Literacy

Literacy

In December 2006, the Home Office announced that people wishing to have residency in the UK had to take a test in the English language. This was a reinforcement of the exam already in place for those wishing to gain British nationality. That there was a need for individuals to become conversant with the English language was seen by many as a necessary tool in their integration into the country. It made them more employable and allowed them to take a more active part in society. But the need for English language as a means of citizenship is a far more complex instrument than that.

In his Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, TS Eliot wrote that education was,

Eliot's attempt to define the culture in which he lived was to the right of centre but the dilemma he identified - that our view of education begs other questions - remains pertinent to an understanding of what it means to be a citizen. Perhaps the most obvious concern of English in the curriculum is that of our contribution to the economy of the country. How that is realized, however, depends largely on your view of what English means. In his introduction to the National Literacy Strategy, David Blunkett, the then Secretary of State for Education, claimed that, ‘All our children deserve to leave school equipped to enter a fulfilling adult life. If children do not master the basic skills of literacy and numeracy they will be seriously disadvantaged later’ (DfEE, 1998).

Blunkett's view was that literacy in general, not English in particular, is a basic standard that all must attain: failure to do so will lead to damage in adult life. Both the New Labour government and the Tories before them agreed that these standards were to be measured by national curriculum levels -a level 4 for 11-year-olds and a level 5 for pupils of f14. New Labour announced that 80 per cent of children at 11 were expected to get a level 4, a target that they have almost achieved - 79 per cent achieving level 4 or above.

But there are some who disagree with this ‘basic’ view of literacy. Henrietta Dombey, for example, is clear about the effects high scores in the national tests at 11 are meant to secure: ‘It seems that higher scores on literacy and numeracy for the country's [Page 368]11-year-olds are expected to reverse the tide of economic decline, unemployment and national uncertainty’ (Dombey, 1998: 128). Yet central to Dombey's argument is that the National Literacy Strategy (NLS), as it is currently framed, has, as its view of what it means to be literate, something which is a definable product, something that can be articulated and written down (Marshall, 1999). Such a definition, for Dombey, limits what can be understood by the term literacy, seeing it as a much more nebulous, unquan-tifiable substance that is difficult to pin down.

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