Education: Literacy by numbers

Education

Literacy by numbers

BETHAN MARSHALL

To criticise a national literacy strategy seems tantamount to attackingmotherhood and apple pie. Anything that gets a nation’s children to readand write better must be a good thing. It must be common sense. And, ofcourse, up to a point it is. The difficulty arises when we try to define what itmeans to be literate and how, once we have arrived at a definition, we thinkchildren are most likely to become so. The problem is further compoundedby the fact that the two are intimately intertwined. In other words, we arelikely to emphasise in our teaching that view of literacy with which we aremost sympathetic.

But the question that will be uppermost in the minds of secondaryEnglish teachers this year is whether or not the notion of literacy is anythingmore than a synonym for their subject. For if you read government docu-mentation, there is little doubt that they are one and the same. Most of whatis contained in the primary schools literacy hour is transferred into yetanother bleak ring-folder entitled Framework for Teaching English: Years 7, 8and 9.1

Depending on how they are counted, this contains a list of roughly 109competencies that pupils should have acquired by the end of year 7 at word,sentence and text level. A similar list exists for years 8 and 9. There isnothing exceptionally objectionable about any one of the items on the list.Most, if not all, would probably be addressed by the average Englishteacher over the course of a year. There are, as always, the eccentric quirksof any list – my particular favourite comes under the heading ‘Under-standing the author’s craft’, whereby it is apparently vital to study how theywrite endings but not how they begin or proceed.2

But this is to miss the point. For part of the function of the list is to makeEnglish teachers accountable. The list ensures that there is a documentagainst which everything they have covered during the course of a yearcan be checked. Yet as important is the way it conveys the stark messagethat the messy business of responding to a book or writing a story or anargument is reducible to a set of clearly defined, immutable rules. And in so

doing it attempts to redefine the subject called English. Whereas even themost tedious textbooks in the past contained the notion of The Art of English,the national literacy strategy is evidently designed around the idea thatEnglish teaching is about transmitting communication skills and very littleelse.

This is not to say that English teachers themselves will not bend, twistand distort the intentions of the strategy to their own ends. Most, I am sure,will, and in so doing will create something considerably more palatableand useful for the pupils they teach. But it is important to note that in sodoing they will be following neither the letter nor the spirit of the strategyitself. What follows, then, is a critique not of what teachers will or havedone with the strategy, but of what the ‘framework’ document, and thetraining materials that accompany it, actually imply themselves.

If we stay with the issue of the content of the lists for the moment, anumber of issues arise. Each of the areas of study – word, sentence and textlevel – are seen as discreet, as are the individual items on the list. There is nosense of how they relate. Broadly generalising, the writers of the frame-work, and the literacy hour that preceded it at primary level, assume thatword level relates to spelling and phonics, sentence level to syntax andgrammar, while text level considers discourse features.

The training video, which accompanies the secondary English framework,reinforces this idea. None of the lessons we are invited to watch integratethese three elements. Indeed, the suggestion is that word- and sentence-level work is to be isolated from the rest of the content of the lesson, taughtin ten-minute blasts at the beginning and not referred to again. We look atone lesson which has a so-called ‘starter activity’ devoted to the teaching ofplurals with ‘es’ and ‘s’ endings before going on to something completelydifferent. In another, we see the use of main and subordinate clauses beingtaught over three or four lessons, never for more than ten minutes at a timeand never directly related to anything else the pupils are studying.

This particular lesson begins to highlight the limits of such an approach.Pupils are invited to comment on the use of the subordinate clause. Shouldyou, for example, write ‘Running down the street Sanjay tripped over hisshoe laces’ or ‘Sanjay, running down the street, tripped over his shoe laces’,or again ‘Sanjay tripped over his shoe laces running down the street’. Theentire emphasis of the lesson is placed on the grammatical feature that isbeing taught. The teacher asks pupils to consider what the punctuationimplications are for ‘embedding’ a clause within the sentence, splitting it orstarting it with the subordinate clause.

