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taxonomy, which implies in turn some particular theory of knowledge: what is known and what can in principle be known.

Furthermore, such taxonomies are characteristic of some academic disciplines rather than others: for example, notably

linguistics rather than literary studies. Summaries and surveys of knowledge are always interpretations, and as such, they involve

distortion. But such distortions are inevitable —and are more visible when the basis of the categorisation is explicit.

These are not mere introductory points, but already the beginning of a central topic of language in education: the relation

between forms of discourse and authoritative forms of knowledge. Techniques for naming the world can focus critical

attention on the ways in which knowledge is constructed, and can therefore become tools for changing the world.

The categorisation will deliberately emphasise certain features of language in education: social, cultural, institutional and

ideological. It clearly cannot ingore others: teaching and learning involve, by definition, children’s psychology and individual

cognitive development. However, cognitive styles, and views about child development are, in turn, irremediably imbued with

social, cultural and political beliefs. For example, there are widespread folk beliefs about ‘good English’ and its relation to

education; there are confusions between the concepts of ‘literate’ and ‘educated’; conversely, ‘illiterate’ has connotations of

poverty, crime and disease; whereas the spread of literacy is related in many people’s minds to concepts of democracy, social

development and the quality of life. However justified or unjustified such beliefs may be, they are very widely held, and show

that a concept such as ‘educated’ or ‘literate’ has to do not only with the psychology of the individual, but with deeply-rooted

assumptions about the nature of society. No-one has ever managed to formulate a definition of literacy which does not

implicitly refer to purposes, and therefore to particular social circumstances, and therefore to the value of literacy for an

individual or for a society. Literacy is therefore always related to the cognitive development of an individual or to the socioeconomic development of a society. And development, whether of individual children or of whole societies, involves

questions of value.

Educational theory as a whole is necessarily prescriptive: it is a theory about how children develop, about the aims of

education, and about the value of certain kinds of knowledge over others (Lawton 1977:171). It is therefore virtually impossible

to write an article such as this without making policy recommendations in areas which are hotly contested by many people.

None of this means that we can ignore social and linguistic description. On the contrary, we must avoid social and political

speculation which is not grounded in evidence about how language is actually used in homes and schools. One of my main

arguments will be that we need a balance between linguistic and social analysis.

A historical perspective is particularly valuable for a discussion of language in education, because we then see that many

things which are now widely taken for granted in education are in fact products of particular social, cultural and historical

circumstances. For example, the view that children are essentially different from adults, with different modes of thinking, is a

relatively recent one in Britain. Primary and secondary schools typically make quite different assumptions about how children

learn, and about relations between different subjects on the curriculum. Many notions about the education appropriate for

young children were formulated in the Plowden Report (HMSO 1963), which was extremely influential in the late 1960s and

early 1970s. It enshrined the concept of a ‘progressive’ child-centred curriculum, in which children are seen as naturally

curious and able to discover for themselves, and in which the teacher is seen as a facilitator. In many ways, this was simply a

straightforward rejection of a tabula rasa view of the mind. This ‘child-centred’ view has since been the quasi-official view

of teacher training, however much actual practice preserves a more traditional model of children.

Medieval society had no concept that childhood was a particular state separate from adult society. And up until the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Britain, children were treated more or less like small adults and not as requiring any

special treatment, linguistically or educationally. Paintings of the time, for example, show them dressed much more like

adults than is now customary. Age groups were mixed in school classes, and the notion of a school class, as a group of

children of the same age and level of education, and possibly also of the same ability or sex, is a relatively recent concept too

(Aries 1962). It follows that different countries hold different assumptions again about the relations between children,

education, formality and discipline (in both senses). And views about the relations between the child, the family and the state

—who has responsibility for which aspects of children’s education and welfare?—change significantly over time.

These general points are related to specific debates over contrasting concepts of acquisition versus learning, and of the

contribution of home versus school to children’s language development. Is it the case that children acquire all linguistic

abilities ‘naturally’ as they do (under some interpretations) their native language? Is the teacher a mere facilitator? Or do

children have to learn, and therefore be taught things, under artificial circumstances?

My main point so far is that such questions about language in education are embedded in broader sets of social beliefs about

the nature of children and learning. A discussion of language in education must therefore relate language learning, in a

relatively narrow sense, to issues of culture and society. Education is necessarily a process of social control and social

engineering. Such concepts are inimical to many teachers, but it is naïve to think that it could be otherwise. This is all the

more reason to understand the relations between language and development, learning and teaching, individual rights and

social obligations.



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3.

LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: 1960s TO 1980s

I will now restrict most of this article to the period 1960s to 1980s. The main rationale behind such a severe restriction is that

it is from the 1960s that language in education was seen very explicitly as an area of academic study and social action, and

developed around a particular problem of education failure. Particularly after 1945, considerable efforts were made by many

Western countries to modernise their education systems. But by the 1960s it was realised that working-class and ethnic

minority children were nevertheless still greatly overrepresented in school failures. Institutional reforms were seen to have

failed and a great deal of academic attention was given to looking for explanations of such failure in the background of the

children.

