THE GUARDIAN: Language — a way to think

Another summer, another dispiriting announcement for British English teachers: according to admissions service Ucas, a third fewer 18-year-olds applied to study the subject at university this year than in 2012. English academics are beginning to lose their jobs, while one university has paused provision altogether.

Those who teach the subject know why: a championing of science degrees instead of “dead-end courses” (in Gavin Williamson’s widely condemned formulation earlier this year) that has emphasised supposedly superior employability; a galloping instrumentalisation of education; and an alienating set of curriculum reforms.

University College London appointed the first professor of English in 1828 — but it was a few years later at King’s College London that the study of literature was given more emphasis and deliberately set against a utilitarian model of education. English language and literature are now among the UK’s most successful exports; passports to work and life across the globe.

English graduates are found throughout the creative industries, in law, the civil service, diplomacy, advertising, politics; they are entrepreneurs, teachers, digital innovators —all areas where the skills of critical analysis, lateral thinking and flexibility are prized.

The Canadian prime minister is an English graduate; the first US woman in space studied it alongside physics. But the subject can provide far more: it is a way to think about our relations with each other and nature, about our rights and moral responsibilities and the powers and limits of science; it demands that we at least try to see the world from others’ points of view. 

Literacy is not just about sounding out a sentence — it includes emotional literacy, historical literacy, and literacy in the structures of power and rhetoric: who is telling you this? How? Why? Is it working? What do you think? Language is one of the most powerful tools humans possess: we all need thoughtful training in how to manage it, and how to protect ourselves from those who abuse it.

Helping children to be safe online, for instance, includes teaching them to read for manipulation and intent. Finally, literature provides deep, complex, lifelong pleasure, which too often gets forgotten as a worthy end in itself. /London, June 27

The Guardian