Not Fit for Purpose: The National Strategies for Literacy Considered as an Endeavour of Government

Abstract

Since 1998 there has been an ambitious attempt to raise standards of literacy in English schools through national strategies targeted at primary schools and at Key Stage 3 in secondary schools. This article views this initiative as a governmental enterprise aimed at forming the capacities and reshaping the understandings of teachers and their pupils in order to produce the citizenry required by a modern nation-state. It is argued that this endeavour has been vitiated by a guiding rationality that is undemocratic and impatient of scholarly process. The national strategies are ill fitted to the task of forming individuals capable of sustaining and enhancing democratic society in a period of cultural and communal plurality. This article attempts to clear some of the ground for considering how such an educational and governmental task might be more appropriately addressed. Preamble

The Limits to Reform: A Critical Discussion of the Saskatoon Public School Board's Assessment Controversy

“…and more subtle alignments (cf. Goddard, 2009). Often schools are expected to unite the day-to-day practice of education with industry by both the official authorities and a host of other social groups who want to ensure their children/communities/countries are capable of competing under the new conditions.…”

Reform, Ideology and the Politics of Waiting for ‘Superman’

“…This salvation narrative has especially been well trodden as of late thanks to equally sweeping administrative reforms in New York, Atlanta and Washington, DC schools. A neo-liberal movement, these reforms have been bolstered by the Texas example, the encroaching commercialization of schools (Giroux, 1994;Apple, 1995Apple, , 2000 and the equally market-driven solutions tendered by the United Kingdom's own 'standards' and 'choice' drive during the Thatcher era (Hall & Jacques, 1983;Hall, 1988), which the New Labour government eagerly continued (see, for example, Goddard, 2009). Each of these US states and cities has recently initiated policies of strict accountability for teachers, large-scale firings for those not measuring up to the bar (up to 90% of principals in Atlanta received their walking papers in the wave of reform), and massively increased tracking procedures both for students and faculty.…”