A major recent theme in British education has been social justice (Lawton 1977). The optimism of the 1940s and 1950s, riding

on the back of the education act of 1944 (which established free secondary education for all children), assumed that if more

money was spent on schools, teachers and materials, then all would be well. By the 1960s, this optimism had been badly

shaken. One origin of this academic focusing was therefore the specific and practical one of demographic research, which

showed inequalities in educational provision and success.

Another origin was the general and theoretical problem of classical sociology: ‘how does the outside become the inside

and how does the inside reveal itself and shape the outside?’ (Bernstein 1987). What is the relation between the individual and

society? And between what a child learns in school and in the wider society?

Changes in academic perceptions have variously tried to explain educational failure with reference to IQ (from the 1920s to

the 1940s), social class and home background (in the 1950s and 1960s), and language (in the 1960s and 1970s). I think there

is now a widespread recognition of the danger of looking for single causes which reside in children or in their families. In any

case, across groups of children, social class, language and measured IQare all interrelated. In addition, attributing the blame to

children or their families may ignore institutional causes of injustice. And people are now aware of the ‘extraordinary

tendency…to blame what happens to people on the way they speak’ (Cameron 1985:170). At the very least, the problem of

differential educational failure is caused by other people’s perceptions of language, not directly or exclusively by language

itself.

A key stage in the social justice debate was an article by Labov (1969). In this highly influential and highly polemical

article, Labov argued against the tendency to condemn children as illogical simply because they speak a non-standard variety

of English. The article was written in response to interventionist programmes (mainly in the USA) which held the view that if

children are taught standard varieties of English, then this will solve their educational problems. Labov showed that this view

was based on a severe muddle over the concept of ‘good’ English. His article then triggered, in turn, a flood of supporting

articles purporting to show that concepts of linguistic and cultural deprivation were faulty. The deprivation debate rapidly

became large and heated, and I have no space to review it directly here, though there are references to it in other sections of this

chapter. (For reviews see Trudgill 1975, Edwards, J, 1979, Stubbs 1980, Gordon 1981; see also Chapter 14, section 3.3,

above.)

4.

THE QUESTION OF ‘STANDARDS’

In many discussions about language in education, especially in the popular press, the concern is with ‘standards’ and it is

generally assumed that standards are falling.

Such discussions usually take it for granted what standards we should be aiming at. Yet the standards referred to are often

standards of spelling or punctuation, or other rather superficial aspects of writing, or are aspects of reading which are

narrowly defined and are measurable only for this reason. In other words, such discussion takes for granted precisely what

should be at issue: namely whether such relatively superficial aspects of language should be our central educational aims. (See

Williams 1976 for a discussion of the changing meanings of the term standard.)

In addition, such discussions about falling standards seem to be a perpetual feature of the human condition. The French poet

François Villon was already asking plaintively in 1460, ‘Where are the snows of yesteryear?’ More prosaically, the Bullock

Report (HMSO 1975) points out that complaints about falling standards are a constant feature of discussion of language in

education. But, logically speaking, standards cannot always have been falling.

I should make it clear (a) that I do think that spelling and other aspects of language development are interesting and

important, and (b) that I do think that the issue of ‘maintaining standards’ is also important. My point is (a) that there is no

real evidence that standards are declining, even in relatively measurable areas such as spelling, and (b) that the concept of

‘standards’ is extremely complex, that much discussion ignores this complexity and therefore ignores much more

fundamental discussion of the aims of education.



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These points—concern over standards and the socio-cultural values attached to all educational discussion—come clearly

together in contemporary concern over standards of literacy. First, in Western countries literacy rates have really been

recorded only for a hundred years. The demand for universal literacy and therefore the attempt to extend literacy from an elite

to the whole population dates only from the late nineteenth century, and it is not surprising if this attempt is not yet

successful, or that there is debate over appropriate standards. Second, it is commonly assumed nowadays that such literacy for

the whole population is a good thing. But again, this is a relatively recent consensus. In the nineteenth century, many people

argued that it was too dangerous to extend literacy to the working classes: it could lead to a shortage of manual labour and to

social unrest if the working classes had access to seditious literature. In other words, the equation between schooling and

literacy is not a self-evident one, but based on an evaluation of the dangers and usefulness of literacy. The argument that

literacy (at least of a restricted kind) is necessary for socio-economic development has won, at least for the present. And most

people would now argue that basic literacy is a right: it is simply unethical to give working- and middle-class children access

to different educations. Third, however, there is still a great deal of dispute over the kind of literacy being taught. Before the

twentieth century there were multiple forms of literacy, learned variously at home and in the community. What has developed

more recently is a new notion that schooled literacy is self-evidently a single skill, which can be measured according to a

single standard. And, fourth, the goalposts keep being moved. If standards of literacy are declining in any sense, it may be

because the demands are rising. It is probably more serious for an individual to be illiterate nowadays than a hundred years

ago, since a wider range of material must be read for a wider range of jobs. And the relative importance of writing (versus

reading) has increased, if individuals are to have access to those with institutional power.

