A version of education conditioned by a focus on measurable outcomes contributes to the unhappiness of children. Using an approach that relates the current crisis in mental health to Simone Weil's concept of affliction, I argue that culture, suffering from its own instrumentalisation as cure, needs itself to be healed. Using a case study of…

This paper displays the ideological positioning as found in Rudyard Kipling's poem If. It is a poem published in 1910. It presents the embedded ideologies and shows how the poet used the available linguistic resources to achieve his goal. The models of analysis adopted are Critical Stylistics as proposed by Lesley Jeffries (2010) and Stylistic…

In this essay, I draw on the experience of reading "Hamlet" with a class of 11- and 12-Year-old boys in a London comprehensive school. I explore how a number of comments in my classroom reveal the complexities of my students' thinking about gender and sexuality in "Hamlet." I look at how these thoughts are difficult for the…

With millions of non-native English language users, English has gained the position of 'global language' in the last century. English literature also has a significant number of non-native writers from around the world. While grasping their own cultures in English, these non-native writers have been transforming English language to a remarkable…

This paper examines the opportunities and challenges of using Shakespeare as a teaching resource for English language learners, and reflects on an open distance learning programme aimed at engaging EFL students across diverse world contexts. The paper reviews the design, production, and dissemination of these teaching materials and in doing so…

Although "VCE English Language (EL)" has been offered for twenty years in Victoria, Australia, the subject, and especially students' experience of it, has had little evaluation. Using data from four surveys conducted across seven years with over 1500 Unit 3-4 "EL" students, augmented by VCAA enrolment data, a profile of…

This article is equal parts educational history and political philosophy. We aim to remind readers that subject English (SE) and indeed state education emerge from the contradictory impulses of classical liberalism, and that, more than simply resembling citizenship education, SE emerges in the first instance as a form of highly normativising…

Since 2013, English Language and Literature courses in England have experienced changes to assessment and curriculum that have ushered them in a supposedly new direction, both under the umbrella of wider reforms. This divergence has included the abolition of controlled assessment and the concurrent resurgence of academic courses being assessed…

In this piece I explore the concept of 'growth' in English teaching. Starting with John Dixon's 'growth' model, I argue that, by re-imagining his ideas in current contexts, practitioners might re-focus and re-invigorate the priorities of English teaching. Dominant conceptions of 'growth' are explored, along with their influence on teacher working…

This article looks at how four British-based poets born in the Caribbean exploit the rich language repertoire available to them in their work for children and young people. Following initial consideration of questions of definition and terminology, poetry collections by James Berry, John Agard, Grace Nichols and Valerie Bloom are discussed, with a…

Research suggests that experts and beginners use qualitatively different writing processes when given the same text to write. Throughout their writing, experts tend to create a network of executive, structural, and content problems that they continually refine and coordinate as they bring the text to fruition. Novices, in contrast, tend to focus…

This article discusses the novel "Pygmalion" by George Bernard Shaw (1957) which depicts Eliza, a flower girl from East London, who became the subject of an "experiment" by a Professor of Phonetics who vowed to change the way she spoke. The story is an excellent example of a very real and contextual portrait of how language,…

Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" argues that we can take responsibility for the future if we refuse to act in thrall to the legacies of the past, which favour one human life over another, and act instead with the conviction that all lives are "lives" (Judith Butler). "White Teeth" examines the colonial legacy of violence…

So much has been made over the crisis in English literature as field, as corpus, and as canon in recent years, that some of it undoubtedly has spilled over into English education. This has been the case in predominantly English-speaking Anglo-American and Commonwealth nations, as well as in those postcolonial states where English remains the…