Newsom (1963)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Contents, Introduction, Principal recommendations

Part 1 Findings
Chapter 1 Education for all
Chapter 2 The pupils, the schools, the problems
Chapter 3 Education in the slums
Chapter 4 Objectives
Chapter 5 Finding approaches
Chapter 6 The school day, homework, extra-curricular activities
Chapter 7 Spiritual and moral development
Chapter 8 The school community
Chapter 9 Going out into the world
Chapter 10 Examinations and assessments
Chapter 11 Building for the future
Chapter 12 The teachers needed

Part 2 The teaching situation
Chapter 13 What should secondary imply?
Chapter 14 An education that makes sense
Chapter 15 Attainments and achievement
Chapter 16 The subjects and the curriculum
Chapter 17 The practical subjects
Chapter 18 Science and mathematics
Chapter 19 The humanities
Chapter 20 School organisation and staff deployment

Part 3 What the survey shows
Chapter 21 The 1961 survey
Chapter 22 The boys and girls
Chapter 23 The work they do
Chapter 24 The men and women who teach them
Chapter 25 The schools they go to

Acknowledgements

Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II Sex education
Appendix III Deployment of teachers
Appendix IV Letter to Minister on teacher training
Appendix V Statistical detail

Index

A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1963
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 19 The humanities
[pages 152 - 169]

A. ENGLISH

461. The use of language in thought and in communication must enter into every part of the curriculum. English, as a subject primarily concerned with care for words, clearly has a distinctive contribution to make, yet it is doubtful if that contribution is at present as effective as it might be. Of the general sincerity and frequent skill of the teaching there can be no question; real illiteracy in the formal sense is comparatively rare. But there seems a very general feeling that the ordinary boy and girl should leave school with a better command of English than they in fact appear to possess. Have aim and method in English teaching kept pace with what we know about young people and how they learn? And does English teaching take sufficient account of the relation between school and the world beyond? For the pupils are a product of both and so is the command of language which they need for maturity.

462. The teachers of English tend to think of their subject from three different but related points of view: as a medium of communication, as a means of creative expression, and as a literature embodying the vision of greatness. They are trying to offer all pupils the freedom of all three, and rightly do not think of the weaker boys and girls as living in a kind of nature reserve, debarred by lack of ability from the great things of our civilisation. That way lies apartheid. But in practice many of the weaker pupils never seem to reach the point at which real English begins. Some teachers, including many who have never been trained for teaching English, give them a watered down version of what they remember from their own grammar school experiences. Much use is made of textbooks providing endless exercises in comprehension, composition and the like. There are rough books and best books, the former filling up more quickly than the latter with laborious writing. Commas are inserted, spelling corrected. Occasionally free composition produces a shapeless mess in which the memory of many televised westerns often seems to be still riding the range of the pupil's mind. Poetry is 'done': drama may occur on Friday afternoon and towards Christmas ...

463. When handled with competence and conviction, the traditional teaching pattern can enlist interest and encourage progress. But it is too seldom about anything of much potential importance to the pupil; where there is little to talk about, conversation or discussions cannot flourish. What is learned today tends to be forgotten tomorrow; it is not applied to other subjects. Nor, though plenty of work seems to be going on, do teacher or pupil seem to expect much real progress. There is little pleasure or respect for skill.

464. The weaker pupils in the third or fourth year do not seem to mind too much, even where, as is not uncommon, the textbooks seem a tired survival from the junior school. But good humoured tolerance often passes into a somewhat cynical attitude which may in turn become definite rejection, when reading means little to these pupils, and writing less. What they already have of either seems enough for their needs later on. And when it comes to speech, there is often a deep-seated corporate resistance to the very notion of 'talking posh'.

465. But the pupils are not merely a product of school. Their standards in speech, as in much else, reflect those of their families. They have heard much about the outside world from older relatives already in jobs, as well as from newspapers, magazines, the cinema and television. The last appears particularly potent, if only because so many particularly of the less able pupils have imbibed so much of it. Like the other mass media it tends to mirror and overemphasise certain aspects of our society which are at variance with the values of school - not for nothing is the screen schoolmaster usually a buffoon. No wonder if school is regarded as something to be tolerated.

466. Yet we must not forget all the ordinary pupils who happily make good progress. Nor are boys and girls as grown-up as they would like us to think; many a young man has left coffee bar, fruit machine and girlfriend to play, with or without a younger brother, with the toys of childhood. And under their veneer of sophistication these young people know they are not yet properly equipped to face the outside world. But their misgivings are inarticulate. They need help and will accept it if this can be done without loss of face.

467. The overriding aim of English teaching must be the personal development and social competence of the pupil. And of all the different aspects of English, speech has by far the most significant contribution to make towards that development. Inability to speak fluently is a worse handicap than inability to read or write. Though boys and girls learn to speak long before they go to their first school, every school carries a major responsibility for its pupils' speech. This is not essentially a matter of accent or pronunciation, although in a mobile society it is realistic to recognise that the pupils who have no alternative to a strictly local vernacular may be at a disadvantage in later life. But far more important is the need to ensure that they can speak easily, clearly and with interest, and have something to talk about. Personal and social adequacy depend on being articulate, that is, on having the words and language structures with which to think, to communicate what is thought, and to understand what is heard or read. The pupils need in school experiences which will not only help them to find the words but also give them confidence to express them. Any definition of literacy for them must include an improved command of spoken English, particularly in understanding argument and in trying to put a point of view. Side by side with speech comes its partner listening; conversation presupposes both, but too few pupils ever learn to listen carefully, to the teacher or to each other. Here the teacher's example is all-important; when he teaches, is it all monologue or a reasonably balanced dialogue in which the pupils get a fair chance; is he interested in what they have to say?

