Bullock (1975)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Foreword, Membership, Contents, Introduction

Part 1 Attitudes and standards
Chapter 1 Attitudes to the teaching of English
Chapter 2 Standards of reading
Chapter 3 Monitoring

Part 2 Language in the early years
Chapter 4 Language and learning
Chapter 5 Language in the early years

Part 3 Reading
Chapter 6 The reading process
Chapter 7 Reading in the early years
Chapter 8 Reading: the later stages
Chapter 9 Literature

Part 4 Language in the middle and secondary years
Chapter 10 Oral language
Chapter 11 Written language
Chapter 12 Language across the curriculum

Part 5 Organisation
Chapter 13 The primary and middle years
Chapter 14 Continuity between schools
Chapter 15 The secondary school
Chapter 16 LEA advisory services

Part 6 Reading and language difficulties
Chapter 17 Screening, diagnosis and recording
Chapter 18 Children with reading difficulties
Chapter 19 Adult literacy
Chapter 20 Children from families of overseas origin

Part 7 Resources
Chapter 21 Books
Chapter 22 Technological aids and broadcasting

Part 8 Teacher education and training
Chapter 23 Initial training
Chapter 24 In-service education

Part 9 The survey
Chapter 25: I Introduction
Chapter 25: II Primary commentary
Chapter 25: III Secondary commentary
Chapter 25: IV The questionnaire forms (not online)
Chapter 25: V Technical notes (not online)

Part 10 Sumary of conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 26 Conclusions and recommendations

Appendix A Witnesses and sources of evidence
Appendix B Visits made
Glossary
Index

Report of the Committee of Enquiry appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science under the Chairmanship of Sir Alan Bullock FBA

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1975
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 1 Attitudes to the teaching of English
[pages 3 - 9]

1.1 In any anxiety over a contemporary situation there is likely to be a wistful look back to the past, with a conviction, often illusory, that times were better then than now. And the times people claim to have been better are generally within the span of their own lives. Nowadays few would consider the Code and Schedules of 1880 as a model from which we have fallen; so was there a point in time between then and now when we had arrived at the optimal? Was there a standard which we can regard, if not as ideal, at least as a criterion by which to judge other times and conditions? These are not trivial questions and certainly not contentious ones. If we are to decide what kind of English is right for our pupils they are the kind of questions that need to be asked.

1.2 Many allegations about lower standards today come from employers, who maintain that young people joining them from school cannot write grammatically, are poor spellers, and generally express themselves badly. The employers sometimes draw upon past experience for comparisons, but even where they do not there is a strong implication that at one time levels of performance were superior. It is therefore interesting to find in the Newbolt Report (1) of 1921 observations of a very similar kind. There Messrs Vickers Ltd reported 'great difficulty in obtaining junior clerks who can speak and write English clearly and correctly, especially those aged from 15 to 16 years'. Messrs Lever Bros Ltd said: 'it is a great surprise and disappointment to us to find that our young employees are so hopelessly deficient in their command of English'. Boots Pure Drug Co. remarked 'teaching of English in the present day schools produces a very limited command of the English language ... Our candidates do not appreciate the value of shades of meaning, and while able to do imaginative composition, show weakness in work which requires accurate description, or careful arrangement of detail'. The last is very close to some of the observations made today, half a century later, and might almost have been taken from evidence submitted to us. We do not reproduce these to imply that things were never any better and that everything is therefore as it should be. To seek perspective is not to be complacent. But perspective is important, and a realistic assessment is the best point from which to move towards improvement. The issue is a complicated one. It is evident that the employers of 50 years ago were no less dissatisfied; but in any case we must ask with whom today's young employees are being compared. The situation is very much different from that before the war or for some time after it. Further and higher education has expanded enormously. More young people are staying on at school or going on to college, many of whom would at one time have gone into commerce and industry. Moreover, as the Central Statistical Office points out, there have been marked changes in the structure of employment in recent years. Agriculture and mining have employed a sharply declining proportion of the working population, manufacturing industry has remained at about the same level, and the service industries now absorb over half the total work force. The changing pattern of employment is making more widespread demands on reading and writing skills and therefore exposing deficiencies that may have escaped attention in the past. What is more, the expansion in junior management has been considerable, and one dimension of competence at this level is the ability to produce a written report.

