Language in the world: properties and powers
Key issues in current English education policy
To summarize very briefly, the last two decades of the twentieth century saw an unprecedented raft of edicts on education policies in England. As Alexander (2000: 257) puts it:
England's transition from a decentralized to a centralized education system was effected at immense speed. It was sweeping in its range, covering governance, finance, curriculum, assessment, pedagogy, teacher training, local administration and much else besides. It was ruthlessly enforced and policed.
Within this raft of measures, English as a curriculum subject has held a particularly prominent place. Writing in 1989, Stubbs observed that '[i]n the last 15 years, English has been subject to more official enquiries, reports and personal ministerial interest than any other school subject' (Stubbs 1989: 236) - and much more has happened since then. In 1988 the Education Reform Act was passed by the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. Among other measures, this established a National Curriculum: publicly-funded schools in all the local authorities of England and Wales became subject to 'Orders' which specified 'attainment targets, programs of study and assessment arrangements' for each of seven 'foundation subjects', together with the three 'core subjects' (English, Mathematics and Science) to be studied by pupils of statutory school age. In the same year, a committee of enquiry recommended in its report ('The Kingman Report', DES 1988a) a program of teacher training about the English language. Working groups were established to draft the content which would go into the curriculum Orders, and, also in 1988, the first report of the National Curriculum working group for English (DES 1988b) published its own conclusions, including those about 'knowledge about language1 and 'standard English'. A separate teacher training project (as recommended in the Kingman Report) was funded by the government to run alongside the introduction of the new National Curriculum. This project became known as LING (Language in the National Curriculum), and it produced training materials containing many linguistically focused tasks with accompanying commentaries. However, the government of the day, which had commissioned the materials, reacted against them, deciding not to publish the materials and refusing to allow commercial publication either. The National Curriculum was subsequently reviewed, with a new version introduced in 1995, and yet a third version coming into force in 2000. In 1996, a 'Literacy Task Force' was set up, and this became a National Literacy Strategy (NLS) after the change of government (from Conservative to Labor, under Tony Blair) in 1997. The stated aim of the NLS was 'to raise standards of literacy in all primary schools in England' (DfEE 1998), and a 'framework' document set out 'teaching objectives for Reception [age 4-5] to Year 6 [age 10-11] to enable pupils to become fully literate' (p.2). Commentators such as Street (Bourne et al 1999) have pointed out the ways in which this policy corresponds to an 'autonomous' version of literacy. Although not statutory in the way in which the National Curriculum Orders are, any primary school which chooses not to adopt the Strategy is obliged to demonstrate to inspectors that its own approach to literacy teaching is at least as effective, as measured by test results.
Each of these initiatives has involved politicians, educationalists, linguists and practitioners (from trainers and advisers to classroom teachers) in different configurations, and with different opportunities and resources for influencing policy and practice. Standard English has been a core bone of contention, but by and large the policy which has been made official reflects a version of commonsense nationalism which has changed very little for over a hundred years. Crowley (1989: 221) quotes a nineteenth-century politician advocating the standardization of English:
It is evident ... that unity of speech is essential to the unity of a people. Community of language is a stronger bond than identity of religion or government, and contemporaneous nations of one speech, however formally separated by differences of creed or political organization, are essentially one in culture, one in tendency, one in influence. (Marsh 1860)
In 1921, there was a government enquiry into 'The teaching of English in England', resulting in The Newbolt Report' (Board of Education 1921). One of the aims it advocated was reducing class distinctions by teaching children 'First systematic training in the sounded speech of standard English, to secure correct pronunciation and clear articulation: second, systematic training in the use of standard English, to secure clearness and correctness both in oral expression and in writing' (Ch. para 13). The desire to see English in schools as a means of unifying the population is quite explicit: 'We believe that such an education based upon the English language and literature would have important social, as well as personal, results; it would have a unifying tendency' (Ch. para 15). In 1986, Kenneth Baker, who was the Secretary of State for Education in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet, introduced the National Curriculum 'as a way of increasing our social coherence. ... The cohesive role of the national curriculum will provide our society with a greater sense of identity' (Baker, Guardian, 16.9.87, quoted in Johnson 1991). Standard English is envisaged in this project as 'a proper model of the language' to be included in a 'national agreement on the aims and objectives of English teaching in schools' (DES Press Notice 16.1.87).
Some linguists and applied linguists have tried to contribute their expertise as these policies have developed. (Widdowson, for example, sat on the Kingman Committee and contributed a 'note of reservation' to its final report; see also Bauer and Trudgill 1998, Bourne and Bloor 1989, Cameron 1995, Carter 1994, Graddol and Swann 1988, Milroy and Milroy 1991.) There have been some minor concessions to this expertise, such as the commissioning of two linguists to correct the worst misconceptions perpetrated in the Glossary accompanying the National Literacy Strategy (although in its on-line version only). One of the changes made in the 'expanded' (not 'revised') version will serve to illustrate the extent of change in descriptions of the standard variety. The definition of 'double negative' is given in the first, printed glossary as follows: 'the use of two negative forms which effectively cancel each other out, as in: I never took nothing' (p.78). In the second, on-line version, the definition reads: 'In non-standard English, a double negative may be used. For example: We didn’t see nobody, I never took nothing. Such double negatives are not acceptable in standard English. The equivalent standard forms would be: We didn't see anybody. I didn't take anything.'
Despite such modifications, the policies have largely retained the commonsense, prescriptivist conception of English grammar which has influenced education for so long. In 2000, procedures were instituted to ensure compliance of 'trainee' teachers with this official version of language description, in the form of an exit test which all intending teachers must pass if they are to attain qualified teacher status. The specification for these national, computerized, centrally marked 'literacy tests' includes a section on the knowledge of grammar on which 'trainees' are to be tested, which reads as follows:
grammar — required to ensure that trainees can demonstrate that they have sufficient grammatical knowledge to correct their own and others' grammatical errors, e.g.: recognizing incorrect/correct usage of grammar generally and editing appropriately …