468. Real communication begins when the words are about experience, ideas, and interests which are worth putting into language. The teacher can initiate and encourage; he cannot do the work for the pupils, but he can suggest work that is clearly worth doing and help them to do it. Only he can find out what interests his pupils, and he must begin, though not end, with that. The initial experience will be that of home, school and the immediate background, though young people's curiosity will soon take them beyond that. There is so much to discuss, not only local and domestic questions, but also such themes as fashion, death, the rate for the job, marriage, football, abstract art, the prospect of human survival, or bringing up children. Hobbies such as fishing, vintage cars and aircraft all offer possibilities which point beyond their own first beginnings - for discussion will not satisfy for long.

469. Books, magazines and the library are, or should be, there to help. The library ought to be the power house of words and ideas: it is the more regrettable that large numbers of secondary schools - three fifths of the modern schools in our survey - are still seriously deficient in library accommodation. (1) Even where facilities are good, it requires resource and persistence to contrive that the less able pupils really benefit from them. It seems likely that there is often a notable drop in the quality of books available to many pupils when they move from the primary to the secondary school, partly because there is a tendency for schools to cater most fully for their ablest pupils, and partly because it is not easy to provide, at least for the older pupil of really limited reading ability, books which are sufficiently simple and yet appropriately adult in content and vocabulary. The latter problem becomes even more acute when the pupils leave school. Even with the large numbers of boys and girls to whom the mechanics of reading present no serious difficulties, there is a need to enlist interest and to establish reading habits which will persist beyond school. Valuable cooperation exists in some areas between schools and public libraries, and deserves wider extension. Certainly it is not enough merely to persuade pupils to acquire a public library ticket, nor simply to insert 'library' periods into the school timetable.

470. The library, fully equipped and used, has much to offer. There are paperbacks, books of reference, and periodicals about anything from railways to homemaking. Assignments on topics appropriately related to the pupils' interests and experience yield, as well as information, the pleasure of working seriously on one's own. The results may not be wonderful at first, but the excitement of making discoveries and advancing is catching; the pupils will not be unaffected by the gradual enlarging of their powers which will follow. But much will always depend on the individual pupil; every pupil is an unknown country which the teacher approaches like a water diviner, and only when he touches the springs of interest will language begin to flow.

471. Seeking information is one aspect of the use of books. Techniques of reading remain important, not least when the pupil has nominally learned to read. Practice in slow, careful reading, practice in rapid reading, work (much of it going deeper than traditional 'comprehension' questions) to link reading with speaking and writing can all help; good reading aloud by a teacher may be much appreciated by the class. In the long run quality of reading usually depends upon will and interest. Many adults manage quite happily with little reading and less writing; the pupils know it, even though they also will accept that one cannot really go very far in contemporary life without either. In a world where the spoken word is so much more important than it was, we cannot assume that all our pupils will take reading or writing seriously unless we show them (rather than preach) the value of both. This means taking account once again of the pupils' background and interests - and also of their personal history; some, particularly of the weaker ones, associate reading and writing with six or seven years of continuous failure, and these salvage cases are the most difficult of all. Yet even at fourteen it is not too late to make a fresh start, provided that the start really is fresh; it is useless to go on boring the pupils of this age with books from the primary school, and one remembers the story of the young man of nearly fourteen given up by his teachers as a hopeless illiterate, who ran a successful betting book under cover of his children's primers; when challenged, he is alleged to have replied: 'You don't think I can be bothered with all that muck'.

472. Given a basic literacy, the work in the later part of the school life may be increasingly concerned with the use of literacy: having learned, in some degree, how to handle words, the pupils have to be helped to learn now not to be handled by them. They need not merely to read, but to read with increasing sensitivity. This may require more attention to what pupils read at their own level, to help them formulate their own responses in words, and so be in a better position to criticise for themselves. Work of this kind, in relation to popular magazines and newspapers and advertising, is to be found in the schools but needs to be done more widely and systematically.

473. Nor should this more perceptive approach to reading be confined to popular journalism or what the pupils may voluntarily seek for themselves. All pupils, including those of very limited attainments, need the civilising experience of contact with great literature, and can respond to its universality, although they will depend heavily on the skill of the teacher as an interpreter. Sympathetically presented, literature can stretch the minds and imaginations of the pupils, and help to illumine for them, in wider human terms, their own problems of living. In so difficult a task the teacher will need a greatly extended range of books from which to choose, and all the help which professional readers and actors on records and radio and television can give. Indeed, in in all its work in speech and reading and writing, the English department will have special need of these aids and of others such as tape recorder and film, as both sources of material and methods of teaching.

474. Here we should wish to add a strong claim for the study of film and television in their own right, as powerful forces in our culture and significant sources of language and ideas. Although the study of these media has for some time been accepted in a small number of schools as an important part of the curriculum, in the majority of schools they are used only as visual aids for the presentation of material connected with other subjects. Again, making a film is frequently seen as an interesting and unusual practical activity especially for the less academically gifted child; film and television clubs may be organised after school hours for the showing of feature films or informal discussion of evening programmes: all these ways of using film and television are valuable and constructive, and their extension is commended elsewhere in this report. The most important and most general use of these media, however, as major means for the mass communication of cultural experiences, is not generally dealt with in schools any more than it is in colleges or universities. Little attention is paid to the degree to which film and television enter into and influence the lives of our pupils and to these media as legitimate means for the communication of personal experience alongside literature, music and painting.