1.3 Factors such as these should be taken into account when observations are made about the standards of school leavers. However, they do not alter the fact that these standards are not satisfying present day requirements. Furthermore, it has to be remembered that it is not only employers who express dissatisfaction. Further and higher education institutions often remark on the inability of their entrants to write correct and coherent English. The Committee was furnished with examples of essays by college of education students, with comments by the Professor of English who had submitted them. These essays contained numerous errors of spelling, punctuation and construction, and were a disturbing indication that the students who wrote them were ill-equipped to cope with the language demands they would meet in schools. Observations to the same effect have been made to us by heads, who have complained of the poor standard of written expression of some of the young teachers who have joined their schools. These remarks by experienced educationists deserve to be taken seriously, the more so since they are not comparing the students with those of the past but measuring them against the demands of a professional function. It may be true that in commerce, industry, and higher education alike comparisons with past standards are misleading, but the clear implication is that standards need to be raised to fulfil the demands that are being made upon them.

1.4 In this chapter we shall be considering briefly the different approaches to English in schools today. Generalisations are commonly made to the effect that one or another set of attitudes has virtually swept the board. In fact, as our questionnaire results showed, and as our visits to schools confirmed, the variety of practice is wide. Some teachers see English as an instrument of personal growth, going so far as to declare that 'English is about growing up'. They believe that the activities which it involves give it a special opportunity to develop the pupil's sensibility and help him to adjust to the various pressures of life. Others feel that the emphasis should be placed on direct instruction in the skills of reading and writing and that a concern for the pupil's personal development should not obscure this priority. There are those who would prefer English to be an instrument of social change. For them the ideal of 'bridging the social gap' by sharing a common culture is unacceptable, not simply as having failed to work but as implying the superiority of 'middle class culture'. Of course, even where a teacher subscribes to a particular approach he does not necessarily pursue it exclusively, neglecting all else. Nevertheless, these emphases do exist and in considering our own recommendations we must examine them, since we believe that in their extreme form they oversimplify what is in fact a very complex matter.

1.5 Nor is the debate on purpose and method exclusive to this country. The historical determinants in the United States of America are different from those in Britain, and this must be remembered when parallels are drawn. However, the same unease has expressed itself there. It gathered into a national head after 1957 when the Russians launched Sputnik, an event which caused the USA to look critically at many aspects of ifs education system. English was not identified with the national interest to the extent that the sciences and modern languages were. Nonetheless, its theorists and practitioners felt the same sense of urgency, and their self-examination emerged in The National Interest and the Teaching of English (NCTE 1961), a publication which expressed the deep concern of the time. In the previous year the College Entrance Examination Board had issued a short description of the proper divisions of the secondary school English curriculum: English consisted of language, literature and composition, a view summed up by the label 'The Tripod Curriculum'. Looked at in this light the study of English could be reduced to manageable proportions, and each unit invited a view of itself as a discipline capable of being structured. According to Muller (2), English in the USA was, until the structuring started, an amalgam of journalism, play production, business letters, research techniques, use of the library, career counselling, use of the telephone, and advice on dating. He quotes Kitzhaber's remark that 'An English teacher can teach almost anything without anyone, including the teacher, realising that it is no longer English that is being taught'. Not surprisingly, the pressures we have noted issued in a definition of English which was as concerned with excluding the irrelevant as identifying the essential.

1.6 It is a characteristic of English that it does not hold together as a body of knowledge which can be identified, quantified, then transmitted. Literary studies lead constantly outside themselves, as Leavis put it; so, for that matter, does every other aspect of English. There are two possible responses for the teacher of English, at whatever level. One is to attempt to draw in the boundaries, to impose shape on what seems amorphous, rigour on what seems undisciplined. The other is to regard English as process, not content, and take the all-inclusiveness as an opportunity rather than as a handicap. The first response can lead to a concept of the subject as divisible into compartments, each of which answers to certain formal requirements. Thus there are many teachers, in both primary and secondary schools, who feel that English language should be extracted from context and studied as a separate entity. The weekly composition on a set title, comprehension, spelling, language exercises; this pattern is still common. The language work may take the form of a class activity or it may occur in a group or individual learning situation. If the latter, the nature of the experience can be governed by the assignment card. In either case the principle is that the child is engaging with the basic skills through the medium of controllable tasks. The second response can lead to a readiness to exploit the subject's vagueness of definition, to let it flow where the child's interests will take it. Its exponents feel that the complex of activities that go to make up English cannot be circumscribed, still less quantified; the variables are too numerous and the objects too subtle.

