Literature-Study and Teaching (Primary)-Australia-History
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Green, Bill and Beavis, Catherine 1996, Teaching the English subjects: essays on English curriculum history and Australian schooling, Deakin University Press, Geelong, Vic. ©1996, Deakin University This is an Open Access book distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives Licence Available from Deakin Research Online: http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30090707 Teaching the English Subjects Essays on English Curriculum History and Australian Schooling edited by Bill Green and Catherine Beavis DEAKIN UNIVERSITY PRESS Published by Deakin University Press, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria 3217, Australia First published 1996 © Deakin University 1996 Produced and printed by the Course Development Centre, Deakin University National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication data Teaching the English subjects: essays on English curriculum history and Australian schooling. ISBN 0 949823 57 0 1. English language-Study and teaching (Primary)-Australia. 2. English language-Study and teaching (Secondary)-Australia. 3. English language Study and teaching (Secondary)-Australia-History. 4. English language-Study and teaching (Primary)-Australia-History. 5. English literature-Study and teaching (Primary)-Australia-History. 6. English literature-Study and teaching (Secondary)-Australia-History. I. Green, Bill, 1952-. II. Beavis, Cathy. 428.0071294 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Deakin University. Acknowledgments We wish to thank the following copyright holders for permission to include their works in this book: Education Department of South Australia, for extracts on pp. 123-9 passim, from Course ef lnstrnction for Primary Schools (English) 1962; English Teachers Association (NSW) for the extracts on pp. 57 & 68, from unpublished minutes of the Association; E. L. French, for the quotation on p. 19, from Secondary education in the Australian social order, PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 1958; David Homer, for quotations on pp. 24, 25, 30 & 48, from Fifty years of purpose and precept in English teaching 1921-1971, MEd thesis, University of Melbourne, 1973; NSW Department of School Education, for quotations on p. 58, from Semi-official Correspondence of Dr H. S. Wyndham. Excerpts on pp. 42, 43, 44, 53 & 54, from unpublished minutes of meetings of the NSW Board of Secondary Studies and Secondary Schools Board, reproduced courtesy Office of the Board of Studies, NSW While every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright holders, we tender apologies for any accidental infringement of copyright. In such a case we would be pleased to come to a suitable arrangement with the rightful owner. This book has been produced as part of the study materials for units offered by the School of Social and Cultural Studies, Faculty ofEducation, in Deakin University's Open Campus Program. Contents Introduction: English teaching and curriculum history 1 Bill Green and Catherine Beavis Chapter 1 Changing constructions: Literature, 'text' and English teaching in Victoria 15 Catherine Beavis Chapter 2 Telling the story of the NSW secondary English curriculum: 1950-1965 40 Paul Brock Chapter3 The English curriculum and social class: Senior secondary English curriculum in Victoria 1941-1993 71 Chris Reynolds Chapter 4 The shaping of secondary English in Western Australia: The formative years, 1890s-1915 96 Ken Willis Chapters Writing the teacher: The South Australian junior primary English teacher, 1962-1995 118 Phil Cormack and Barbara Comber Chapter 6 Working out one's own salvation: Programming primary English teaching 145 Jo-Anne Reid Chapter7 Reading in Australia: A history of primary reading education 1790-1945 170 Noelene Reeves Chapter 8 Manners, morals, meanings: English teaching, language education and the subject of 'Grammar' 204 Bill Green and john Hodgens Introduction: English teaching and curriculum history Bill Green and Catherine Beavis • The current scene There is a striking dearth of historical perspective and imagination apparent in cur riculum work in and on the teaching of English, and in research and teacher educa tion in language and literacy education. This is especially the case in Australia. It is evident in research and pedagogy alike, and refers equally to work at both the pri mary and secondary levels of schooling and teacher education. As a result, debates such as the recent struggle between 'process' and 'genre' emphases in writing peda gogy and literacy education, or that addressing the question of'grammar', tend to proceed, largely and significantly, on the basis of myth, caricature, and limited forms of binary or oppositional thinking. Similarly, notions such as 'response' or 'collabo rative learning', or 'group work', are often taken up relatively uncritically or else critiqued in a profoundly ahistorical manner, as if their most recent manifestation on the scene of teaching and schooling has either no precedent or is somehow a 'natural' register of 'progress' and 'truth'. Concepts and historical-philosophical movements such as 'Progressivism' and 'Romanticism' are all too often deployed with neither theoretical rigour nor historical grounding and reference. The result is to compromise and constrain the nature and effectiveness of English teaching at all levels of schooling, as well as the development of informed action-understandings of the field and the profession. Now, more than ever, given its current state of crisis, controversy and change, English teaching needs to be firmly placed in historical and social context, with due recognition of its complex and contradictory character and of the significant (dis)continuities in its historical record.This will enable practition ers, students, scholars and teacher educators alike to grasp and exploit the larger picture of English curriculum history-past, present and future-as a resource for curriculum praxis. • Debating 'English' While this monograph deliberately takes the category 'English' as its organising reference point, it does so not at all uncritically or naively. Working explicitly with 2 TEACHING THE ENGLISH SUBJECTS such a category is consistent with contemporary curriculum and policy develop ments in Australia generally-as well as in the UK and North America-as evi denced in the recent National Statement on English in Australian Schools. Campagna (1994) notes, for instance, that it quickly became apparent to the working party charged with producing the Statement and Profile, and associated materials, that there was 'no agreed, across the nation definition of English', and considerable con fusion and conflict with regard to the relationship between 'English' and 'literacy'. Further, there were clearly 'quite different conceptions of English ... between pri mary and secondary curriculum personnel and teachers' (Campagna 1994, p. 1). It is therefore important to bear in mind that the official policy position in Australia in this regard now firmly emphasises a common K-12 view of 'English' as a distinctive and specific area of schooling and learning. While it may still be the case that 'on the ground', as it were, 'English' is not the preferred term at the primary level-being more commonly known as 'lan guage arts' or 'language and literacy'-it has been so historically. Teacher manuals and syllabus documents indicate this very clearly; at least up until the 1970s, 'Eng lish' was the term in general usage for primary schooling as much as for secondary schooling, and this is very clear in teacher education contexts.1 Murray's (1988) brief survey of primary teaching since the 1940s specifically traces a movement, in his terms, from 'English as a subject' through successive phases of 'English as skills', 'English and the creative individual' and 'the 'New English' to the 'Language Arts'. Moreover, in his account this is clearly a 'progressive' movement, with the latter formulation in the 1980s being understood as referring to an emergent-albeit complex-' new orthodoxy' in primary language and literacy education. 'English', as such, had by this time clearly fallen out of favour-something that coincides with profound forms of crisis and change in the discourse of English teaching itself. However, the term 'English' is certainly more immediately recognisable in secondary contexts, although that too needs to be properly historicised. Does it refer to literary education, broadly conceived along the lines of analyses such as that of Hunter (1988a) and others? If so, a distinction needs to be made between the emergence and consolidation of English as a school-subject-something limited to little more than a century across the international English teaching community and the peculiar nexus of popular schooling and literary education that runs at least across the (somewhat larger) history of institutionalised education. Moreover, nine teenth-century references to 'the English subjects' embraced Literature, History and Geography, a much broader canvas than seems even intelligible now, at least at the school level. Historical perspective seems entirely necessary, then. Accordingly, we should welcome initiatives along these lines in the recent Christie Report (Christie et al. 1991). Recommendation 38 is as follows: That all teacher training programs in secondary English include (i) work on the history