475. The culture provided by all the mass media, but particularly by film and television, represents the most significant environmental factor that teachers have to take into account. The important changes that take place at the secondary stage are much influenced by the world offered by the leisure industry which skilfully markets products designed for young people's tastes. The media help to define aspirations and they offer roles and models. They not only supply needs (and create them) but may influence attitudes and values. Little as yet has been effectively undertaken in schools in the way of offering some counterbalancing assistance. We need to train children to look critically and discriminate between what is good and bad in what they see. They must learn to realise that many makers of films and of television programmes present false or distorted views of people, relationships, and experience in general, besides producing much trivial and worthless stuff made according to stock patterns.

476. By presenting examples of films selected for the integrity of their treatment of human values, and the craftsmanship with which they were made, alongside others of mixed or poor quality, we can not only build up a way of evaluating but also lead the pupils to an understanding of film as a unique and potentially valuable art form in its own right as capable of communicating depth of experience as any other art form. Just as we have traditionally thought it important to broaden children's response to and experience of literature and music, so we must now offer a comparative education in the important and powerful visual media, both because these media at their best have much that is valuable to offer and simply because communication in the twentieth century is becoming increasingly visual. The making of films when allied to studies of this kind becomes a much more potent educational instrument. One of the difficulties in extending this work is the shortage of teachers equipped to tackle it. While there is a supply, even if inadequate, of specialist and other teachers with some training in literature, music, art and drama, there are very few teachers equipped to deal with the art forms that most closely touch the boys and girls of this report. We are glad to note that some training colleges have begun to respond to this challenge by offering courses in film both as major and minor elements in a course.

477. English comes within the sphere of the liberal arts for the pupils covered by this enquiry. It is not always easy to remember this; and yet, where there is real progress, such things as colour, feeling, tone, rhythm and the pleasure of language are surprisingly often playing a part. Heart is involved as well as head. It is of course within poetry and drama that the use of language goes deepest. Nobody should have to teach poetry against his will, but without it English will never be complete; poetry is not a minor amenity but a major channel of experience. The best starting point is likely to be the present, and there is a great deal of contemporary verse to draw on, including ballads, songs and even limericks. How far the great poetry of earlier ages can be introduced with advantage only the teacher can say. Good reading by the teacher and the use (too rare in many schools) of records of spoken poetry will help the pupil to broaden his range; from listening to reading (in a group as well as individually) is a second step; from reading to writing is a third. In a number of schools very ordinary boys and girls are writing verse with pleasure, and the result, however simple, can be a moving and sometimes beautiful comment upon experience.

478. Though drama comes, by school tradition, into the English field, it is a creative art embracing much more than English. Perhaps its central element is, or should be, improvisation. It involves movement as well as words - that is one main reason why an outsize classroom or a small hall is really essential for English teaching. Drama can include miming and acting everyday situations or familiar stories, play writing and play reading: all are relevant for the pupils covered by this enquiry, so long as we respect the limits of their understanding. It is useless, for example, to take them out of their depth in dramatic literature. If they read plays, they must be helped to realise that a play is not just the words in the book but much more besides.

479. Drama can offer something more significant than the daydream. It helps boys and girls to identify themselves with well known men and women of whom they have heard or read. By playing out psychologically significant situations, they can work out their own personal problems. Here is one way in which they can be helped to reconcile the reality of the world outside with their own private worlds. Once this begins, education has something on which to build. In short, drama, along with poetry and the other arts, is not a 'frill' which the less able can safely omit or relegate to a minor position on some Friday afternoons. Art is not an expensive substitute for reality. It is through creative arts, including the arts of language, that young people can be helped to come to terms with themselves more surely than by any other route.

480. It is a matter of some concern that the educative experience of drama in all its forms is too often, despite notable exceptions, restricted or denied to pupils. In school, the reason is often lack of suitable teachers, or of accommodation; outside, in many areas, there are too few opportunities for seeing high quality productions in the theatre. The stimulation of interest in the professional theatre, and encouragement to feel that it is part of their own, not an alien, culture, is particularly important for the older boys and girls, if they are not to miss this source of enrichment of their adult lives.

481. The best way to study writing is to practise it. Children only learn writing by writing, and they are best prepared to write about their own experiences. These free outpourings have much of the character of free verse: they are shapeless often, and lack control over words, grammar, spelling and punctuation. Gradually, improved writing develops. With some of our pupils it may never become completely mature or adult, but it can be encouraged by understanding teachers. Teachers whose sole standard is correctness can dry up the flow of language and shackle creative and imaginative writing before it is under way. Precision and logical arrangement of ideas may well be sought but will not readily be found. Of the quotations (both extracts from longer pieces) which follow a headmaster writes:

'These would never have been written had correctness been our care. This boy of fifteen must only have bottled up his feeling for his pigeons. The quantity of output would have suffered and the quality of natural expression have been lost. The tenderness of the first passage, and the professional appraisal of the racing birds in the second, spring from real experience, creative enjoyment, and a pupil teacher relationship that develops confidence.'

