This article is equal parts educational history and political philosophy. We aim to remind readers that subject English (SE) and indeed state education emerge from the contradictory impulses of classical liberalism, and that, more than simply resembling citizenship education, SE emerges in the first instance as a form of highly normativising citizenship education. We further argue that, following England's recent educational reforms initiated by former Education Secretary Michael Gove, SE continues to be framed in moral terms consistent with citizenship education-again, of a highly normativising sort. England's current educational policy generally, and specifically the framing of SE, employs the language of liberal possibility, while ultimately espousing an invidious exclusionary and assimilationist politics. The framing of SE, moreover, is one that misrepresents the supposedly 'rich and varied literary heritage' it is supposed to exemplify and promote. The current political landscape in which the study of literature takes place is one where a crisis of liberalism is manifest (in terms of populism, radicalisation or apathy). However, we do not believe the answer is to retreat into a sealed, hermetic canon that excludes the reality that England and English literature are fundamentally multicultural and polyethnic. SE will be the poorer for not fully acknowledging and embodying this, for not enabling students to imaginatively and critically engage with characters and experiences that reflect both the present and long-standing diversity of English society, as well as its present and long-standing inequalities.
Debate over subject curricula is apt to descend into internecine squabbles over which (whose?) curriculum is best. Especially so with school English, because its domain(s) of knowledge have commonly been misunderstood, or, at least, misrepresented in the government's programmes of study. After brief consideration of democratic education (problems of its form and meaning), I turn to issues of knowledge and disciplinarity, outlining two conceptions of knowledge-the one constitutive and phenomenological, the other stipulative and social-realist. Drawing on Michael Young and Johan Muller, I argue that, by social-realist standards of objectivity, school English in England as currently framed in national curriculum documents falls short of the standards of 'powerful knowledge' and of a democratic education conceived as social justice. Having considered knowledge and disciplinarity in broad terms, I consider the curricular case of school English, for it seems to me that the curious position of English in our national curriculum has resulted in a model that is either weakly, perhaps even un-, rooted in the network of academic disciplines that make up English studies. *** Knowledge, the Curriculum, and Democratic Education: The Curious Case of School English To accept Ansgar Allen and Roy Goddard's claim that education is always 'political in that it is intimately involved with the values and interests that government serves and the social ends it purses' (2017, 6) is to presuppose, among other things, that the various forms of state-provided or-sanctioned education tell us something about the state's attitude towards, or conception of, education. 1 In recent years in England, central government has tightened its control of most curricular aspects of schooling, and so my aim in what follows is to consider issues of democratic education in relation to curriculum design, knowledge, and disciplinarity. Debate over subject curricula is apt to descend into internecine squabbles over which (or whose?) curriculum is best. Especially so with school English, because its domain(s) of knowledge have commonly been either misunderstood or misrepresented by the government's programmes of study. After briefly outlining why a democratic education that consists in mirroring democratic political machinery and process may not be the only or even the best way of 'doing' democratic education, I turn my attention to issues of knowledge and disciplinarity. Here, I outline two conceptions of knowledge-the one constitutive and phenomenological, the other stipulative and social-realist-and trace a line of continuity between them. Drawing on the work of Michael Young and Johan Muller, I hope to show how and why, by a social-realist standard of objectivity, school English in England as currently framed in national curriculum documents 2 falls short of the standards of 'powerful knowledge' and of a democratic education conceived as social justice. Curriculum design, and the presuppositions upon which it is based, is as central to the possibility of a...
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