What Kind of ‘Knowledge’ is English? (Re-reading the Newbolt Report)

Abstract

This essay takes Michael Young’s 2007 call ‘to bring knowledge back in’ as an occasion to reflect on the relationship between subject English and the disciplinary knowledge that provides its foundations. It focuses on a key text in the history of English teaching, namely The Teaching of English in England, published in 1921 (otherwise known as the Newbolt Report), arguing that it reflects a moment in the emergence of English as a cultural praxis that is still relevant to us, especially with respect to the claims it makes for literature as the core of subject English. The richness of subject English as it is embodied in its history cannot be comprehended by Young’s understanding of ‘knowledge’.

Keywords:

• Knowledge and English teaching
• literature teaching
• history of subject English
• The Teaching of English in England

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Monica Brady, John Yandell, Bill Green and Philip Mead for providing feedback to drafts of this article. An earlier version was presented as part of a symposium on ‘Reading a literary education: sociability and disciplinary knowledge in subject English’ at the 2016 conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE). The research for this essay is part of a larger Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project, entitled ‘Investigating Literary Knowledge in the Making of English Teachers’ (DP160101084 2016–2019). Associate Professor Larissa McLean Davies (University of Melbourne), Professor Lyn Yates (University of Melbourne), Professor Wayne Sawyer (University of Western Sydney), Professor Philip Mead (University of Western Australia), and Professor Brenton (Deakin University) are the Chief Investigators in this project.

Notes

1. Eagleton himself has been on a journey since he wrote Literary Theory. In How to Read a Poem, he writes: ‘Poetry is an image of the truth that language is not what shuts us off from reality, but what yields us the deepest access to it’ (Eagleton 2007, 69) – a formulation that to my mind is akin to the Newbolt Report’s claim that language is the ‘very stuff and process’ of thought.