'Every day David looked at his egges to see if they were hatching, taking great care not to alarm the birds or touch the egges. He soon got downhearted and thought his egges would never hatch, and then one day to his great joy he saw his first baby pigeon, it sat there with it large eyes shut and all its golden doun beutifieing its otherwise ugly stature. He smiles as he shut the door of his small coop, and then suddenly he thought such a terrible thought that he ran almost in tears to his mother, and spluttered the words out, mother only one egge has hatched. A great smile came over his mothers face and she said they don't hatch at ones. A great smile came over his face, and he told her of his little baby pigeon and asked her if she wanted to see it, no she said let his sleep now he will be tired'

'It was about half past five, as I went down to the loft, the weather was fine, the wind was in the East. I loocked out accross the sky and said to my self I hope it stays as fine as this. After fidling around in my pocket I finally found my key and opened the lock. The usualy rumpus happened. My big black Cock Bird called Sulky Sam jumped on my shoulder, and started to pick my ears in his usual way, this earned him the name of Sulky Sam. I picked him up of my shoulder and loocked at him carefully, he was one of six candates, two of which would race. I loocked into his eyes, and grunted contentidly, it was good and bright, and the core was beutifully white. I ran my hand gently down his side and felt his beutifully hard body and silky feathers. I then opened his wing and saw every flight and secondry in beutiful condition. I brushed my fingers down his wing and it squeked and a lot of bloom came off it.

The next bird I came across was a hen and soon as I laid hands on I thought she seemed lively. She was in lovely condition, and had the things about her I was looking for. Her wattle was lovely and white and she handled beutifully. She was also sitting correctly. The Black and this hen were my candidates.'

483. A wide and generous course of English should do much to prepare these pupils for life in an adult society; it is vocational in the best possible way. Such a course should provide a good foundation of workmanlike English, in that it will enable boys and girls in later life to read instructions or pass on messages, or write a letter, or jot down a record. The course will almost certainly have included practice in writing real letters, both personal letters, for example, to a member of the class in hospital, and more formal letters, such as those to firms asking for a leaflet or arranging a visit. Some special help, but not much, will be needed, if it is necessary to write letters of applications for employment; but those devastating make-believe applications in laborious, unreal letters should not often be needed. In any case too much must not be expected: the employer who wants his employees to be proficient in the written word will probably have to provide specialised linguistic practice as part of the training given to new entrants, however well the school does its work. But these are not the only, or even the most important vocational aspects of English. In whatever job, and at whatever level of skill, the pupils may subsequently be working, they will all need to enter into effective relations with other people, if they are to work efficiently and happily. What they take with them from school in improved powers of speech, and in sympathetic insight into human relationships gained through literature, will be of great value to them here. To achieve success in their work, even in the narrowest sense, the boys and girls will require an experience of English that is far from narrow. To those objectors who say in effect 'Cut out the frills. You haven't the time, and the pupil hasn't the capacity, for more than the three Rs; this is the only way to deal with illiteracy', we repeat, as we have argued earlier, that such a restricted programme defeats its own ends.

484. English is distinctive in the curriculum in that it is both all-pervasive and yet has relatively little subject matter of its own. In the greater part of the pupils' work concerned with communication, with the acquisition of information and with the recording and evaluation of experience, English performs a service function to other subjects: it is the other subjects which supply the content, and the occasions for strengthening the pupils' resources in language. English must not be a subject narrowly ensphered within its own specialist boundaries; neither must it disappear altogether. It has distinctive experiences to offer: there will, for example, always need to be timetable periods in which the main emphasis falls on imaginative literature, and it is not easy to see how other subjects could take these over. The English lesson, too, is most likely to offer those opportunities which allow adolescents to write out of themselves what they are not always prepared or able to talk about: in the writing, deeply personal thoughts and feelings may be disguised or transmuted. Some of the least able pupils most need these opportunities.

485. But there are schools in which much, perhaps even most, of the speaking, reading and writing are taught through the medium of other subjects, or through projects of various kinds. Project work offers the incentive of a unified and challenging task, and also a means of bringing together diverse subjects, although projects cannot always cover all the important points; as the pupils get older, the various fields of knowledge are likely to be wider and more sharply defined than for younger pupils, regardless of ability. Whatever the pattern of organisation, the content of other subjects provides the pupils in any event with a great part of their verbal education. Not only are they continuously using ordinary English which is common to all occasions; but they are acquiring a series of important special vocabularies which enlarge the field in which their minds are active. There is a particular literacy required in all subjects which should be carefully fostered by those who teach them. They are, perhaps, more likely to do this if sufficient time is allowed for the purpose (as it often is not at present) and if the objective is thought of as a necessary part of what they are themselves teaching rather than as a contribution to 'English' which is somebody else's business.

486. We feel considerable disquiet at the possible impact of examinations on English teaching. The proposed examination for the Certificate of Secondary Education is designed for boys and girls whose capacity varies from just below GCE standard to a little below the middle of the ability range. Since the new examination will concern only those who stay on until sixteen, it is not likely at first to be taken by very many of the less able pupils. But when all have a five year course there may be a real danger of distorted teaching as a result of too many candidates in the third and even fourth quarter of ability being put through unsuitable tests. We should not wish to see the main emphasis in Form 5C (and probably in 4C and 3C as well) being devoted to answering examination questions, instead of learning English. And, if we may judge by GCE experience, preoccupation with examinations would tend to perpetuate a teaching pattern in which the whole form is treated as a single unit, at the expense of individual and group study.

