The Newbolt Report (1921)

• The Newbolt report followed:
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  • H.A.L. Fisher's Education Act 1918
  • establishment of the first English Literature tripos at Cambridge
  • The spectre of the Russian Revolution haunts the report: it begins stressing the social divisions not being bridged by education. English is seen as a means of creating national unity and a bond between classes.

NOTES FROM READING
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• The inquiry was established (in 1919) to investigate the state of English (Language and Literature) taught in school and "advise how its study may best be promoted in schools and in Universities and other Institutions of Higher Education".
• H.A.L. Fisher was President of the Board of Education at the time.
• Among the members of the board: Sir Henry Newbolt, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and George Sampson.

• The report points out that there is no "general or national scheme of education".

  In general, it may not unfairly be said that education is regarded as a suitable occupation for the years of childhood, with the further object of equipping the young in some vague and little understood way for the struggle of adult existence in a world of material interests.

• Private education has in general been superior to state education and "has widened the mental distance between classes". Draws attention to the "social chasms which divide us".

• Classical studies are regarded as the possession of a privileged class.

• The report asserts that "our education has for a long time past been too remote from life".

• Scorns the view that education is "hard labour".

• It must be realised that education is not the same thing as information, nor does it deal with human knowledge as divided into so-called subjects. It is not the storing of compartments in the mind, but the development and training of faculties already existing. It proceeds, not by the presentation of lifeless facts, but by teaching the student to follow the different lines on which life maybe explored and proficiency in living maybe obtained. It is, in a word, guidance in the acquiring of experience.

• Education should be divided into training of the will (morals), training of the intellect (science) and training of the emotions (expression or creative art).

  the three main motives which actuate the human spirit are the love of goodness, the love of truth and the love of beauty

• Education should not be remote from ordinary life.

• In many schools English often regarded as inferior.

  education in English is, for all Englishmen, a matter of the most vital concern, and one which must, by its very nature, take precedencen of all other branches of learning.

• The report argues that the study of the mechanical aspects of Literature should not interfere with the "voyage of the mind... on which the explorer is floating". This "defect of method" is seen as "injurious" in the teaching of Greek and Latin.

  to convey anything of the feeling and thought which are the life of literature the teacher must have been touched by them himself and be moved afresh by the act of communicating the touch to others...

• We believe, therefore, that formal grammar and philology should be recognised as scientific studies, and kept apart (so far as that is possible) from the lessons in which English is treated as an art, a means of creative expression, a record of human experience.

• English is described as "the channel of formative culture for all English people".
  Bemoans the "lack of a general appreciation of the true value of education and the best means of obtaining it".

• The report still acknowledges the importance of Greek and Latin ("Greek literature is still the most life-giving and abundant source to which we trace our highest poetical and philosophical ideas and our feeling for artistic form". Believes that the Classics are "a fundamental part of a national system of education".

  • The "true starting point and foundation":

    for English children no form of knowledge can take precedence of a knowledge of English, no form of literature can take precedence of English literature

• English is seen as a "new element of national unity" that brings together the "mental life" of all classes.

• English is "a means of contact with great minds, a channel by which to draw upon their experience with profit and delight, and a bond of sympathy between the members of a human society".

• Warns that competent teachers are needed.

• Summarises a passage from Wordsworth's Prelude Book XIII in order to promote the use of literature of true education (rather than "book learning").

• Books are not things in themselves, they are merely the instruments through which we hear the voices of those who have known life better than ourselves.

• Role of education:

  >Among the best things which education can give are certainly freedom and independence of thought, a wide outlook on life, and a strong sense of the difference between convention and reality.

• The teacher must keep Literature "close to life"

• The report writers believe that culture and "humane training" can be taught through English (as well as the Classics). English must be the basis for a liberal education.

• The component parts of English:

  • training in speaking standard English
  • teaching standard English speaking and writing
  • training in reading

• English is developed naturally up to a certain degree but does not allow mastery of the mother tongue.

• There is a lack of appreciation of the nature of Art and its relation to human life and welfare in England.

• The report writers clarify that role of Literature is not for its commercial uses (writing business letters up to selling books).

• Literature is a "fine art" and must be taught as such.

• Teaching Language and Literature will have important social and personal results:
  gradual disappearance of the difference between educated and uneducated speech (not dialect)

• unite the "mental pleasures and mental exercises" of all classes (a pride in the national language): "a joy in the national literature serve as such a bond".

