Levende Talen. Jaargang 1933

The teaching of the mother tongue in English secondary schools.

My opening words must be of thanks to the Committee of the Vereniging van Leraren in Levende Talen for the honour they have done me in inviting me to address you this morning. It is a privilege that I appreciate, and I hope therefore in return that what I have to say may be of some interest and perhaps even use to you. I only regret that I am unable to address you in Dutch: I did contemplate the possibility of having my remarks translated, but realised that it would after all hardly be repaying your kindness to submit your language to bad pronunciation and a halting delivery.

I have been asked to give you a sketch of the place occupied by the mother tongue in English secondary school teaching. I shall endeavour in the time at my disposal to indicate at least the main aspects of this wide and most important subject, selecting what seem to me to be the principal topics and commenting on them briefly.

Now until recent years the mother tongue was in England the Cinderella among the subjects of the school curriculum. Till the end of the eighteenth century, indeed, English as a subject had no place in education at all, in spite of a few solitary protesting voices, and when in the following century it was at last admitted it was grudgingly received and harshly treated. In the twentieth century, however, it gradually became more prominent, though there was no clear realisation of exactly what place it ought to hold or why. By the beginning of the post-war period dissatisfaction on the question was general, and a review of the whole position was felt to be urgent. Something of the same sort of dissatisfaction seems to be felt in Holland to-day: I read in the current number of Levende Talen (No. 72, Dec. 1932) that some would go so far as to characterise the position

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as regards the mother tongue as chaotic (though another energetically denies chaos - see pp. 318-21), while a more temperate opinion admits: ‘Toch is het ... van belang, dat er meer eenheid komt in het moedertaalonderwijs’ (p. 303), and continues ‘Een onderzoek naar de richting waarin zich dit onderwijs in hoofdzaak beweegt lijkt mij zeer gewenst’ (p. 303). Preparatory to this it has seemed to you desirable on the present occasion to glance at the state of affairs in other countries, to see how, if at all, they have dealt with problems essentially similar for every nation, and to take profit and warning from their successes and failures - which is partly the reason for my presence here to-day.

Now vague dissatisfaction having once been felt, it does seem that a thorough investigation of the whole matter is a natural preliminary to improvement. In England this first step has been taken. In 1919 a Committee was appointed by the Government ‘to inquire into the position of English in the educational system of England’. This Committee was composed of fifteen experts on educational matters, who in the course of their inquiry received evidence from a hundred and two witnesses representing every type of educational institution. The findings of the Committee were published in 1924 under the title of ‘The Teaching of English in England’¹⁾ in a Report of nearly 400 pages. That Report, which may fairly, I think, be taken to represent English educational opinion, will for convenience sake form the basis of my remarks.

It is perhaps necessary to remark at the outset that the Report has not solved in detail all the problems presented by the investigation, nor has it made any attempt to do so. The paramount necessity was to achieve agreement on and a clear statement of fundamental principles, and it is the great value of the Report, it seems to me, that it has done this. Not that the Report is above criticism: even committees make mistakes, and sometimes bad mistakes that would not have been made by the separate individuals composing them. The Report has been much criticised, has indeed often been looked upon as fair game for sarcastic remark, but the fact remains that even where such criticism is fully justified, the main principles of the Report remain unassailed. And it may be noted that the most serious

1) Published by H.M. Stationery Office, London, 1 s. 6 d.

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criticism has been levelled at the section on University teaching, with which we are not to-day concerned.

A second minor point arises from the opinion of the writer in Levende Talen already quoted, that ‘Dit onderzoek zou moeten uitgaan van de Nederlandse sectie dezer vereniging’ (pp. 303-4). The English investigation was carried out by a Governmental Committee. Government intervention is, it is true, often (and nowhere, I think, more than in England) considered undesirable, but in the present case it does seem to be necessary. For it is essential that such an investigation be thorough: it must not concern itself solely with secondary schools, but must take account of the whole educational system from top to bottom, from the elementary school up to the university, including technical and commercial schools, evening continuation schools, and even institutions for adult education. What must be determined is the place of the mother tongue in the whole national life. This, it seems, is beyond the power of a private association concerned primarily with but a part of the whole system. It must be carried out from above by a body that can see the system as a whole and see clearly the interrelations of its various parts. In addition, such an inquiry is inevitably expensive, although it is money well invested. On all counts the Government is the only body capable of conducting this inquiry fully.