487. To many good judges our suggestions will probably seem not so much unreasonable as Utopian. There are all the physical difficulties so often mentioned in this report. Even more serious is the shortage of trained teachers. Not many teachers without knowledge or training can teach the subject in the way that we have tried to suggest, however great their devotion and natural skill. And the supply of real specialists capable of making good heads of department or deputy heads, who would give a lead in the right direction, is drying up. Many schools have made great strides in English as in other subjects during the past decade, but today some of the best are full of misgiving. The quality of English teaching threatens to become worse; if it does, the weakest pupils will suffer most because the dominant pattern of teaching is always likely to be, for the non-specialist working without help, that which is set by the ablest groups and which is inappropriate for those with which we are concerned. We face, then, a crisis which is even now not sufficiently recognised, because it is a crisis of quality as much as of quantity. The challenge in teacher training is formidable. This is partly a matter of supply and organisation, but it is more than that alone. It involves a wider recognition of what these pupils need. They deserve the best.

B. A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

488. In our survey, just under a third of the modern schools provided some foreign language teaching, mainly in French, and largely confined to the ablest pupils. (2) In the country as a whole at the present time, a foreign language is probably taught to about a third of the pupils in perhaps half of the modern schools. It is clear that very large numbers of boys and girls, including most of our 'average' as well as the 'below average' pupils, as yet have had no opportunity of learning a foreign language. The reasons for this are partly historical, partly related to the shortage of really skilled and fluent language teachers. There are nevertheless signs that this situation is beginning to change, and we think it wholly desirable that it should.

489. There are several reasons why boys and girls of all levels of ability should have the opportunity of learning a foreign language. One has an important connection with their urgent need, already discussed in relation to English, of improved powers of communication. Learning to speak in a foreign tongue offers one more experience of the significance of words as tools, as means of indicating particular objects or actions or ideas; and as a result of this, though very simply in the case of the more limited pupils, they may begin to think about the use of words in their own language. While we should not suggest that very backward boys and girls still struggling to attain the barest literacy in their own language should be burdened with another, there is every likelihood that other pupils, whose poor attainments stem from disturbed early schooling or adverse environment rather than lack of native wit, might be helped, by the stimulus of a foreign language well taught, to apply fresh energy to the learning of their own.

490. Indeed, some of us would consider this the most important reason of all, that the learning of a new language may give confidence to those pupils who need it most - the less than average, those who have often had difficulty with English. The feeling that they too can express themselves, however simply, in a foreign tongue can increase their self-respect and improve their general attitude to learning. We have long accepted that children of relatively limited general ability in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries acquire a simple, spoken knowledge of other languages: we should not deny the opportunity to our own children. In spite of frequent assertions to the contrary, there is no solid evidence that, comparing like with like, our people have less aptitude for languages than those of other nations.

491. In the past, the people of this country have had their closest links with the English speaking world and have generally lacked the incentive which some other European countries have had to learn a foreign language. But circumstances are changing, and are already beginning to create a climate of opinion which may be very favourable to language teaching on a much wider scale. Not only in our national economic life, for which it is highly important that as many people as possible should be able to cross the language barrier, but in private life, the links with the rest of Europe are growing stronger every day. The notable increase in recent years of facilities for foreign travel, both by school parties and by families and young people on holiday, has provided a strong motive for acquiring at least a 'tourist' knowledge of another language - as witness the interest and persistence with which many thousands of adults have followed broadcast language series.

492. When young people and adults travel abroad, as increasing numbers certainly will, it is important that they should go wanting to make contact with the people of the country, and ready to appreciate their distinctive way of life. This attitude is more likely to develop through the learning of the language, than by merely reading about the French or Germans or Italians - although obviously there will still be a need for considerable reading in English about the country in question, to supplement a modest acquaintance with the language. For many of our pupils, both the language and the supplementary reading stimulated by the possibility of a visit may valuably enlarge their general stock of ideas and of knowledge. Here is one more window on the world, a chance to extend their experience through contact with a different people and culture.

493. The question arises as to which foreign language should be taught. French is the usual one because there are more people available to teach it. It is not, however, the easiest in its early stages, and Spanish and Italian have been more successfully taught to the less able pupils in some schools. The difficulty is to ensure a succession of good teachers, whatever language is chosen. Continuity of teaching, always important in the learning of a language, is essential in the weakest groups. The teachers must be fluent and have an easy command of the language. The approach must be an oral one; the argument for teaching a language is valid only if the pupils can speak what they know. We accept the fact that some will never speak more than a few simple sentences but many will do more than that and will be able to write simply as well. It will be, with rare exceptions, only the most able who will speak fluently and write accurately. Nevertheless we would not deny even to the least able the privilege and the fun of being able to say a few simple things in a language other than their own.

494. Opinion varies as to how long average and below average pupils can go on learning a language. The experience over seven years of one comprehensive school is that a language can be taught to girls of all levels of ability for at least three years, and that in spite of the great demands it makes on the patience and ingenuity of the staff, it is well worth doing for the sake of the pupils. If there can be continuity of teaching, it would seem that a language can profitably be studied to the end of the fifth year by average girls though probably not by the least able. But the truth is that although we know this is happening in one school, and probably in others, there is too little experience nationally of trying to teach a foreign language over the whole, or most, of the ability range for anyone to gauge the limits and possibilities. Quite certainly there is evidence that many more boys and girls could respond to an opportunity.

