English as an emancipatory subject in England: analysing the research into the history of the subject for a post neoliberal future.

Submitted by: Andy Goodwyn
Abstract: This paper considers the nature of English as a school subject in England in relation to its history as a potentially emancipatory subject. The research question is ‘Can English still claim to be an emancipatory subject for its teachers and students?’
The subject called ‘English’ is essentially an emancipatory subject’ its complications, contradictions and vexed history make that a questionable claim but English has immense and continuous potential to be truly emancipatory and, at times, has more fully embraced that concept. The simplest definition of the term, ‘emancipatory’, is to free from restraint, control or the power of another – but the term is much broader including concepts of freedom, human rights [especially those of women], the abolition of slavery, the principles of democracy and the idea of ‘liberation’. Butzlaff states ‘Scholars have repeatedly pointed to a constant enlargement (Grass & Koselleck, 1994) and pluralisation (Rebughini, 2015) of the term’s meaning’ [Butzlaff, 2022, p.95]. That perspective is from political theory but is appropriate because the domain of English, certainly in high schools, is necessarily political – although as suggested already, English is a quicksilver subject and is more explicitly political at certain times, the more political its orientation, the more emancipatory its modus operandi.
It has been suggested elsewhere [Goodwyn, 2020a, 2020b] that it can be useful to consider the history of the school subject of English, at least in England, as a series of phases. The method adopted here is an approach that is quasi-historical. It is historical in that actual dates and actual people are specified and so the analysis is grounded the analysis in historical reality but it is not the work of a historian researching archive material. It is principally an attempt to illuminate the present and future of the subject by drawing on those past phases as a resource to think with, as a particular explanatory framework. This study selects three key phases, each associated with a particularly seminal report. Given the currently dire, neoliberalized, condition of English in England [see Goodwyn, 2022], the focus here is strongly on where and how the past versions of the subject substantively enabled emancipatory experiences and knowledge.
English is always partly emancipatory but certain periods have demonstrated its optimum power and not just potential. The suggested phases overall [often over lapping] are: [1], ennobling the vernacular 1870-1914; [2], conventions and conditions 1918-1954; [3], culturing the citizenry 1929-1954, [4] Growth through Language 1954-89, [5], English in harmonious practice 1980-1992 and [6], Building the Panopticon, the coming of control, conformity and self-regulation 1993 -ongoing. [ Goodwyn 2020a, 2020b].
The research focuses on three key documents and their relationship to the phases, The Newbolt Report, The Bullock Report and The Cox Report with references to The Kingman Report and the LINC project.
The two most recent surveys by NATE [Goodwyn, 2020] demonstrate clearly that well informed and professional English teachers continue to express emancipatory values and experience enormous frustrations because of the utter dominance of the current examination system and the restricted kind of pedagogy it demands.
The analysis puts the last two decades into the perspective of fifteen decades, going back to the nascence of subject English in the 1870s, Matthew Arnold really did have some important ideas. The essential momentum of the subject through Newbolt, Bullock and Cox remains the main history of subject English, an increasingly democratic and emancipatory subject with social justice at its heart. That history is complicated with all kinds of nationalism, colonialism, patriarchy and conservative notions of literary heritage but the story demonstrates English teachers striving to balance the societal demands of these pressures with their progressive ideals to develop a humane version of that society.
English remains a grand, emancipatory project. Its critics are always clear that its pretentions need to be curbed for the security of a certain kind of hierarchically structured nation state. This is a challenge for all L1 teachers in the neoliberal, global era [see Green & Erikson, 2020]. Around the world English is boxed in by regulatory frameworks and oppressed by right wing agendas for whom the nation state is a form of mind control; would that these were hysterical claims but the times give them truth. History, when authentically told, always reveals that tyrannies are temporary although their endurance feels permanent. The history of English is necessarily complex and vexed, its current state is compromised, but its future must take inspiration from its undiminished ambition to return to being the truly emancipatory subject for all its students and teachers.