The Committee realised early that the increasing claims of the mother tongue were the result of gradually altered views on education in general. Education, once the privilege of the upper classes, with the change in the social scheme resulting on the industrial revolution and the consequent need for technical training for the humblest worker, spread through all the layers of society, down to the lowest classes. And gradually it was realised that not merely vocational instruction but a liberal education in the fullest sense is the right of every citizen. It therefore became incumbent on the State to provide such an education, which thus received recognition as a public service of the greatest importance.

In their Report the Committee enunciated certain fundamental principles, which may be summarised as follows. Education is the right of all, and a liberal education is not merely a mental discipline or the supplying of useful information, but ‘the acquisition ... of that experience which makes for proficiency

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in living’ (p. III). This acquisition depends on efficient communication between men, which in turn implies the use of language, that - and this is the important point - for all the members of a single nation can only be the mother tongue. Further, the mother tongue ‘is not merely the medium of ... thought, it is the very stuff and process of it’ (p. 20). As for the experience to be acquired, the best repository of this is a nation's literature, ‘the most direct and lasting communication of experience by man to men (p. 9) ... Books are ... the instruments through which we hear the voices of those who have known life better than ourselves (p. 17) ... literature [is],,, the self-expression of great natures, the record and rekindling of spiritual experiences’ (p. 21). Education in the mother tongue is thus not merely a branch of education, ‘but the one indispensable preliminary and foundation of all the rest’ (p. 10), and the mother literature is the chief channel for the formative culture of the people (cf. p. 12). As such, too, it is ‘a new element of national unity, linking together the mental life of all classes by experiences which have hitherto been the privilege of a limited section’ (p. 15).

Starting from this position the Report then goes on to consider the particular problems of the various domains of the subject, in each asking what place the mother tongue ought to hold, what place it actually holds, what yet remains to be done, and how this is to be accomplished.

Before, however, we can consider the application of these principles in practice, it is necessary to call attention to the peculiar nature of the English educational system. It is the product of national proclivities. England is a country in which liberty has always been valued even to exaggeration. The slightest suggestion of interference from above with individual liberty (even for the good of the individual) has always been strongly resented. Government by a democracy being suspected as much as the tyranny of an individual, there has hence evolved the curious constitutional phenomenon of a limited monarchy, in which the two systems operate as a check the one on the other. England is accordingly preeminently a land of private endeavour, with all its consequent disadvantages as well as advantages. Even what are usually in other countries now regarded as essentially national services, vital to the country as a whole and requiring

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organisation and centralised control by the State, have in England remained in the hands of independent private bodies subject to no external control. Thus it is with the coal mines, the railways, and the hospitals, to mention a few examples. So, too, the education of the upper and upper middle classes is still in the hands of those sections of the people, each supporting its own schools and each jealous of its own exclusive privileges.

So far, of course, it is manifestly impossible to speak of any educational system. When, however, as was said above, it became necessary to provide education for the poorer classes, this was recognised to be the responsibility of the State, which, working through Local Education Authorities set up for the purpose, founded schools all over the country. Here at last were laid the foundations of a national system of education. A beginning was made with elementary schools, but in this century secondary schools were also provided and these to-day number well over a thousand. The public educational system is now an organised whole, comprising educational institutions of all types. But it is not the whole education of the country - there is a cleavage, the education of the lower and lower middle classes being public and organised, that of the upper and upper middle classes private and independent. The first result of this, for our present purpose, is that for the former the principles of the Report are regulations which may be enforced, while for the latter they remain only recommendations, to be adopted at will. If education based on the mother tongue is to be that link between the classes that is desired, then such a split is to be regretted. However, the chasm is gradually being bridged, by the offer of annual grants-in-aid to private schools that will submit to a measure of Government inspection and supervision. These schools are said to be ‘recognised by the Board of Education’. The actual control, though, varies considerably. In general, then, it is still necessary to distinguish between the two groups.

For the private schools, consisting principally of the oldest and greatest schools of England (the so-called Public Schools) and also of schools conducted by various religious denominations, are based on the classical tradition. Most of them were founded in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. Now the Renaissance ideal of a liberal education, as the Report points out, was essentially