495. Current trends are all in favour of letting them try. A large-scale experiment supported by the Ministry and the local education authorities is even now introducing a foreign language into primary schools. Before long, many boys and girls will in any case be arriving at their secondary schools with an awakened interest in the speech and customs of another country, and will be disappointed if they cannot continue with the language they have begun to learn.

496. Happily, just at the time when the demand for teachers of foreign languages may rise sharply, there have been striking advances in teaching techniques based on the use of audio-visual aids, which offer ways of considerably supplementing the teacher's own resources. These methods, which put an emphasis on lively communication through speech, as opposed to an analytical, textbook approach, could have special significance for our pupils. But as yet too few schools in this country have had experience in using these methods, or possess the necessary equipment, for the full possibilities to be assessed. Many more schools need to be equipped to take full advantage of materials and techniques involving the use of film-strips and tape recorders, listening booths, and radio and television programmes designed especially for this purpose.

497. We welcome the present interest in language teaching, at both the primary and the secondary stage, and believe that extended experiments are highly desirable, in methods of teaching and learning over the whole range of ability, and in the choice of the language taught. Given good conditions, a foreign language, taught in a well-conceived oral course and enlivened wherever possible by direct contacts with a foreign country, might well be one of the most stimulating subjects in the curriculum for some of the pupils of this report.

498. Finally, there is a significant world trend towards more language learning. Europe as a whole is ahead of this country in including a foreign language, and often two, in the general education of a much larger proportion of its citizens. Humanly and economically speaking, insularity is behind the times.

C. THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND

499. The importance of history and geography, or the social studies in which they are sometimes merged, seems obvious. A man who is ignorant of the society in which he lives, who knows nothing of its place in the world and who has not thought about his place in it, is not a free man even though he has a vote. He is easy game for 'the hidden persuaders'. A society in which he and his like predominate is at their mercy. We may turn Abraham Lincoln's saying to our situation: 'this nation cannot survive half slave and half free'. Too often, however, the boys and girls with whom we are concerned do not see this. Geography and perhaps even more frequently history lessons are expendable as far as boys, and to a less extent girls are concerned. They cannot buy anything with this kind of knowledge as they can with physics and shorthand; they are not always willing to pay for it with hard work as they will for the skills of handicraft or dressmaking. Henry Ford's 'history is bunk', did they but know it, expresses exactly what they feel; but, of course, Henry Ford is as dead to them as Queen Anne - or history.

500. This is a grimly pessimistic view. In so far as it is true it represents a grave danger. But, while it holds good of many pupils in many schools, we see no reason why this should go on. If other schools can tell a different story, and they can, we are not confronted with a psychological barrier which prevents people of below average intelligence, that is to say about half the nation, forming a responsible and reasoned opinion about public affairs. Optimism is possible. The important thing is to discover and apply the means by which it can be justified.

501. They will be found in classrooms. A 16 mm film about an Indian village has just been shown. Here are to be seen temple and mosque, dung cakes and wooden plough, the monsoon bank of earth and nearby the building of a large concrete dam soon to result in a permanent water supply and the gift of electricity. Here in a Birmingham classroom in 1963 is present at one time a recapitulation of many thousands of years of human history. Maps, statistics, first-hand descriptions may lead on to questions of climate, food, birth rate, clothing, caste, nationalism, religion, and governmental planning.

502. The film has raised questions. The answers call for contributions of many kinds from many groups of pupils. Discussion alone is not enough. Its purpose is to decide on a programme of work and to evaluate work done. In between comes the work. This requires the provision of much source material. Standard reference books will be needed; good maps; an indexed collection of pictures and diagrams. Some will be to hand in the geography room; some in the school library; the public library system will be involved. Eventually, when some final worrying area of ignorance remains to be explored - but, if the teacher is wise, only then - reference may be made to the Commonwealth Institute or to the Indian or Pakistan High Commission. The pupils will have been investigating real problems, using adult sources of information and becoming involved in a world situation in which they may have a part to play.

503. In another school boys and girls of the same age are engaged in what one might call a series of confrontations. Here, magnified, is a rubbing of a George VI half-crown with its superscription 'Ind. Imp.' and the date. Next to it on the display board, is a similar rubbing of a Victorian half crown - how by the way was this obtained? The dates are compared and the heyday of the British raj is fixed. The class are debating what shall be put opposite the half-crowns. The Indian flag? Mahatma Ghandi's spinning wheel? Is the latter already as dated as the George VI half-crown? Why? We are back to the population problem. Then, pictures. 'Forty years on', a line of melody from the school song, a silhouette of Harrow Hill and the pictures of Jawaharlal Nehru and Winston Churchill. Questions again: What brought Nehru to Harrow? Will other Indian boys in the future do the same sort of thing? Would they understand the language if they did? We are back before we know it to Lord Macaulay and on to this year's debates in the Indian parliament on English as an official language. Another confrontation: Mr Ghandi again, but this time gathering salt, not spinning kadar. Side by side with this picture there is a recent photograph of English demonstrators sitting down in Trafalgar Square. What is the connection? And, incidentally, had Mr Ghandi any connection with South Africa? Why did he choose salt? What has this to tell us about poverty; and, if the class is up to it, about elastic and inelastic demand?

504. Once again a full programme of work is mapped out; once again adult sources will be used; once again the boys and girls will become involved in a situation which calls, first, for understanding and then for commitment. Who was right and who wrong? This is the first question they ask. What was right and what wrong in each side's action and why? That is the second question. The second question leads on to the third, which is very like the first but with a subtle difference. Who was right on balance?

