhapses, that it is the purpose of education, not to prepare children for their occupations, but to prepare children against their occupations.”
• Sampson (agreeing with Newbolt Report) that the goal was “to develop the mind and soul of the children and not merely to provide tame and acquiescent labour fodder.”
• “powerfully emotional language” of Report and English for the English and stressed the urgency of the need to implement change. Sampson uses a combative language. Both use religious imagery. Mathieson also notes a “tone of desperation” (she links this later to Leavis and Cambridge School of English in 1930s-40s where teachers are called “warriors”).
• Mathieson: “The language of the Newbolt Report and English for the English certainly suggests that the responsibility for ‘uplifting’ – the traditional function of the classics and the Church – was, in time of crisis, being transferred to English.”
• Mathieson (on the Report): “If the goals of the schools were changed and the teachers could be educated to do more than just impart useful knowledge to their pupils, society, it was suggested, would inevitably improve. Hearts and minds would be changed because of the nature of the literary experience, the power of which was to satisfy ‘the love of truth, the love of beauty and the love of righteousness’.”
• Newsom Report (1963) made similar assertions: “we state what appears to us to be an incontrovertible primary fact, that for English children no form of knowledge of English, no form of literature can take precedence of English literature: and that the two are so inextricably connected as to form the only basis possible for a national education.”
• By the time of Newbolt Report English teachers were being equated with Arnold’s “preachers of culture”.
• Sampson: “I am thinking of… the class of young barbarians whose souls are to be touched by the magic of poetry and whose souls will certainly not be touched unless there is first a soul to teach them.”

Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975)

Chapter 5 – Progressive Theories and Creativity

This chapter describes how European and American ideas about child development influenced teaching in Britain and the position of the child at the centre of the classroom. By 1921 English as a school subject had moved beyond the view of great literature as a civilising agency to include the oral and written creativity of children.