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the same as that advocated to-day: it was ‘for all who were fitted to receive it ... the development of the full powers of both body and mind’, and ‘was concerned with all the pursuits and activities proper to man; hence the term “Humanities”. It aimed at producing the good citizen, possessed of sound judgment in practical affairs, and at the same time it strongly emphasised the aesthetic ...’ (p. 29). ‘But for our purpose’, continues the Report, which I quote here at length, ‘the significant point is this. What the Humanists looked to as the essential means whereby their ideals might be realised was literature, or “good letters” ... The principle is not affected by the fact that it was classical literature to which they turned and by which they were inspired. No other stone was yet available as the keystone of their arch. During the century which followed the death of Chaucer in 1400 English Literature had developed but little, and at the time of the Renaissance it could scarcely put forward a claim to be included in, still less to hold any place in, the system of education. But the Renaissance educators did clearly perceive, what was all too soon lost sight of, that the essence of a liberal education is the study of a great literature. They found in the classics the source of all culture and enlightenment; the best that had been thought in the world expressed in the best possible way ... The spirit in which they approached the literature which to them was all in all was the spirit which we desire to recapture on behalf of English to-day.’ (pp. 29-30). But the Humanists came just too soon. A century later Latin had ceased to be of practical importance, and a great vernacular literature had meanwhile sprung up. In the schools, unfortunately, the Classics, degenerated now to a formal grammatical study, were in possession of the field, with a tradition behind them and a perfected technique. In the eighteenth century they were confirmed in their position by the theory that education was ‘essentially a discipline ... a training of separate faculties ... for which purposes it was claimed that the classical languages were an incomparable instrument’ (p. 38), while, too, they ‘conferred a certain social distinction’ (p. 39). And these ideas are still strong to-day.

At the beginning of the present century we thus have two groups of secondary schools, on the one hand new government schools teaching modern subjects but with no tradition and

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hence hesitation and uncertainty in their methods; and on the other hand private grammar schools in which modern ideas found little headway. In the latter English had no place, while in the former it was at first neglected in favour of Science. But in the last thirty years English has been making headway rapidly in the government schools, while the private schools have remained pretty much where they were. The result is thus that where formerly the upper classes had all the privileges of education, the lower classes to-day have on the whole the advantage over them of the best education that modern methods can give. A personal example well illustrates this. I was myself educated, within comparatively recent years, at a private school in which most subjects, modern languages and science as well as the classics, were admirably ‘imparted’ by means of a traditional system of drilling, effective, not wholly unpleasant, but certainly unattractive and uninspired. But English, which could not be made to submit to this process, was hardly taught at all. Some years later, after I had completed my university degree studies, I followed a year's course in pedagogy, assisting at the teaching in public elementary and secondary schools. This was, without exaggeration, a revelation to me: for the first time I saw teaching as a science, an art. In these schools I saw an education in every way better and more enlightened than that which I had received. In other words, and it is much to be regretted, there are still schools to which the Report and the ideas and ideals represented by it have not yet penetrated. Fortunately, however, there is another side of the question. For some of the most successful recent experiments in method have been carried out in modern private schools. One of these is the Perse School, in which Mr. Caldwell Cook conducts the Play Way, which he has described in a fascinating book under that title. To sum up, while in the private schools one may find teaching representing every shade between the extremes of excellence and badness, in the government schools there is a high general level of teaching on modern lines that is continually improving. And in these schools the mother tongue is gradually coming to have that pride of place claimed for it in the Report.

From this rather long historical sketch emerges the important fact that the great contrast between the English public and private schools is not due to any inherent difference in their organisation

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but is purely an accident of development. Hence, while on the one hand the public school system is a spur to the private schools and offers a model which they are not being slow to imitate, on the other hand this public system has many of the advantages of the private school group, notably in regard to independence and liberty. For it is not a highly centralised system - the schools are conducted by local authorities which are left free to follow their own methods. Everywhere, however, the fundamental principles laid down in the Report and summarised above are accepted, and this has been sufficient to produce a uniformity of method that is at once a striking confirmation of the Committee's belief that methods would spontaneously follow on the adoption of sound principles, and a justification of their consequent refraining from prescribing detailed methods themselves.

It follows naturally that, if the mother tongue is regarded as the only satisfactory basis for all education, the main problems connected with its teaching in secondary schools are to a great extent general educational problems relating, though primarily to the mother tongue, also to other subjects and to other types of school. I make no apology, therefore, for dwelling on such problems, for they are, in spite of their general application, no less problems in the teaching of the mother tongue, which must be solved before such teaching can be efficient.