• Success depends on:

  • all teachers possessing a sufficiently good ability to teach English
  • teachers of Literature must already be educated in Literature

• this only leads to the conclusion that for teachers we must have those who will not come between their pupils and the author they are reading, but will stand by them sympathetically, directing or moderating the impact of the new experience upon their minds.

• The teacher is the "lever" "if we are to raise the mass" but "They have neither been grounded nor confirmed in the idea of a liberal education". The report urges universities to deliver teacher training and for university graduates to lecture school teachers.

• English was "a thing of no account" in the development of the English educational system.

• Gives a history of the adoption of English as the national language.

• Latin almost exclusively studied in medieval schools (Latin of "a barbarous kind").

• Revolution in educational ideas took place in 15th-16th centuries under the influence of Italian Humanists.

• To the Humanists a liberal education implied the freeing of the human reason and the development of the full powers of both body and mind. It 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, which the mediaeval system had ignored.

• The report argues that Humanist education struggled because Greek and Latin needed to be learned first.

• Humanities narrowed down to mean simply the ancient languages and Humanism "tended to undo the humanistic scheme of education".

• John Brinsley - Ludus Literarius

• Milton - Tractate on Education

• Charles Hoole - Art of Teaching (1660)

• John Locke - Some Thoughts concerning Education (1690)

• By the end of the 17th Century, the position of the established curriculum undermined. Though knowledge of the Classics conferred social distinction.

• 18th Century grammar schools "out of touch with the life of their time".

• Development of "Popular Education" beginning at the start of the 19th Century.

  Fear of the danger to the State that an illiterate population might constitute became a powerful motive after the Reform Bill of 1832 Commons

• 1933 the House of Commons made its first grant towards the cost of education.

• Early philanthropic leaders of schools were inspired by only the most rudimentary educational ideas (read, write, cipher).

• Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth established the Battersea Training College in 1840.

• Teacher training was:

  >all that it could offer was a supposed disciplining of the faculties by means of formal, especially linguistic, studies, tempered, in view of the vocational requirements of the new type of pupil, by certain concessions to the "useful knowledge" theory characteristic of the Academies.

• Mr Moseley, Inspector of Training Colleges for Men, reports of 1848 and 1855.

• The Newcastle Commission "to inquire into the present state of popular education" (established in 1858 and reported in 1861).

• Mr Moseley drew up a Government syllabus for the purpose of testing the instruction given in the Training Colleges for men (details given on p.44).

  >The formalism which so often warped the public school idea of Education is seen setting its stamp upon the Elementary School so soon as it attempts to grow. English, indeed, makes an appearance, but only as a pale reflection of the discipline of classical studies. There is no reference to the writing of English, and no suggestion that literature conveys ideas, deals with life, affords enjoyment. Education is viewed as the forming of the mind by the study of certain subjects, independently of experience of life, and as attainable in full measure by a small minority only, since mind-forming subjects are apparently deemed beyond the reach of women and elementary school children. For them must suffice the humbler alternative of education as useful and wholesome knowledge.

• Discusses the "useful knowledge" theory of education. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge founded in 1827.

• Newcastle Commissioners criticised for believing that elementary education is necessarily a "soulless thing".

• Curriculum in state-funded schools were limited to reading, writing and arithmetic. Teachers discouraged from regarding the thinking powers of his pupils as a matter for concern.

• "meagre quality of English teaching" in later part of the 19th Century.

• The Revised Code and Standards.

• Gives examples of the English Literature syllabus for 1876.

• It seems that because teachers were paid by results, they taught to the tests and this caused a failure to inspire interest in reading and that children hate their books. The payment by results was abandoned in 1890 and English ceased to be a compulsory subject.

• The New Code of 1890 left English as a "class" subject still consisting almost entirely of parsing and analysis.

• Report of the Bryce Commission on Secondary Education (1895) reported that Science teaching "had developed out of all proportion to the teaching of literary subjects" and led to a narrowing of the curriculum.

• Between 1895 and 1905:

  • elementary schools:
    • Composition made an alternative to Dictation in the lower standards
    • class subjects removed
    • English (and Grammar) expected in every school
    • annual examination in elementary subjects abolished
  • secondaries:
    • modern subjects and modern sides

• The report writers argue that the "true instinct for humanism may be smothered by the demand for definite measurable results, especially the passing of examinations".