1.7 It would be absurdly oversimplifying to say that English teaching has, without light or shade, separated itself into factions with these ideas as the manifestos. For one thing few British teachers would subscribe to the notion of the 'Tripod Curriculum', mentioned above, still less to some of the practices that separate development gave rise to, e.g. the attention to rhetoric and analysis in the teaching of composition. (Indeed, it was by no means universally embraced in the USA. One American educationist said that, like Caesar, they had divided the area into three parts and then found the division so convenient they had assumed God must have made them). It is safe to assume that no one would any longer see English in terms of the LCC [London County Council] official Time-Table Form of 1920, which required the time allocation to be shown for each of the following 'subjects': (a) Composition, Written, (b) Composition, Oral, (c) Dictation, (d) Grammar, (e) Reading, (f) Recitation, (g) Word-building, (h) Handwriting, (i) Literature. Equally, not everyone would express a contemptuous disregard for standards and say that English was merely a free-wheeling vehicle for the child's emotional and social development. Thus, although there are certainly opposed emphases there is also an area of common occupation.

1.8 It. is extremely difficult to say whether or not standards of written and spoken English have fallen. There is no convincing evidence available, and most opinions depend very largely upon subjective impressions. These are not to be dismissed out of hand, but we have already shown how difficult it is to make valid comparisons with the past. We have also remarked that any speculation about standards all too frequently relates them to a particular kind of teaching. We received many letters which suggested that 'creativity' is now reverenced and that 'formal' work has virtually been banished. This is a particular area of contention where personal impression clearly counts heavily, especially since 'creativity' and 'formality' are hazy concepts. Exact or even approximate comparability of standards may be elusive, but parents and teachers alike know there have been new approaches and that some schools have operated them with remarkable success, some have adopted them uncritically, and some have set their face against them. Moreover, these approaches have frequently been discussed in the press, and they have featured prominently in publications of one kind or another and in teachers' courses. What is far from certain is how widespread is this change of emphasis. It is commonly believed that English in most primary schools today consists largely of creative writing, free reading, topic or project work, and improvised drama, and that spelling and formal language work have no place. When certain teaching methods attract a good deal of attention it is understandable that people should assume them to have become the norm. But what is the situation in schools? How general has been the shift of emphasis away from the formal to the 'permissive'? We decided at the outset that we would find out by enquiring of the schools themselves by way of detailed questionnaires. This survey is described in detail elsewhere in the Report, and from the tables of results it will be seen that a good deal of time is allocated to formal practice in English. The answers we received certainly did not reveal a picture of the decay of such work in the midst of a climate of unchecked creativity. Sceptics may say that the schools told us what they thought we wanted to hear, or what they surmised would present them in a respectable light. We do not believe this for one moment, but even if it were true, one is still left with a picture of what primary schools feel is the acceptable way to be teaching. Our survey gives no evidence of a large body of teachers committed to the rejection of basic skills and not caring who knows it. It is facile to assume that all manner of weaknesses can be ascribed simply to the wholesale spread of a permissive philosophy. One has to look more deeply. This we hope to do in the course of the Report, when we shall develop some of the points made here.

1.9 We have in effect been discussing the first of the two responses described in paragraph 1.6, and we believe that the diagnosis and remedy it offers is an over-simplification. We take the same view of the second when it regards standards of performance as of slight consequence compared with the personal growth or social orientation of the pupil. Every good teacher is concerned with the social and psychological development of his pupil. But we refer here in particular to the notion of English in the secondary school as almost exclusively a source of material for personal response to social issues. Literature is experienced largely in the form of extracts and is filleted for its social yield. Talk is shepherded into the area of publicised questions, of acute issues of the day. The writing that emerges from both is to a large extent judged for its success by the measure of commitment it seems to reveal. Genuine personal response in such circumstances is not easy to express. These public issues have been dwelt upon at length by television and the press, and the cliché responses generated inevitably find their way into the children's writing and talk. We must make it clear that we are not contesting the place of social concern in the curriculum of the secondary school. But we are questioning the philosophy of those teachers for whom it has become the core and essence of the English programme. Of course it is part of the English teacher's task to develop social awareness and responsibility. By its very nature this subject involves the contemplation of immediate and vicarious experience into which such sensibility enters. Indeed, English is rooted in the processing of experience through language. The pupil uses language to represent the experience to himself, to come to terms with it, to possess it more completely. It is a major part of the teacher's skill to extend the range of that experience, at first hand and through literature, in such a way that new demands are made on language. It is our contention that for some pupils that range of experience has been narrowed. We know that some very sensitive writing and lively talk have emerged from encounters with contemporary social issues. We have read and heard it. But we have read and heard as much which has reflected the child's inability to produce a genuine felt response, where he has had to fall back on the ready-made cliché reaction.