505. These two lessons, or series of lessons, on India may stand as tokens to represent a whole programme of work designed to set ordinary minds working on world problems. Some parts of the programme, however, would be set much nearer home - almost on the doorstep or no further away than a school journey's distance. The identification of land forms, the influence of geology on landscape, the principles involved in national parks and nature reserves, the rights of different kinds of country users - young and old, walkers, motorists, naturalists and farmers, this is a totally different sequence from the Indian ones. It starts with the immediate experience of the perceptive eye and the field-sketching hand, but it too may lead on to the making of social judgements. Another home-based sequence, using immediate experience but this time of human relations, might study the ebb and flow of East and West as seen in the pupils' family history - uncles and aunts settled or working overseas, new neighbours from abroad; the epitome of world history in one of its main transformations as crystallised in grandfather's war and father's war - here the school in the slums is at no disadvantage and possibly somewhat better off than others. There is plenty of material which a good teacher can use to secure an intellectual and emotional breakthrough from the classroom with its textbook and its lessons to the real world of human problems. To secure this breakthrough is more important than to explain the mechanics of the ballot - more difficult, no doubt, but more likely to hold the pupils' attention.

506. But the teacher needs space and time if he is to succeed. (3) He needs space because his room will have to serve as a base, a workshop and a store. He needs good facilities for mechanical aids - projector, record player, tape recorder, radio and TV receiver. He needs these to give the actuality of quasi-immediate experience to studies which time or space put at a distance. He needs a working surface where models can be made, a tracing table, perhaps a photocopier (certainly ready access to one), map chests, filing cabinets, bookshelves. He needs time. The total time allowed by the school for English subjects is often adequate, sometimes generous. But when it is dispersed between three and four teachers with three or four different 'subjects' - social studies, current affairs, history, civics, geography - none has enough elbow room to undertake a programme of work such as we have suggested. The time needs concentrating, and the values specially associated with the various subject names secured by ringing the changes among them.

507. Something in depth for a short time rather than a little of everything all the time is probably the right approach anyhow for the boys and girls with whom we are concerned. A relatively short spell of work at a given theme - a term at the most - culminating in some definite evidence of achievement is a good formula. The evidence of achievement may take the form of an exhibition, the production of a class book, the making of a film strip, perhaps with a commentary recorded on tape - there are many possibilities. Different themes lend themselves to different methods; the important thing is that all pupils should be able to take part. Such a wide range of expression is possible that this general participation can usually be secured - but it does not happen without careful planning in advance. It is indeed often possible to get senior boys and girls so interested in what they are doing that homework does not so much have to be set as suggest itself. Some of it may even take the agreeable form of an evening's viewing - but with a constructive and critical purpose.

508. A programme of this kind will have failed if it does not lead to knowing what evidence is and what it will prove. At one time a class will be interpreting for themselves physical evidence: they will be learning, for instance, how to read landscape and how to interpret a map. A short time at a field studies centre will make both map and science come alive for them. At another time they will be setting social facts against social facts. They will come to see that in any economic problem some facts will tell in one direction and some in another; that some groups of people will naturally pay more attention to one set than the other; and that this personal bias is something that they must guard against in themselves. The personal and social advantages of different forms of space heating is an obvious example. They may, and should, go on to problems where only some of the facts are known, but a decision has to be made. There is much argument, for instance, about streaming in schools. It will take a long time to find out what its true consequences are, but meanwhile schools have to be carried on. This is the sort of situation that could profitably be examined. It is possible to move from cooperative situations like this, where everybody is trying to find out the truth or the best course to take, to situations in which there is no longer this common purpose. In war, for instance, the enemy's position has to be inferred in face of appearances designed to mislead. Boys and girls of quite poor academic ability are often well aware that a good deal of propaganda falls into this last category. They feel that they are being got at, that they are not being told the truth, or at least only carefully doctored truth. They develop a protective cynicism which leads them to disbelieve everything; a more hopeful defence would be provided by an elementary training in evidence and how to handle it.

509. Even more important, perhaps, than this scientific approach to factual evidence is an ability to enter imaginatively into other men's minds. What is to be cultivated here is psychological sensitivity and intuitive awareness rather than rational fact finding. It is important to keep good company and great company. People count. They count not only in their private lives but publicly. People make history. It is an enlarging of the spirit for our boys and girls to meet great men and to respond to them as men did and still do. The racy but rich speech of Abraham Lincoln can still hold fifteen year olds in twentieth century England and show them as it showed men a hundred years ago what things are worth more than living. It is important, too, to know bad company and to avoid it. Evil men also have power. Were those who followed Hitler necessarily worse men than those who rallied to Churchill? Why did they do it? Might we not have done the same? How did some of his own people stand out against him? These are sobering questions which ordinary young people ought to face.

510. Need a teacher select his programme with an eye to more than its momentary acceptability to his pupils and its effectiveness in getting his pupils to pause long enough to think? If he remembers that there is nothing quite so dead as last year's sensation, he will probably conclude that he ought to have some better principle of selection than topicality.