These are undoubtedly useful and important lessons to learn. To knowhow to manipulate different types of sentence is to increase the repertoire

104 Critical Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 1

we have to hand when writing. Pupils need to play and experiment with thedifferent ways in which a sentence can be constructed, and they need to betaught explicitly how to do it. But that is not what is happening in thislesson. Given that the aim of the literacy strategy is to improve the qualityof pupils’ writing, little or no attention is given to the pupils’ applying thelessons learned to their own work and, perhaps more importantly, theimpact that they might want to make while writing.

Nor, in a sense, can this attention be given – partly because so much timeis devoted to analysis but also because the sentence under considerationwould then have to be seen in the context of the paragraph in which itoccurred. Pupils would need to know what preceded or succeeded it tohave any sense of whether or not it worked well as a sentence, whetherit achieved the desired effect. But this would be a text-level question andso cannot be asked. So we end up with a lesson that is as arid and asdecontextualised as the old parsing exercises that went out some time inthe seventies – exercises that were abandoned not out of some politicalcorrectness to do with creativity, as is often suggested, but because researchand experience showed they made little impact on improving the quality ofpupils’ writing.3

More curiously still, the framework suggests that paragraphing andcohesion are features that should, in year 7, be taught at sentence level.Pupils are told to study ‘8. Starting paragraphs; 9. Main point of paragraph;10. Paragraph structure’.4 How any of this is to be achieved in isolation is farfrom clear, for there is little suggestion that paragraphs develop from thenarrative flow of the whole text or the structure and development of anargument. Similarly, the stylistic conventions of non-fiction, whatever theymay be, in that they are as diverse as the writers who employ them, are alsoto be analysed at sentence level.

Yet even if we argue, in a way that the strategy does not, that grammarshould be taught for its own sake, we see again that the division of languageinto word, sentence and text level limits analysis. If, this time, we look atword-level work, we find an emphasis on prefixes and suffixes. The reasonfor their inclusion appears to be to teach spelling rules. Again, the trainingvideo supports this interpretation in the lesson taught on ‘es’ and ‘s’endings. As the teacher goes through a list of words, the pupils are invitedto hold up cards with either an ‘s’ or an ‘es’ on it. This enables the teacher tocorrect any misconceptions when a child holds up the wrong one.

Apart from the fact that, as any teacher knows, a pupil may well get theexercise right but fail to apply it to their own work, it seems a waste of achance to show the fascinating grammatical and etymological function thatprefixes and suffixes hold in our language. They create an ideal opportunity

Education: Literacy by numbers 105

for children to begin to think linguistically. In the training video on offer,pupils are given another ten-minute blast at pluralisations when they areasked to group the different suffixes we use to pluralise. Only at the end ofthe activity does the teacher ask, incidentally, the possible origins of thedifferent endings.

In this lesson, what the students end up with is a vast and complex setof rules on how to pluralise, with almost as many exceptions as there arewords. They may also be left with a vague sense that it is the variety oflanguages that contributed to English that is responsible for this parlousstate of confusing affairs. Had the lesson been turned around and the focusbeen etymological, they might have understood something about the wordorigins and been able to devise and apply rules for themselves.

But, as Steven Pinker’s book so ably demonstrates, the fascination ofprefixes and suffixes does not end there.5 Because they modify words andcan lend them their grammatical function, they enable pupils to start tothink linguistically. I have seen groups of students involved in heateddebate when asked to devise rules for the function of prefixes and suffixes,arguing, for example, over what part of speech ‘ing’ is. They find it acts as averb and an adjective and, in so doing, they bump into the thorny questionof gerunds and gerundives. They also start to notice how certain usageshave dropped out of the language so that, for example, we are more likely touse the word unkempt than kempt.

Such kinds of classroom activities are much more akin to the original ideain Cox’s English curriculum6 in the knowledge about language element.Here children are encouraged to become interested in language for its ownsake as well as given a meta-language in order to discuss their own writing.The Language in the National Curriculum (LINK) initiative was designedto support this development by producing training materials for teachersand their classrooms. But the final publication was banned by the then Toryadministration for being ‘unsuitable’.7 Professor Christopher Brumfit ofSouthampton University, who directed the report on grammar teachingpublished in June 1996, was moved at the time, in The Oxford Companion to theEnglish Language, to describe the suppression of the publication as ‘an act ofdirect political censorship’.8

Interestingly, Ronald Carter, who headed up the LINC project, has morerecently been working on producing a grammar of spoken English. As withhis previous work, this research highlights the failure of any attempts toreduce the complexity of English grammar to a set of easily transmittedrules.

