Literacy lessons have been fatal for English, says teachers' leader
THE drive to improve literacy in schools has killed the subject of English and left a generation of children unable to speak properly, a teachers' leader warned today.
Pupils no longer read whole books or write in class for pleasure, but instead analyse "extracts" for tests, according to Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. She said children had lost the chance to learn how to talk and listen to others under the Government's literacy strategy.
There is growing concern among authors over the erosion of literature studies and employers have complained about school-leavers' weak communication skills.
Pupils are no longer required to study whole Shakespeare plays in detail but can rely on revising sections from extracted scenes. Inspectors have warned that poetry is a dying subject in too many schools, while Michael Rosen, the Children's Laureate, has criticised the Government for failing to promote reading for fun.
Speaking at ATL's annual conference in Liverpool, Dr Bousted, a former English teacher, criticised the Government's literacy strategy, begun while David Blunkett was education secretary, for failing to include verbal communication skills.
"My subject, English, is no more. It has been replaced by a newcomer - literacy," she said. "Literacy as a subject is based on the naming of parts. Children rarely read whole books. They read parts of books - extracts. These extracts are mined for adjectives and adverbs, and active verbs and nouns.
"Where has the concept of pleasure gone? Where has the personal response to a book or a poem disappeared to? Where is the experience of children choosing what it is they want to write about?"
Despite opposition from teachers' unions, ministers have overhauled the teaching of reading in primary schools, bringing in the use of "phonics", in which children learn to blend individual letter sounds to form whole words.