• This chapter describes how European and American ideas about child development influenced teaching in Britain and the position of the child at the centre of the classroom. By 1921 English as a school subject had moved beyond the view of great literature as a civilising agency to include the oral and written creativity of children.
• Towards the end. of the nineteenth century proposals for English in schools broadened to include pupils’ own composition. An emphasis gradually changed from copying and memorising to creativity. Convictions about the importance of an individual’s emotional life, ideas of growth through activity and romantic views about children as artists brought creativity into discussion.
• Mathieson: “After the First World War, particularly, English took on new possibilities, because it was then that more widespread interest was aroused in the relationship between individual growth and self-expression. Many educators who were affected by the mood of disillusionment, and suspected that the classical curriculum and traditional teaching methods were personally destructive, gave strong support to what they believed to be the emotionally liberating experiences of literature and creativity.”
• In 1870s – after the foundation of the Froebel Society – the ideas about fostering the growth of the child developed in Britain. ▾ Mathieson contrasts British educational attitudes with Europeans through the work of the Edgeworths and Froebel’s Darstellung:
  • Edgeworth‘s On Practical Education “shows the preoccupation of the Edgeworths with the techniques for transmitting knowledge and the competing claims of science and the classics for primacy in the cur­riculum”.
  • Froebel’s “view of the child as a developing organism whose growth demands careful nurture”.
• Codes of 1862 and 1871 made it clear that writing in school was limited to dictation and linked with skills of copying, transcribing and spelling.
• The Cross Commission 1886-8 pointed out that English ought to consist of more than exercises in grammar, advising teachers to devise schemes of work related to pupils’ interests.
• The Education Department’s Circular 322 (1893) “accepts Froebel’s notion of development” and recognised the importance of children’s spontaneous activity and the need to involve themselves in the learning process.
• The Instructions to Inspectors (1895 and 1896) draws on the “interest” theories of European and American educators.
• In 1895 the British Association of Child Study was established through which J.J. Findlay introduced John Dewey‘s ideas into Britain.
• Mathieson: “It is useful to notice the difference between the statement made by the Committee of the Council on Education in 1875 on the value of learning by heart generally as a means of storing children’s memories with noble and elevating thoughts’ and the view expressed in the Handbook of Suggestions issued by the Board in 1905, which criticised excessive burdening of children’s memories.”
• By 1905 it was proposed that composition was to have its origin in children’s experiences.
• Philip Hartog in The Writing of English (1908) criticised the methods used in classics teaching and argued that spelling and grammar were best taught incidentally and that any continuous writing by pupils should be about subjects related to their experiences and interests.
• The 1909 Report of a Conference on the Teaching in Elementary Schools stated that composition should be considered as a systematic practice in self-expression.
• Concidence of new theories in science and education plus wide-spread dissatisfaction with traditional teaching methods brought increased interest in the notion of children’s involvement in the learning process:
  • Darwin‘s theories accelerated the acceptance of developmental ideas about physical and mental differences between pupils.
  • Froebel‘s ideas about the value of sensory experiences and spontaneity in the learning process undermined support for memorising and copying.
  • Dewey’s theories of motivation, and his stress on the importance of direct experience and interest turned teachers’ attention to children’s lives as the material for their compositions.
• Mathieson: “As the idea of the child as a developing per­ sonality displaced the view of him as a passive receptacle for useful information, greater emphasis was placed upon the role of English in schools. Through composition particularly, it offered opportunities for self-expression, inviting the child to participate in the learning process as an active, responsible being.”
• Policy changes regarding composition were confined to elementary schools. Little impact on grammar schools.
• G.S. Hall’s Adolescence (1905) had “One of the strongest influences upon official thinking”. It attacked traditional drill methods designed to produce uniform accuracy in pupils. Also condemned detrimental effect on English of studying other languages.
• Edward Holmes’ What is and What Might Be (1911) insisted that the “business of the teacher is to foster the growth of the child’s soul” and referred to children as victims of traditional teaching methods. Holmes interested in the separateness and uniqueness of each child, believing that self-expression aided the growth of individuality.
• Holmes: “I mean by composition the sincere expression in language of the child’s genuine thoughts and feelings. The effort to express himself [in language] tends, in proportion as it is sincere and strong, to give breadth, depth and complexity to the child’s thoughts and feelings and through the development of these to weave his experiences into the tissue of his life.”
• Caldwell Cook, an unconventional, progressive teacher: desirability of play and the value of self-expression in the development of the whole child. Affirmed the “special qualities of childhood”. Attacked the “everlasting slavery to books” and asked teachers to rid themselves of the “tyranny of print” focusing instead on the lives of the children. He deplored treatment of English as a foreign language in schools and, instead, wanted to bring English to the centre of the classroom experience: encouraging poetry reading and writing and using native language in talks and debates.
• Caldwell Cook’s The Play Way presented progressive theories about “delight”, “joy” and “pleasure” in the “natural free activity of children”.
• Caldwell Cook enthusiastically referenced in 1921 Newbolt Report.
• Mathieson: “Whereas Arnold had insisted upon the spiritually educative role of literature, Cook stressed the need for creative participation in the development of each individual boy. Drawing upon Continental and American theories of interest, play and self-expression, Cook concentrated upon the variety of richness of work in English in his reaction against the remoteness of classical studies. His methods, moreover, appeared to the Report’s contributors to be helpfully relevant to the contemporary situation since they illustrated the way in which progressive ideas could be adapted to the education of young adolescents. Thus, his approaches were recommended to all teachers of English to children from every part of society.”
• Caldwell Cook: “Let us have outline schemes by all means, but leave the details to the hour in which it will be told us what we shall do. Let us remember that without interest there is no learning, and since the child’s interest is all in play it is necessary whatever the method in hand, that the method be a play method.”
• Stanley Hall, American psychologist, insisted on value of child’s native language and literature.
• Sir Percy Nunn’s Education: Its Data and First Principles (1920?) concerned the need for education to encourage the development of individuality, of personal uniqueness and of a child’s potential for creativity. Argued that even speech was a daily act of creation.
• E.A. Greening Lamborn in preface to W.S. Tomkinson’s The Teaching of English: A New Approach (1921): “What Greek literature did for the few of the past, English literature must do for the many of the future… What is really new is the revelation of the importance of the emotional life and of the need to cultivate and enrich it by humanistic treatment of all our studies.”
• Tomkinson suggested the “possibilities of reading as a creative art” (anticipating educators of the 1940s and 1950s) when he likened the child’s creative potential to the poet’s.
• Post-War mood seemed sympathetic to educational theories responsible for bringing literature and children’s creative work to the centre of the curriculum.
• Ideas of educators like Edmund Holmes (What Is and What Might Be – 1917), Norman MacMunn (The Child’s Path to Freedom – 1914) and Caldwell Cook (The Play Way – 1917) developed a willingness to experiment.
• The New Education Fellowship founded in 1921 (formed to promote world peace through education) and the themes of its conferences in early 1920s were creative self-expression and individual salvation. The organisation drew attention to the work of Freud and Adler. Insisted that the arts contributed uniquely to the personality and its development.
• By 1927 – The Report of the Consultative Committee – “Literature is still considered to be of vital importance because of its humanising content, but to it have been added oral work, drama and creative writing in order that, through active participation in the learning process, children should achieve fuller individuality.“

Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975)

Chapter 4 – Literature and the Threats from Commerce

This chapter briefly presents the fears about the corrupting influence of cheap press and film in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

• Support for study of English Literature long before its acceptance by Oxford and Cambridge because it was seen as a subject that could protect its readers from the corrupting effects of cheap fiction and newspapers. It was hoped that English Literature would provide experiences which would lift pupils above the commercial world’s crude sensationalism.
• D.J. Palmer has studied this and showed that the recommendation of good books as a defence against corruption has a long history: 1660 Charles Hoole, 1824 Rev. Vicesimus Knox, Rev. H.J. Rose given as examples.
• As literacy spread and cheap press grew the study of Literature was recommended less generally against “loose behaviour” and the “pursuit of lucre” but specifically against the power of sensational fiction to deprave and corrupt.
• One of the criticisms of the failure of the classical curriculum taught in the nineteenth century was that it failed to defend against the attractions of the popular press. Gothic novels identified as causing concern.
• Quotes 1856 Bagehot‘s condemnation of sensationalism in fiction: “Exaggerated emotions, violent incidents, monstrous characters, crowd our canvas. They are the resource of a weakness which would obtain the fame of strength. Reading is about to become a series of collisions against aggravated breakers, of beatings with imaginary surf.”
• By 1850s publishers targeting younger readers and fear was that villains would be romanticised and wrongdoing imitated.
• Increased anxieties encouraged recommendations to include more poetry in schools’ curriculum. Contributors to the Report of the Committee on Education 1895-6 advocated the inclusion of a wide range of authors in school libraries to combat the attractions of “pernicious matter”.
• Edmund Holmes in What Is and What Might Be said that one of the prices being paid for the failure of elementary education was children’s surrender to “vicious and dealising literature”.
• Mathieson: “There is little doubt that the advance of English as a school subject can partly be explained by the coincidence of spreading literacy with the commercial success of cheap fiction; literature, it was clearly hoped, would act as a defence against the penny-dreadful.”
• Mathieson gives examples from early 20th century where teachers are encouraged to challenge sensational popular literature. In promoting good books teachers were seen as developing good characters. Mathieson: “Part of the civilising experience of imaginative engagement with great literature was thought to be the resistance it created to the damaging effects of the second-rate.”
• W.S. Tomkinson presents a number of interesting assumptions:
  • Appeal of the visual (cinema): “Children who are reared on the strong meat of the picture palaces will come to the more delicate viands of literature with dulled palates and jaded appetites.”
  • Tomkinson assumes that the life-style associated with appreciation of high-Art is desirable for whole population (he sees high Art as delicate).
• 1921 Report on The Teaching of English in England deplored the mechanical way reading had been taught in Victorian elementary schools. Ignoring Literature had caused pupils to be “the help­less prey of anything which appears in print”.
• Mathieson (on 1921 Report): “The Report’s criticism of nineteenth-century teaching methods is illuminating. It reveals the writers’ immense faith in the power of education and, importantly for the strengthening ideology of English teaching, contains their conviction that English, well taught, would provide successful defence against cheap fiction. Sharing Matthew Arnold’s belief in the moral power of literature, the Newbolt Report pleads a passionate case for the serious inclusion of English in every child’s timetable.”
• The 1921 Report accepted the notion of the superiority of art to the rest of life and strengthened anti-industrialism. Insisted on the inseparability of fine literature from quality of life: “Dissemination of liberal culture, traditionally the monopoly of the leisured classes, throughout the whole of society, was becoming defined as the special mission of the English teacher.”
• Statements about the good that English teaching could do plus the redemptive power of Literature plus the “threat” of commercial forces developed insistence on need for exceptional teachers.

Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975)

Chapter 3 – Matthew Arnold

This chapter presents the influence of Matthew Arnold upon English.

• Matthew Arnold was committed to the idea of a central educative subject that would “form the soul and character”.
• Arnold expressed views about education “in tones of religious intensity” and passionate conviction.
• Arnold saw social unrest of 1860s-1870s as a product of cultural crisis that required a literary culture in schools. He was troubled by the “external” nature of Victorian society: competitive, materialistic, practical, complacent. Worship of scientific progress threatened religion. Saw a wave of American vulgar culture threatening.
• Argued for “apostles of equality” among middle and working classes. He wanted reform of classics teaching in public schools and literature taught elsewhere.
• In Literature and Science, Arnold argued he would prefer young people to be ignorant of facts of science and enable them to “live more” through Literature.
• Arnold argued in his General Report for 1876 that people needed to be “moralised” before using the data of natural science (through “letters, poetry and religion”).
• His father was a school headmaster and influenced by the moral idealism of German education and a distrust of a godless, mechanical society produced by Benthamite rationalism. Both Arnold his father had a missionary zeal about transforming society.
• Society needed the “beneficent function” of Literature.
• Arnold saw poetry as replacing religion and philosophy: “We should conceive of poetry worthily, and more highly than it has been the custom to conceive of it.. .. More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us to con­ sole us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear in­ complete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy, will be replaced by poetry.”
• Raymond Williams in the first chapter of Culture and Society suggests that the Romantics equated art with what was superior in experience, promoting Literature to the level of life and poetry to the level of experience. Art offered a different set of values in distinction from those of utility and acquisitiveness.
• Arnold’s response to “external” society had “far-reaching effects” on the study of English in schools.
• Arnold saw the study of culture as a “moral and social passion for doing good”.
• He suggested that elementary school children should study the best models of English poetry. “Indeed, the introduction of learning poetry by heart by children and pupil teachers was Arnold’s contribution to the advancement of English in schools.”
• Through “sweetness and light” (his view of culture), Arnold believed divisions in social classes could be bound. Saw culture as doing away with classes. The “apostles of equality” would carry the best knowledge and ideas of their time throughout society.
• Ambivalence between Arnold’s egalitarianism and his contemptuous attitude towards the masses.
• Further element in Arnold’s influence on English in schools is the despair with what is seen as threats represented by the mass media and frustration with education’s apparent failure to equip the masses to resist.
• Mathieson argues that he was (along with other contributors to Essays on a Liberal Education) responsible for the perpetuation of class differences: classics for public schools and English for the lower middle class and elementary school pupils.
• Mathieson: “A common culture was unlikely to be achieved by retention of traditional teaching methods transferred, for working-class pupils, to models of the English classics. His recommendations, however, caused English to be given greater time and attention in the schools.”
• As a result of Arnold’s efforts in 1871 English Literature and grammar was made a “specific subject” to be taught to individual pupils in Standards IV, V and VI.
• Arnold felt that the passages for recitation were frequently unsuitable for children who recited them without understanding.
• By 1882 English moved from being an optional to a compulsory “class” subject.
• Arnold on poetry: it “undoubtedly tends to form the soul and character; it tends to beget a love of beauty, of truth, in alliance together; it suggests, however indirectly, high and noble principles in action . . . hence its extreme importance to all of us, but in our elementary schools, its importance seems to me at present, quite extraordinary.”
• The 1921 government report on the Teaching of English in England shared many of Arnold’s beliefs in role of Literature (they “envisaged something like a crusade of English teachers working in the schools to promote society’s unity and salvation”).
• Mathieson notes the strong influence of Arnold on 20th century educators (Leavis, G.H. Bantock).
• Quotes Basil Willey: “Instead, in Arnold, we encounter a new phenomenon, intelligence playing freely upon the great concerns of human life. He was the first to see and to proclaim the importance, for the modern world, of the qualities of mind and spirit which literary culture can give …. He knew, and had ‘felt along the heart’ , the deep malady of his time, and for that very reason could diagnose it and spend the greater part of his life in trying to cure it.”

Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975)

Chapter 2 – Essays on a Liberal Education

This chapter briefly examines the influence on English studies of Dean Frederic William Ferrar’s 1868 collection, Essays on a Liberal Education.

A pdf of a scan of Essays on a Liberal Education is available at the Internet Archive.

• Essays on a Liberal Education made “very high” claims about the benefits of studying English Literature though still assume the superiority of the classics – this perpetuated “social divisiveness” up until 1921 Newbolt Committee.
• Teachers presented as “missionaries of culture”.
• Although there was some memorisation of literature in second half of nineteenth century, English focused on providing functional skills.
• Robert Lowe’s Primary and Classical Education (1867) emphasised “practical things” rather than “speculative things” and argued that the study of English should be “peparation for actual life”.
• Mathieson gives the example of a 1832 advertisement for Billesdon Academy which taught English and gave the impression of English being a “poor man’s Latin”. She gives other examples to show how English was presented as replacing Greek and Latin in schools of lower social status.
• English seen to humanise and refine boys’ minds.
• Contributors to Essays on a Liberal Education were looking to English to make good the deficiencies of the classics. They disliked literatures exclusion from recommended subjects, grammar schools neglected English literature entirely and elementary schools taught through mechanical drills. Victorians concerned about a cultural crisis.
• T.H. Huxley and H. Sedgewick gave strongest emphasis to value of English studies.
• Quotes Huxley: “‘There is a little more reading and writing of English. But for all that, everyone knows that it is a rare thing to find a boy in the middle and upper classes who can read aloud decently, and who can put his thoughts on paper in clear and grammatical (to say nothing of good and elegant) language…. He might never have heard that there once lived certain notable men called Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Vol­taire, Goethe, Schiller.’”
• Henry Sedgewick’s essay “is probably of greater significance for the growth of English in schools”. Content and tone of Sedgewick’s essay is about the humanising power of literature. (Part of his argument about the failure of the Classics is that children never experience the humanising effects because their minds are exhausted by linguistic struggles. Sedgewick supports literature being taught as character-building.
• Quotes Sedgewick: “‘Let us demand instead that all boys, whatever their special bent and destination, be really taught literature; so that as far as possible, they may learn to enjoy intelligently poetry and eloquence; that their views and sympathies may be enlarged and expanded by apprehending noble, subtle and profound thoughts, refined and lofty feelings; that some comprehension of the varied development of human nature may ever abide with them, the source and essence of a truly humanising culture.’“
• English regarded as a lower-status subject for students unable or unwilling to study the Classics. When English was introduced at London University it required philological elements (to make it seem respectable).
• Writing about English in the 1970s, Mathieson observes: “Today, a roughly similar relationship exists between subject specialists and supporters of interdisciplinary work. The supremacy of the classics has finally disappeared—qualifications in Latin are no longer demanded by the ancient universities—and English is widely accepted as their replacement as the humanising centre of the school curriculum. Many teachers are worried, though, about the difficulties faced, by working-class children in particular, when reading major
  texts in English literature, and are adopting thematic approaches in­volving easier and shorter extracts. When English teachers resist these developments, their reluctance for their subject to be dismantled for interdisciplinary projects and themes reflects something of the Vic­torian headmasters’ suspicion of vernacular literature as it previously threatened the classics. There are differences, of course, which illus­trate major changes in the climate of educational discussion. Today, the supporters of English studies, like G. H. Bantock and David Holbrook, want children from all social backgrounds to be able to experience great literature and creative activity, at their own levels, whereas the nineteenth-century headmasters wished to preserve the classics as a liberal education for their upper-class pupils only. They were unconcerned, sometimes enthusiastic, about the introduction of English literature into elementary schools, as long* as this did not interfere with their own curriculum. And today, unlike the Victorian pioneers for English studies, the supporters of interdisciplinary work tend to believe in the value of their innovative curriculum for all pupils, not only the average and less able, and even for university students.”
• Mathieson argues that supporters of English studies made “major contributions” but their acceptance of the superiority of the classics over English intensified the bitterness of the debate about English in early 20th century.

Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975)

Chapter 1 – The Curriculum Debate

This chapter presents the central issues of the nineteenth-century debate between supporters of classical and scientific studies and argues that the underlying assumptions and manner in which the debate was conducted affected the way in which English studies was first advocated.

• Mathieson sums up the debate: “For a century and a half then, from the dissatisfied middle class who wished to enter public schools and universities and transform them to accommodate their needs, from the radicals who insisted upon the inclusion of useful knowledge, from the progressives who followed Rousseau in their emphasis upon learning through things rather than words, critics attacked a curriculum limited to the study of classical texts. The universities and public schools, however, stubbornly resisted successive series of critical articles and recommendations of commissions and scientists. They maintained their unshaken confidence in what they believed to be he superior humanism of the classics and the truth of the faculty theory Public school headmasters, distrusting the notion of progress through scien­tific discovery and application, were unimpressed by references to foreign competition, suspicious of the anti-religious associations with the scientific cause, and untroubled by any need to provide their pupils with the means of earning their living.”
• English first existed as instruction in basic reading and writing.
• Nineteenth century universities, public schools and grammar schools ignored English due to confidence in “superior humanism of the classics” and link with utilitarianism of working class schools.
• Mechanics Institutes and London University insisted on English’s morally educative value.
• Proponents of a “liberalising core to the curriculum” shared a belief that the curriculum should include morally educative subjects. This moral aspect (“high ideals and impassioned tones”) was inherited by the subject.
• Radical education reformers, leading scientists and nineteeth-century progressives insisted that the classics were failing to provide a liberal education.
• Essays on a Liberal Education (1868) accused universities of failing to reconsider meaning of a liberal education in the light of changing knowledge.
• Quotes John Seeley: “‘Education, in fact, in England, is what the universities choose to make it’”.
• Mathieson explains that “The accusation that dominated the criticism directed at universities and schools was that a liberal education had degenerated into the sterile routine of grammar drill and exercise of mere memory. Few pupils, critics argued, reached those heights where their characters would be trained through encounters with the great minds of the past.”
• Quotes Thomas Huxley that a classical education: “. . means getting up endless forms and rules by heart. It means turning Latin and Greek into English for the mere sake of being able to do it, and without the smallest regard to the worth or worthlessness of the author read.’”
• Quotes Darwin that his experience was that: “‘far too many boys emerged from the public schools with little knowledge even of the classics, with less of modern subjects, and with no mental cultivation or interest in study’”
• Greatest criticism was from middle-class dissatisfaction from the exclusiveness of university. Both the Westminster Review and the Edinburgh Review argued against the narrowness and inappropriateness of the classical curriculum in first quarter of nineteenth century. Also dissatisfaction with lack of Science taught at universities. Universities seen as establishments for training gentlemen of leisure.
• Mathieson argues that the most significant criticism was that upper-class educational establishments were failing to provide a liberal education because of dull teaching routines or failure to include modern knowledge. The presumption is that the provision of a liberal education mattered most of all.
• University tutors and public school headmasters resisted studies associated with Science as they were associated with working class education, industrialism and manual labour. Mathieson gives examples of resistance to the study of Science. Headmasters saw the classics as embodying tradition, authority and wisdom through which character could be best developed. The classics conveyed superior social status on students and were influenced by German idealism and theories of mental training.
• In late nineteenth century when modern languages and science were introduced in public schools they were limited to timetables of less-able pupils (the “modern side”).
• Supporters of scientific studies also adopted idealistic terms. Thomas Huxley in Science and Culture (1887) argued that “‘for the pur­pose of attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least as effectual as an exclusively literary education’”. Others – eg. Faraday – argued for the moral value of engaging in scientific activity.
• Mathieson notes that those involved in the curriculum debate felt their views had urgency because they were living in a time of crisis.
• The curriculum debate of nineteenth century had far-reaching effects on English studies. All assumed that there must be a humanising, morally improving subject at the heart of “sound education”. The supporters of English studies shared these assumptions.
• Mathieson ends the chapter: “Much of the support given to English in the school curriculum has come from educators holding gloomy views of modern urban society and repeatedly reminding the teachers of its state of cultural crisis. And unlike the nineteenth century’s unified view of the character-­building demanded of the classical curriculum, today’s highly diversified society provides its English teachers with no single sense of purpose.”