511. Probably in history he will decide that in the last years at school he must choose contemporary themes which will help his pupils to understand the world in which they live, not only the world into which their fathers were born. History in schools now often, but by no means always, reaches 1939 and edges towards 1945. But in 1945 the Indian peninsula was still politically united and part of a British Empire; China was not yet Communist; and Africa was still a network of colonies and mandated territories with only a distant prospect of becoming anything else. The first atomic bomb had only just been exploded; Everest and not the moon was still the summit to be reached. History which does not take account of these and similar revolutionary changes will not seem to the limited minds of our boys and girls to be the history of their world. This does not mean that the cavemen and the open fields of their earlier years were just childish stories. They will find them still existing: no longer in our past but in other peoples' present. English boys and girls need to get some idea of this compression of millennia of human development into one African generation and of the economic and psychological problems that go with it. They need, too, to understand the problems of India and China which are economically similar to Africa's but psychologically different because Asia is a continent of old and proud cultures. Some of our very modern history will take us back to very ancient times.

512. What is living and important in the world in 1963 cannot be explained only by what has happened since 1945. This is certainly true even when the topic is the USA and the USSR in the world today. In British history perhaps the most important thing to do with the pupils before they finally leave school will be an assessment of Britain's true position in the world of today, an assessment which must be based on knowledge of the past as well as the present. Here is material for a life study, not for a year's work however generous the time allowance. The teacher will have to choose between the barest outline of events and the selection of limited topics which can be studied in sufficient detail to bring them to life. If he chooses the latter course, and this seems more likely to give his pupils understanding, he will want to select his topics carefully to give as representative coverage as he can to four or five themes of history today.

513. The same principles apply in geography. The list of possible topics is far too long for any school to exhaust. Once again the choice must lie between large tracts of barren outline and a few typical problems studied in depth. Once again the latter is the promising solution. A clear break in the syllabus is useful at the end of the third year, involving a change from a systematic course to selected case studies. It should not mean losing intellectual coherence. A wise teacher will probably distribute his fields of study as widely as possible so that examples are given of differences of climate and relief, different stages of economic development and differences in race and culture. The progressive nature of the work will not be determined by the sequence of examples, but by the depth at which they are tackled. Thus a detailed study of an Indian village if taken in the third year might stop short at vivid description. If taken in the fifth year it might initiate a discussion on the precise meaning of 'a low standard of living' illustrated by comparative figures for Malaya, Britain and the USA, leading on to a consideration of how the standard could be raised.

514. Most of the illustrations in this chapter have been drawn from history or geography. Often very much the same ground was being covered, though in one case the approach was that of a historian, in another that of a geographer. No attempt has been made to set out all that history or geography can do for the education of the average and below-average boys and girls during their schooldays. We have concentrated on certain things and certain lessons which they need especially to learn during their last year or two at school and which we think history and geography can usefully teach them. We do not really mind which does it. There are more than a sufficient number of teachers of both to meet the needs of the schools. It is only fair, however, to add that many of them would feel themselves singularly ill-equipped to undertake the kind of work which is suggested in this chapter. There is need for a review of what history and, to a rather less extent, of what geography is taught in higher education. There is quite certainly need for a large programme of in-service training.

515. Can historians and geographers do all that boys and girls need in this sphere? It seems to us that the answer must be 'no'. Most of the illustrations we used lead on into the field of moral judgements. No review of the world situation can fail to show boys and girls how strong and how various are the faiths by which men live. They are bound to encounter and admire the conviction and self-sacrifice which many Communists display. They will discover how Protestant pastor, Roman Catholic priest and Communist cell leader alike were tried in the ordeal of Buchenwald and not found wanting. They will find, too, how men of all faiths can be cruel and evil, often with the highest possible motives. Both discoveries need thinking about. Turning back to one of our original illustrations, they will grossly misunderstand Mr Ghandi if they fail to realise something of the subtlety of his relation to Christianity.

516. This involves among other things knowing what Christianity is. There is a straightforward teaching job to be done here. Just what do Christians believe about God and man, life and death? Many fourteen year old boys and girls will not know unless they are taught - but it is often assumed that they know this already. An information service is important, and they ask for it. In their last years at school there is need also to help them to see the difference that being a Christian makes, or should make, to the answers that have to be given to problems of living. Some of these problems are personal and immediate; some are collective and social - relations with parents and with friends of the opposite sex; problems of conflicting loyalties to friends and to moral standards; nuclear weapons and the colour bar; the care of the old and thalidomide babies. Problems such as these, and others mentioned in Chapter 7, come up clearly in any discussion about human beings which is more than skin deep. They lend themselves to treatment in the same kind of way as many of the themes already discussed in this chapter. Good teaching may often involve contact with those working outside the school. These contacts should be welcomed; they are part of the process of relating the school to the world. But this kind of contact is not the whole of the answer. Christianity is not to be defined as the religion of Englishmen. It is sometimes difficult for boys and girls to realise this and what it implies. They can be helped to do this if, for instance, they are brought into contact with the problems of Christians who lapsed under Mau Mau persecution and have since wished to come back to their faith. What line should the church take? This was a burning question in the first Christian centuries; it still is. It cannot be solved without probing deeply into the heart of man and the heart of the Christian religion; to observe Africans answering it is sometimes to shame ourselves.

517. In some schools it may be possible to bring the school's religious instruction into close association with the social studies with which this chapter has been mainly concerned. It should gain. But there is always need to remember the double conscience clause - the right of the pupil to be excused, the right of the teacher not to suffer professionally because he does not choose to give religious instruction. There is also a right of pupils to be taught. Until there is a much better supply of skilled and knowledgeable teachers the right to religious education at a true secondary level is bound in some schools to be little more than nominal.

Footnotes

(1) Details are given in paragraphs 677-681.

(2) See paragraphs 633-635.

(3) Present conditions are described in paragraphs 641 and 682.