NATE’s origins and development reaffirms the relevance of the subject association for English teaching today, argues Simon Gibbons.
Prior to 1963, the London Association for the Teaching of English (LATE) had been active for seventeen years but had resisted calls to form a national group, opting instead to support other regions in the development of branches. LATE had been pioneering a new model of English teaching, catalysed by the change in the make up of schools and classrooms in the post war years following the 1944 Education Act.
In existence also were various ‘Use of English’ groups that were linked to the journal of the same name and which, broadly speaking, were representative of the more traditional, ‘Cambridge’ model, of English teaching. It was in a Use of English editorial in 1963 that the need for a new national association was articulated — and the founding meeting happened that year, with representatives from various LATE-like regional groups and Use of English groups attending.
To suggest there was a clear divide between the ‘English as Literature’ groups and the ‘English as Language’ groups is an overly simplistic reading of the history and ofthe individuals involved, but it is clear from the evidence that tensions were present as the new Association was formed and its constitutional details thrashed out. Some wanted the Association to be predominantly a body that would represent English teachers at a national level to engage with policymakers; others — notably from LATE and its associated groups — wanted NATE, instead, to be a ‘bottom-up’ organisation, encouraging local networks, with study and research groups generating information and ideas to help develop classroom practice.
That those advocating this latter model ‘won’ the argument in 1963 was deeply significant in the way NATE became a subject association that was primarily concerned with supporting English teachers to research and discuss their own practice, to try out and share new ideas. It meant that NATE became very quickly associated with the new version of English teaching that was shifting away from the traditional grammar school model, to one that was responding to the ways English was having to change in the light of comprehensivisation, the raising of the school leaving age, new examinations and increasing diversity in the pupil body.
NATE and Growth Through English
Very soon, this new model of English that NATE was fundamental in spreading, both nationally and globally, would be enshrined in the publication of Growth through English (Dixon, 1967). This publication was one account (there are others, often overlooked) of the consensus reached on the ‘best’ way to teach English at the landmark Dartmouth conference of 1966. At the conference, attended by 40 members of NATE and its sister association in America, NCTE, delegates discussed and debated for a month what classroom English should look like.
Growth through English articulated the vision as a subject that was centred on the learner (rather than on the discipline), a subject that celebrated the authenticity and importance of the pupil’s voice and language in her learning. It was a ‘progressive’ model of English, a term that has been used pejoratively by its detractors (typically those who erroneously claim it to be ‘slack’ on ‘basic’ standards and negligent of the importance of the canon of English literature). It became the NATE ‘orthodoxy’ and has been hugely influential on generations of English teachers and deeply significant in the ways in which national curriculum and assessment policies – at least in their earlier days – were formulated by policymakers who actually involved English teachers in consultative processes leading to new initiatives.
The influence of NATE
NATE’s ‘bottom up’ way of working and its commitment to a new English were fundamental in some of the most significant movements and projects that helped shape the development of our subject through the 1970s and 1980s, for instance:
The seminal government report A Language for Life (published in 1975 and often more commonly known as the Bullock Report) is infused with NATE thinking, from the sections on writing that reference NATE chair James Britton’s ideas, to the section on language across the curriculum that praised the work in this area done at NATE’s 1971 annual conference.
The highly influential National Writing and National Oracy Projects of the mid to late 1980s prominently featured NATE members and championed the approach of teachers seeking to develop their practice through carrying out projects in their own classrooms.
NATE’s multicultural committee, led by the indefatigable Joan Goody, pioneered work to diversify – or decolonise – the curriculum. Key NATE members – James Britton, Douglas Barnes, Margaret Meek, Harold Rosen (to name but a few) – helped to ensure that this was, in many ways, a period where ideas about English flourished and there was the freedom to enact such new ideas as they emerged.
Much of this work still infuses good English practice today (whether individual teachers know it or not); there is also much that is in danger of being forgotten, and demands, in my view, urgent review and reconsideration in the context of classrooms in the 2020s.
Challenges for the future
The past 30 years have seen a much more challenging context for NATE. Increased centralisation of policy, through numerous curriculum revisions, New Labour’s literacy strategies, and reform to examinations, has seen little genuine engagement with the profession and its major subject association. Where NATE would once have been involved in consultative groups, policies now are seemingly determined by ever smaller numbers of ‘experts’ or ‘consultants’.
In such an environment, and where there is always someone on a social media network stating, with apparently unchallengeable authority, what the ‘evidence’ tells us of how to teach, it seems to me that NATE is even more important as a place where English teachers – both new and experienced – can share ideas and problems, and consider the fundamental question of what it is we should be aiming to achieve with our subject.
Although NATE is indelibly, and should unashamedly be, linked to ‘growth’ English, the Association has never preached a party line. However, two core ideas have lasted 60 years and should be writ loud and proud in the hearts and minds of English teachers today. Firstly, that English teachers are autonomous, creative professionals who should be actively engaged in co-constructing solutions to the problems of how to make the subject ‘work’. And secondly, and most fundamentally, that, when we think of English teaching we should think first of its learners: our duty is to them, not to our discipline, and less still to our political masters.
Further reading
Gibbons, S. (2014) The London Association for the Teaching of English 1947–1967: A History London: Trentham Books