His work is most interesting in the way in which he identifies thesubversive, aesthetic and playful use of language employed by native


English.9 He notes for instance how the most common usage of preposi-tions, far from being to denote spacial relationships (such as on the table,behind the door), is, rather, metaphoric and idiomatic – cheesed off; fed up;under the weather. He found too that it is almost impossible to analyse asentence in isolation from the context in which it arises. This is in partbecause people often create collective sentences, one interjection in a con-versation arising out of the next. It also occurs because individuals playwith language as they speak. They pun, for example, and subvert well-known quotations or phrases, but, more than that, these playful encountersact like riffs in a conversation, where those involved add to and build on theprevious contribution. They even play with the sounds of words.

Such creative use of language and its study is entirely absent from thedocumentation provided by the DfEE. Perhaps that is why I balk at theliteracy strategy, because it seems to me that the sheer artistry of words on apage, the ability of language to transport and inform, lies far from its heart.It can be read into the strategy but it is not what it is about. Possibly the bestway of illustrating the point is to look at the way in which the governmentproposes it is to be tested. For, laid bare in the exam pages of the euphem-istically entitled optional tests for years 7 and 8, lies the strategy’s utilitariansoul. These tests are to be taken at the end of the year to see how much thepupils have progressed over the course of twelve months. In some respectsthey are the clearest demonstration of what is meant by the deadlyparagraph which appears on page 15 of the Framework.

Clearly there is a balance to be achieved between providing classroom time tosupport the reading of longer texts, and the imperative to ensure progression.Having clear objectives lends pace and focus to the study of longer texts; thereis less need to teach all possible angles on the text and more reason to focusaround those aspects which cluster around the objectives. This aim is toprovide enjoyable encounters, which serve the objectives well but do notdemand a disproportionate commitment of time.10

If we now look at the optional tests, piloted in 2001, it becomes evident whatthis means. The test of reading contains three pieces – two non-fiction andone an extract from a novel. The extract comes from Tom’s Midnight Garden,an enchanting and slightly fey children’s book which describes a boy’sadventures in an apparently magical garden which only appears after thehall clock strikes thirteen. Only at the end is it revealed that Hetty, Tom’schild companion in these midnight encounters, is the old woman who livesat the top of the house.

The impact of this revelation cannot be understood without having readthe rest of the book. Phillippa Pearce, the author, so builds the narrativethat when Tom finally meets Hetty, now the old Mrs Bartholomew, we as


readers have been prepared for the denouement, and yet find pleasure inthe resolution. There is a lyricism about the book which culminates in thoseclosing chapters. It is not that you cannot see the resolution coming; in factthat is part of the point. The ending is almost inevitable – as the lives of thetwo main characters intertwine and form a loop or circle in time.

And which section of the book do the examiners choose to use in theexam? This final encounter, now robbed of its charm and purpose, placedthere apparently to satisfy the demand that pupils should be able identifythe rule for using a semi-colon. One of the questions reads:

‘He understood so much now: why the weather in the garden had always beenperfect; why time in the garden had sometimes jumped far ahead, andsometimes gone backwards.’Explain how the use of a colon and a semi-colon helps to make the meaning ofthis sentence clear.11

Undoubtedly, using this extract to teach the use of the colon and semi-colonwould meet an objective and, in all probability, it would not take muchtime. Perhaps the authors of the strategy believe that encountering a punc-tuation rule in the context of a children’s story will make it ‘enjoyable’, but itis likely to make the teaching of the novel arid and dull if it is to be reducedin such a way. The book is an escape, a fantasy, an imaginative experience.Who is to say what aspect of it would ‘demand a disproportionate commit-ment of time’?12