For the teaching of the mother tongue on the lines laid down by the Report, the first necessity is a teaching body trained on those lines. The realisation of a liberal education (which is a spiritual, not a mechanical process) requires, first and foremost, ideals and enlightenment in the teachers. An important aid to this is undoubtedly professional training. Now the elementary school teacher has long received such training, to his great advantage, while until lately a university education in the subjects he is to teach has for the secondary school teacher been deemed a sufficient substitute for training. There are still, in fact, those who deny the usefulness of professional training for the secondary school teacher, in spite of the fact that in every other vocation in life some preparation is admitted to be required. And the ill-effects of a lack of training are indeed profound and farreaching, for to it may be traced the origin of some of the greatest obstacles that remain to be faced, namely, opposing

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theories of education and the absence of enthusiasm. Consider what happens. Having completed his own studies, the teacher is for the first time put in front of a class. He knows that he has to impart a knowledge of his subject to his pupils, but he has no idea how to set about his task. There follows a process of trial and error which - and in such a delicate and complex matter as education it is no wonder - in all too many cases ends in disaster. Now the critical period is the first year or two of teaching, and it is ill-success in these early years that results in the practical application, if not the conscious adoption, of either the ‘discipline’ theory, already mentioned, which insidiously holds that ‘the process of learning and not the thing learned’ is what matters, thus losing at least half the benefit of a complete education, or of the ‘cram’ theory, which believes in simply storing a receptive mind with useful information. And in addition, what enthusiasm the teacher may have had at the outset has in the meantime disappeared. He is disillusioned, and what should have been a vocation has become for him merely a means of livelihood.

This is, unfortunately, no imaginary or exaggerated picture - and it is the negation of a liberal education. And the remedy is simple: it lies in giving the teacher-to-be guidance and a helping hand, by means of professional training, in his first teaching days. Accordingly, although it has not yet been made compulsory, it is now in England in practice almost universal for a secondary school teacher, after taking a university degree in his subject, to follow a year's course in pedagogy. This includes both theoretical and practical work: with lectures on the principles of education, educational history and psychology, and on the methodology of his subjects, is combined ‘school practice’, which comprises assistance at and participation in the teaching in a secondary school, in London this being for two days a week throughout the year. The school practice is by far the most useful and important part of the course, for ‘an ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory’: the two combined, however, are invaluable.

There remain other reasons for the absence of ideals in teachers. Hardly less important in this respect than training is the matter of salaries. If a teacher is underpaid and overworked, anxious and harassed, he can hardly be expected to retain a lively

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appreciation of either the responsibilities or the dignity of his calling. It may be said that in England to-day, although education is still one of the first victims of emergency economies, secondary school teachers are comparatively well paid (better, for example, on the whole than university teachers). In favourable contrast, I think, with Holland, they are paid by the year, not by the hour, and they have mainly full-time employment in a single school, to which they are thus able to devote all their energies. Another contrast, perhaps not entirely an advantage, is that there is not complete specialisation. In a single school one subject does not always occupy a teacher's whole time. It is usual therefore for him to teach a main subject and one or two allied subsidiary subjects. Thus English and History, French and German, Greek and Latin, Physics and Chemistry, are frequent combinations. The relating of work in naturally connected subjects is an obvious advantage in many ways, but incomplete specialisation also permits abuses, especially as regards the mother tongue. For, either in the belief that the mother tongue did not require teaching, or because it did not submit easily to drilling methods, English was until quite lately often left to anybody and everybody to deal with, and consequently received scant attention.

In connection with the question of specialisation in general, it is perhaps worth noting that in England, in contrast with continental practice on the whole, there is a clear distinction between the university and the secondary school teacher, the former being a man primarily interested in the advancement of knowledge on his subject, the latter chiefly interested in children and their training. The secondary school teacher (better off than his university colleague) is on the whole a secondary school teacher by vocation and has no aspirations to university teaching, while on the other hand the university teacher rarely serves his apprentice ship in a school - to the great advantage of both, for each is contented in his own work and is thus, in a phrase which I have found to be a favourite in Holland, ‘the right man in the right place’.

Perhaps the outstanding characteristic of the English secondary school system is, as has been noted before, its freedom, and this applies particularly to methods. Here as regards details the utmost diversity prevails - but there is, nevertheless, a ‘unity in diversity’, in as far as there is to-day pretty general acceptance of

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certain fundamental principles that suffice to determine the main character of the teaching.

Noteworthy first is the realisation, on the principle that ‘every teacher is a teacher of English, because every teacher is a teacher in English’ (p. 63), that the mother tongue is a unifying influence throughout the school, as the foundation of the teaching of all subjects. In spite, therefore, of the extreme importance of the mother tongue it is not necessary, as was at first feared by its opponents, to claim for it a disproportionate place in the syllabus: ‘The whole of the timetable is ... available for the teaching of English’ (p. 63), and indeed, as far as speech and expression are concerned, much work can be done and time saved by the insistence on a high standard of English, especially in written work, by teachers of other subjects.