1.10 Is it possible, then, to make some kind of provisional generalisation about standards? There may be little profit in attempting to compare today's standards with those of the past, but we underline our conviction that standards of writing, speaking, and reading can and should be raised. The first thing that is required is a redefinition of what is involved. These three abilities are usually described as 'the basic skills', but like the terms 'formal' and 'progressive' this is a phrase which merits more precise definition than it tends to receive. It is often read to mean that language abilities can somehow be extracted from context, taught in the abstract, and fed back in. The evidence is that one acquires language as a pattern, not as an inert collection of units added serially, a mechanical accumulation of abstracted parts of speech. So we are not suggesting that the answer to improved standards is to be found in some such simple formula as: more grammar exercises, more formal speech training, more comprehension extracts. We believe that language competence grows incrementally, through an interaction of writing, talk, reading, and experience, the body of resulting work forming an organic whole. But this does not mean that it can be taken for granted, that the teacher does not exercise a conscious influence on the nature and quality of this growth. The teacher's first concern should be to create the conditions necessary for fluency, but he then has a responsibility to help the child improve the technical control of his work. What is the quality of the child's verbalisation of his experience? With what fidelity and coherence does he communicate it to his readers? The child should be brought up to see this technical control not as an abstraction imposed from without but as the means of communicating with his audience in the most satisfying and appropriate manner. His development of this ability can be expressed in terms of increasing differentiation. He learns to carry his use of English into a much broader range of social situations, to differing kinds of audience. The purposes to which he puts language grow more complex, so that he moves from a narrative level of organising experience to one where he is capable of sustained generalisation. Considered in these terms the handling of language is a complex ability, and one that will not be developed simply by working through a series of textbook exercises. If we regard this approach as inadequate we have equal lack of sympathy with the notion that the forms of language can be left to look after themselves. On the contrary, we believe that the teacher should intervene, should constantly be looking for opportunities to improve the quality of utterance. In schools where the principles of modern primary school education have been misinterpreted this often does not happen. We have talked to young teachers who have so misunderstood them as to believe they should never directly teach the children.

1.11 If a teacher is to control the growth of competence he must be able to examine the verbal interaction of a class or group in terms of an explicit understanding of the operation of language. We believe that because of the nature of their training this is precisely what many teachers lack, and this has implications for initial and in-service training. In succeeding chapters we discuss language and its relation to learning, and in the course of the Report we emphasise that if standards of achievement are to be improved all teachers will have to be helped to acquire a deeper understanding of language in education. This includes teachers of other subjects than English, since it is one of our contentions that secondary schools should adopt a language policy across the curriculum. Many teachers lack an adequate understanding of the complexities of language development, and they often hold the English teacher responsible for language performance in contexts outside his control. A great deal of work remains to be done to help teachers learn more about the nature of children's language development, its application to their particular subject, and their own role in the process. There is also the important question of the deployment of staff in the teaching of English itself. The English in a secondary school is sometimes in the hands of as many as 15 teachers, only four or five of whom are specialists in the subject. Almost a third of the 12 year olds in our sample had their English with more than one teacher. In the survey the replies from heads suggested that no fewer than a third of all secondary teachers engaged in the teaching of English have no qualification in the subject (see table 72). It also revealed (table 70) that only 37 per cent of those teaching English spend all their time on it, while 38 per cent spend less than half. In some cases a shortage of qualified English teachers forces a head to assign a non-specialist to the subject. On the other hand there are schools where no strenuous efforts are made to acquire English specialists precisely because it is thought possible to make up English time from other members of staff. Similarly, if timetable construction is presenting a difficulty it is not unknown for the recalcitrant single period to be labelled English and given to whichever teacher is not already engaged. There are, of course, many examples of schools which go to great lengths to avoid any such disadvantages to English. Moreover, we are aware that some schools adopt as a deliberate policy the kind of integrated humanities work in which a teacher of another subject becomes responsible for the pupils' English. In the best of such schemes there is strong support from the English specialists, sound planning, and good resources. However, it remains true that large numbers of pupils are taught English in circumstances which would be considered unacceptable in many other subjects. The attitude still prevails that most teachers can turn their hand to it without appropriate initial qualifications or additional training. In our view such an attitude is based on an ignorance of the demands of English teaching and the knowledge required of its practitioners. In the course of the Report we shall attempt to illustrate these, since we believe that only if they are fully recognised can an advance in the teaching of English be achieved.

References

1. The Teaching of English in England (The Newbolt Report). HMSO, 1921.

2. Muller H The Uses of English Holt, Rinehart, and Winston Inc., 1967.