Rethinking English in English Schools: Asking questions of a 'sack of snakes'

Viv Ellis
At a conference of philosophers of education in 1964, participants were invited to discuss the 'substantive and syntactic structures' of English, mathematics and science. Taking on English, G.C. Wilson complained this was an especially difficult task and suggested that it was akin to discussing a 'sack of snakes' (Wilson, 1964). A few years later, in his influential account of the development of the 'personal growth model' of English teaching, John Dixon came to a similar conclusion but put it rather more positively: the subject was 'a quicksilver among metals – mobile, living and elusive' (Dixon, 1969). What both metaphors illustrate is that English as a school subject has a dynamic problem as its core:

"The point about 'English' as the name of a subject is that it is an adjective being made to serve as a noun. So 'English' is always pointing toward an absence – the noun. Is the subject English literature, language, society, culture, people?" (Evans, 1993, p.84)

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