In the teaching of Literature the main principle (as I see it emphasised also in Levende Talen, p. 304) is that it should be kept close to life, while it is hardly less important that it should be entrusted to teachers who themselves love it. The old method of concentrating attention exclusively on the notes of an elaborately annotated text of Shakespeare, to the almost complete neglect of the play itself - with the result that one left school with a dislike rather than a love of literature - has now almost entirely disappeared, although, it is painful to admit, it does still linger tenaciously in one or two schools. Now, it is the texts themselves that are read, and read as a whole. Complete or abridged texts of individual authors are studied, and anthologies illustrating various literary genres, either in a particular age or in their whole development, and also various aspects of life as treated in literature. Formal anthologies illustrating the whole history of English literature are not used, nor is the history of literature treated as such, though a good idea of the main lines of development is gradually obtained through the judicious selection of texts during the secondary school years. The choice of material in a literature so rich and varied as English is of course very wide: two series of modern textbooks that are no doubt known to you, Nelson's Teaching of English Series and Dent's Kings Treasuries of Literature, contain 154 and 215 volumes respectively, classified as junior, intermediate and senior. It would take too long to discuss even briefly the books in these series, but I may say that their titles are themselves an

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assurance that in them the close relation between literature and life is preserved, while in their introductions and notes may be found a clear indication of the way in which their contents are approached and treated. And it may be noted that they are all most attractive little volumes, with nothing of the forbidding look of the traditional textbook about them. This is important: it is of course obvious that even in the whole secondary school period only an infinitesimal proportion of these can be studied with any thoroughness in the classroom, but most children are eager readers, and great attention is nowadays paid to the direction of their home reading, not only through the school library, but also through separate class libraries, in which many of these little books find a welcome place. Thus after all, a greater proportion of these books is read than might have been expected. In the midst of the greatest individual variety, a useful minimum of uniformity is preserved by the fact that in the upper classes there are public written examinations for which ‘set books’ are prescribed that are the same for all schools taking those examinations. These generally include a Shakespeare play, a verse anthology, and an anthology of prose, usually essays, each as a rule selected from a choice of two or three.

In all English teaching the oral method is now strongly emphasised. In the past one of the chief weaknesses has been the almost exclusive concentration on written work, which has produced the inarticulate Englishman, who we hope will soon be a figure of the past. In the elementary school insistence is laid on the teaching of the standard speech, and this is continued in the secondary school, with the use of phonetic symbols. Poetry and prose are read aloud and learned by heart, and composition is to a great extent taught by oral methods, the pupil learning to express himself in impromptu and prepared speeches and in discussions and debates. The dramatic method is also employed, with the most valuable results, plays being not only read aloud but also acted in the classroom.

In addition, original plays are composed and stories and poems dramatised by the pupils, either individually or working together. This method is used with great profit, too, in the teaching of other subjects, especially History and Modern Languages. In fact it is impossible to overestimate the importance of the drama in education, for through it pupils learn, not only

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to speak well and to move gracefully, but also to be selfconfident and resourceful.

A great deal of English work is also done outside school hours, in various school societies, literary, debating and dramatic, and through competitions and school magazines.

Finally, there is the question of language work - and here there is still much hesitation and uncertainty. Until recently English grammar, when taught at all, was forced into the mould of the old Latin grammars - with disastrous results, in consequence of which it disappeared from the curriculum, to the great relief of teachers and pupils alike. But, to quote the Report once more, ‘an unpopular subject is generally a subject which is badly taught, and bad teaching is almost invariably the product of misunderstanding and lack of interest’ (p. 282).

Meanwhile, a better appreciation of the differences between the dead classic languages and modern foreign languages, and between these and the mother tongue, necessitating a different treatment of each, has been arrived at, with the realisation at the same time that modern English grammar ‘still lacks formulation.’ (p. III). But the need for the study of grammar as the basis of all linguistic work has made itself apparent. What is now advocated, therefore, is that ‘the grammar taught in schools should be pure grammar (i.e., a grammar of function, not of form)’ (p. 357), in other words, a grammar concerned, not with the formal phenomena of a particular language, but with ‘the essential modes of thought of all peoples’ (pp. 290-1), which are the same whatever tongue they speak. Such a grammar is a training in logical thinking, and it provides also the necessary preparation for the study of foreign languages; while exercises such as analysis, parsing and paraphrase are not only linguistic exercises but also valuable literary exercises in form and style.

The ideal school grammar of modern English is still awaited.

Nijmegen.

W.A.G. DOYLE-DAVIDSON.