Over the last few months I’ve read Barbara Bleiman’s recent book, What Matters in English Teaching as well as taken two courses organised by The English and Media Centre led by Barbara. Her 2019 Harold Rosen Address to the NATE Conference is rightly insistent in its demands to broaden an increasingly prescriptive view of English as a subject. I’ve found her thinking influential in a number of ways. It’s introduced me to the theories of Arthur Applebee and the ideas of the curriculum as conversation which emphasises knowledge-in-action, where – for instance – children must discuss Literature rather than be simply taught its characteristics. (One of the books I’m currently reading is Applebee’s Curriculum As Conversation and getting to grips with what amounts to philosophy of education which seems to me to fundamentally challenge the prevailing culture in British schools). She offered a number of ideas about how to approach teaching which seemed so obvious but at the same time reminded me about the powerful approaches to English teaching that still existed when I started in the 1990s. Above all, Barbara’s work has crystallised my thoughts about my practice as an English teacher.

Here are my thoughts about the two CPD sessions:

Barbara started the session by identifying what she considered to be the things (or values) that matter most in English teaching. Essentially, it’s about Big Ideas, valuing students, dialogic classrooms, creative and critical activities working in conjunction with each other (“Writing like a reader; reading like a writer”) and assessment being properly formative.

Barbara challenged the dominating view of knowledge advocated by Michael Young which argues that powerful knowledge is only school knowledge (I’ve not read Young yet). She took us through the opening of Oliver Twist and showed how it’s possible to begin a text through questions that engage students’ existing knowledge rather than beginning with a list of vocabulary. She insists on “Big” questions.

Barbara examined what knowledge in English actually is and argued that many of the things children are expected to know are not really necessary. To a certain extent I understood Barbara’s argument to be about the importance of understanding over knowledge (eg. in the sense that knowing facts about a writer’s life aren’t unimportant but only relevant in the genuine understanding they bring to the text). I welcomed that Barbara emphasised:

• What’s worth focusing your attention on – what’s significant
• Pleasure that comes from reading novels

She moved on to discussing vocabulary and explored what to do with “hard vocabulary”. Her advice was focus on supporting children with getting the gist of what they read with a “Big picture, broad brush reading”.

Writing and Reading were presented as complimentary acts. One of the best parts of this CPD was the demonstration of a task where students alter an existing text as if they were the writer and adding extra details to show interpretations of characters (how characters say things, what they do as they speak and so on). She also showed how to encourage student “buy in” by offering students different interpretations of a text. Then the class would go on to discuss an area in which they are interested. (In my own practice I’m aware I don’t do this at all and probably over-control the learning journey.)

Among the topics discussed in the Q+A part of the session, Barbara:

• discussed knowledge organisers (limiting rather than expanding);
• didn’t advise teaching the whole of (a text like) Oliver Twist; instead cover it through extracts and filling in the gaps;
• spoke about “fast immersive reading” and the research by Julia Sutherland;
• encouraged “zooming in and out” when studying a novel; there’s no need to read/respond to all the novel in the same detail;
• learning vocabulary is not the purpose of reading a novel; students learn vocabulary through “rich” talk and reading; lists of vocabulary only scratches the surface of what students need to learn.

In the second CPD session, Barbara considered the role of knowledge in English teaching. She examined the strong belief that has developed recently that knowledge has been sidelined. Her view is that this is a result of schools taking over CPD in the early 2000s and promoting generic teaching skills at the expense of specific subject knowledge so that “knowledge dropped off” the agenda. She also suggested that OFSTED have confused pedagogy with knowledge and asserts that there is a growing understanding that subjects are different. (I’m less optimistic that Barbara about SLTs really accepting that a subject like English is taught in a fundamentally different way than, say, Maths or Science.)

She drew on Applebee’s conception of knowledge-in-action and defined it as: thinking, understanding, making sense of, making judgements, understanding, recognising what’s significant, allowing new knowledge to alter one’s framework of thinking and acting on a new text or context drawing on knowledge. (The active role of the learner in knowledge use seemed to me to be the primary concern here.)