But what the question really reveals, as does the Framework ’s instruction,is the lack of interest in the meaning of a book, indeed the very purpose ofreading a book in the first place. That sentence is a moment of epiphanyfor reader and character alike. It is, as it were, the point of Tom’s MidnightGarden, where all the strands and themes meet; where, if you have beentruly involved, you want to cry. When reading it aloud to a class, it’s thepart of the chapter where you can cut the atmosphere with a knife, when acough or an untoward interruption would break the spell; it is the momentwhen Tom recognises in the old women his childhood friend and every-thing falls into place. Not in a neat, rational way regarding the nature oftime, as the other questions suggest, but through understanding memory,imagination and the need for companionship. And how do you get to thatpoint but by spending a ‘disproportionate’ amount of time revelling in thereading of the whole text?

In an interview in the English and Media Magazine, the award-winningchildren’s author David Almond complained of the use made of his novelSkellig as exemplification material in the Framework document. He felt thattoo much was lost from the enjoyment of reading by trawling his work for


opportunities to analyse linguistic features such as noun phrases. When yousee how texts are to be assessed, you begin to believe he has a right to beconcerned. As teachers are placed under pressure to demonstrate that theirteaching has wrought the improvements necessary to move children up alevel, the temptation will be to teach to the test, and any pleasure gainedfrom sharing a book will be lost in the drive ‘to focus around those aspectswhich cluster around the objectives’.13

And is this upheaval of the English curriculum based on evidence thatthe primary literacy strategy has worked? Deemed so successful by thisgovernment and the tabloid press, it seems to have made little or nodifference to the quality of children’s writing. The continual year-on-yearrise in test scores for 11-year-olds has disguised the fact that almost all thegains have been made in reading. In 2000, for example, the scores jumpedfrom 70 per cent of pupils gaining the bench-mark level 4 or above, to 77 percent. But the gap between the reading and writing scores has widened. In1999 only 54 per cent achieved a level 4 in writing, as opposed to 78 per centin reading. There is even evidence that much of the rise in reading scores isattributable to the type of question being asked. Mary Hilton14 argues thatthose questions which require a complex and analytic response have beensacrificed to make way for more and more questions that need only infor-mation retrieval.

This article has had at least four starts – some mental and some a para-graph or so long on my computer screen. All of them have been aborted andthis is now the final version – I think. I end with the painful journey towardsthe actualisation of thoughts onto a piece of paper or screen, by way ofillustrating the complexity of the writing process. It is not simply aboutspelling words correctly, or getting the syntax straight; it is about findinga way of conveying an idea or mood, an emotion or depiction. It is, inthe end, about conveying meaning. And when we read something, whatmatters is whether we have understood or responded to what the writer haswritten. To be able to do both is to be literate. To enable children to do bothis the job of the English teacher. The lists and charts and planningdocuments are only a cynical ploy to keep the circus people in check. Wemust not let the Gradgrind’s have their day.

Notes

1 DfEE, Framework for Teaching English: Years 7, 8 and 9 (HMSO, London, 2001).2 Ibid., 43.3 QCA, The Grammer Papers: Perspectives on the Teaching of Grammar in the

National Curriculum (HMSO, London, 1998).


4 DfEE, Framework for Teaching English, 43.5 S. Pinker, Words and Rules (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999).6 DES and WO, English for Ages 5–16 [The Cox Report] (London, HMSO, 1989).7 T. Eggar, cited in B. Cox, Cox on the Battle for the English Curriculum (London:

Hodder and Stoughton, 1995), 17.8 C. Brumfit, The Oxford Companion to the English Language (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1992), 269.9 R. Carter, Paper presented to the Cross London Seminar, King’s College

London, 1999.10 DfEE, Framework for Teaching English, 15.11 QCA, Optional Tests Year 7: Past and Present (HMSO: London, 2001), 9.12 DfEE, Framework for Teaching English, 15.13 Ibid.14 M. Hilton, ‘Writing Process and Progress: Where do we go from here? English

in Education, 35:1 (2001), 4–11.


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Education: Literacy by numbers