In so far as nation-wide evidence about standards of literacy is available, it is provided by the Assessment of Performance

Unit. (The APU was set up by the Department of Education and Science in 1974 to monitor standards in schools.) Their

findings, based on the monitoring of thousands of children, is that standards of literacy have risen slightly over the last twenty

years: but that standards are still too low, given that demands are constantly rising.

5.

‘EDUCATIONAL FAILURE IS LINGUISTIC FAILURE’?

If we look at how academics have defined such issues since the mid 1960s, the following main questions have been posed.

How are language, social class and educational failure related? Why are middle-class children more successful on average at

school than working-class children? In brief, what relations are there between

the language of the child (and his/her home)

the language of the school,

and the child’s educational success or failure?

These questions could then be expanded. For example, we could, logically, look at the language of the school in only a

restricted number of places. We might mean the language of school textbooks: does their style cause problems for children? Or

the language of school subjects more generally: does academic jargon serve a genuinely intellectual or cognitive function? Is

learning a school subject equivalent to learning the language of that subject? Or we might mean the language of teachers: do

they talk in particular ways to pupils? Or the language of pupils: are they allowed to talk to each other at all in class? If they

are, does this help their learning? Is their written language restricted in particular ways? How does this relate to their learning?

Again, at least for the purposes of a reasonably comprehensive outline, there are only a restricted number of perspectives on

pupils’ language. The key relation is likely to be the relation between language at home and language at school.

However, note again that any categorisation is inherently ideological. We will almost inevitably be looking for differences

and transitions between home and school, with an underlying assumption that homogeneity is normal and that diversity is

problematic.

A widely-quoted notion, arising from the academic work of the 1960s and 1970s is that ‘educational failure is linguistic

failure’. This slogan sounds like an explanation, but it may simply be a tautology, true by definition. Schools place particular

linguistic demands on their pupils, and if they fail those demands, then of course they fail altogether. The Western education

system is thoroughly verbal and textual. The place of written texts, writing and literacy have always been central, and in some

contexts ‘literate’ and ‘educated’ are synonymous. But the high value placed on written language is a view with its roots in

middle-class Western culture: it is not universal. More specifically, a particular cluster of language characteristics—standard,

written, formal—is fundamental to the British education system. For historical and social reasons, in Britain these three things

are intimately related to each other, and an educational theory of language must involve a thorough analysis of their relations.

The education system and Standard English are mutually defining: SE is the expected and appropriate variety in the British

education system; conversely, the education system has been a major standardising force and a major source of the

institutional authority of SE. SE cannot really be defined independently of its functions in schools and other central institutions.

(Milroy and Milroy 1985, Stubbs 1986, Chapter 5.)



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6.

THE CONSTITUENTS OF AN EDUCATIONAL THEORY OF LANGUAGE

In order to systematise further the discussion, we now require an organising framework: what I will call the constituents of an

educational theory of language. As is obvious from other contributions to this book, there are many theories of language

which have been developed for different purposes. What we are concerned with here is a way of organising a large and

otherwise very disparate body of work on language in a way which is of help to teachers and other educationalists.

We cannot avoid studying language in institutions: in schools obviously; but, historically, we see a long-term and

continuing battle over the place of language in religious and secular, private and state institutions. We are dealing therefore

with a theory of language variation: how language use varies in different institutions, in pupils’ homes and at school, in

different academic disciplines, and in different social groups. And we are also inevitably dealing with the language planning

and policy carried out by institutions: schools have long been central in such policy making and have themselves contributed

to the creation and maintenance of Standard English; but other institutions concerned are printers and publishers, and the

government committees who formulate educational and linguistic policy. We must deal with pedagogy and classroom

practice: how notions of language policy and language variation are actually put into practice in classrooms. And in order to

discuss all these issues, we have to have linguistic descriptions of how language is used by pupils and teachers, at home, in

schools, in books, and so on. Figure 28 sets out these distinctions schematically, with reference to some topics for an

educational theory of language discussed below. My claim is that any topic in language in education must be studied from all

five of these points of view. The social must not be privileged at the expense of the linguistic or vice versa. In Figure 28, headings

1–5 along the top refer to the points of view from which topics in language in education require to be approached if the

discussion is to maintain a balance between linguistic and social theory. The topics down the left refer to main sections in the

rest of this chapter.

The rest of this article attempts to classify and integrate the wide range of things which are known about language in

education, and to identify areas where basic knowledge is missing. I will not go mechanically through each subheading, but

under each of the main headings below there are comments on the description of language varieties, on the nature of the

language variation, on the place of language in institutions, on language policy and on pedagogical practice. All of these

approaches must be given a cognitive dimension to relate them to children’s language development.