Barbara went on to look at how students examine texts and used this to examine what knowledge students need to have about texts. She focused on knowledge of genres and emphasised that lists of narrative techniques are not enough (perhaps even necessary).

She went on to show how to consider constructing a learning journey (not Barbara’s term) where younger students might study Blake and learn about symbolism, go on to develop their understanding of symbolism through reading Coraline, then The Lie Tree, then Lord of the Flies and Jekyll & Hyde. The text should lead the learning not the concept. She criticised departments where students study gothic genre throughout because KS4 exam text might be gothic. Curriculums are built as texts in conversation with each other. Barbara presented what she called a recursive curriculum:

Knowledge in drama was discussed next – with a focus on the opening of An Inspector Calls. For Barbara we should begin with what interests students as the “way in” and gives as an example how to present ideas (very much like the “buy in” of her previous session).

She briefly addressed knowledge organisers, gave her “key tests” for their validity and suggested an expandable “agenda” instead (or blank KOs that are constructed by classes as they study).

At the end of the session, Barbara directly examined knowledge itself and presented Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital. She insisted that knowledge is not a “simple ladder” and also that texts provide their own knowledge and students do not need to be “front loaded” with contextual information before reading. She countered with Applebee’s Familiar and Unfamiliar Traditions of Knowing and Doing (eg. reading a text that’s outside/beyond our reading experience broadens the “great conversations” about literature and culture). She looked at how its possible for students to learn/understand what’s essential in Homer through other texts. Through alternative routes. (I don’t think she diminished the importance of Homer, just suggested that what it is that we want children to learn from Homer can be done in better, more modern, more accessible ways.)

Among the topics discussed in the Q+A part of the session, Barbara:

• discussed the need to study a wide range of texts, particularly in Years 7-9;
• clarified that she wasn’t saying that the “Big Picture” was more important but clarifying that small details are at the service of big ideas (she pointed out that it’s the P in PEE that’s most important); an AQA examiner in the chat supported this by saying it was virtually pointless “zooming in” on language without having a good point to make;
• “What’s at stake in a text?” or “What’s significant in a text?” is the most important thing;
• wasn’t against retrieval practice (or quizzes) as long as it related to what students needed to learn; no point in making students memorise facts they do not need;
• called the absence of KAL a “heartbreaking crime” and encouraged teaching about students’ own language; “it pays off”.

This is something I am super-interested in.

Yesterday, I watched this video, a presentation in February to the Leonardo at 500: Boosting Creativity in Education by Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills for the OECD:

The overall presentation concerns creativity in schools. Schleicher provides a great deal of data to argue that developing creativity and collaboration in young people is vital in order to prepare them for the ever-automised future we face.

Two aspects of his talk really interested me. He uses the PISA 2018 data to show that countries which emphasised collaborative approaches to learning showed better reading performance by children. The UK, which is identified as a country where competitive approaches dominate scores low comparatively.

He also presents data to show that teacher enthusiasm has a significant effect on children’s reading. He shows this table:

Indeed, the third volume of the PISA report, What School Life Means for Students’ Lives, has a great deal to say about the impact that enthusiastic teachers have on children:

PISA findings reveal that, in a clear majority of countries and economies, the more enthusiastic 15-year-old students perceived their teachers to be, the higher they scored in the reading assessment, even after accounting for the socio-economic profile of students and schools (measured by the PISA index of economic, social and cultural status) (Figure III.5.2 and Table III.B1.5.5).

This volume of the report – which is over 200 pages long – is actually pretty interesting in examining the impact of teaching on children. Section 5, Teacher Enthusiasm. It argues that passionate, enthusiastic teachers have a direct impact in achieving higher scores in PISA reading tests. There’s no evidences that overly-enthusiastic teachers have a detrimental effect (which has been suggested by earlier evidence). Children do better in classes where the teacher enjoys (or appears to enjoy) the topic. Classes where teachers did not allow disruption seem to be classes where children perceived their teacher to be more enthusiastic.

Enthusiasm is identified as relating to motivation:

In every school system, teacher enthusiasm was positively related to students’ motivation to master tasks

The report has a fantastic reference section with a number of research articles on teacher enthusiasm I’m going to work my way through. I do believe that – especially for a secondary English teacher – enthusiasm lies at the heart of successful lessons and learning.