Ian Reid

Wordsworth institutionalized: the shaping of an educational ideology

Introduction How did the particular kind of literary education that most of us grew up with gain and maintain a central place in schools? Where did its presiding assumptions and attitudes come from? The following argument will be that a normative `English’ curriculum derived largely from the institutionalization of a Romantic ideology, and speci®cally from an ongoing process of appropriating Wordsworthian assumptions to frame the formation of teachers through the University of London’s Institute of Education and associated mechanisms, in ways that served as a national and indeed international model. It may seem surprising to invoke the name of William Wordsworth (1770±1850) in relation to teacher training. His poetry no longer has wide popular appeal and the ideas generally attributed to him have relatively little mainstream currency now. Changes in literary taste among the general reading public and among those who shape school curricula have occurred so suddenly in recent years that most people today would be perplexed to learn that only a few decades ago the writings of Wordsworth were still a supremely powerful in ̄uence for many educators. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, as has been argued elsewhere, the University of London was an especially strong mediator of that in ̄uence. The present paper traces further mediations by concentrating on the ethos of teacher training that was fostered through that institution. What became the English Department of the Institute for Education was part of a cluster of sites, involving a few other University of London colleges (most notably King’s), which together provided links between formations of `English’ in the secondary and tertiary sectors, particularly through an assimilation of images and attitudes drawn from Romantic literature in general and Wordsworth’s poetry in particular. That assimilating process focused on the themes of `natural’ learning, imagination, self-expression and personal growth. An understanding of how `English’ took shape in the education of teachers in England needs to begin with some reference to legislative contexts for the establishment of the Institute’s forerunner, the London Day Training CollegeÐcontexts that required every state secondary school to oŒer courses in literary studies. It needs also to take cognizance of the in ̄uence of the English Association, the Newbolt Report

Memory Loss and Retrieval

Abstract Underlying the generally oblivious attitude of teachers and learners towards the past is insufficient respect for the role of memory in giving meaning to experience and access to knowledge. We shape our identity by making sense of our past and its relationship to present and future selves, a process that should be intensively cultivated when we are young. It is vital for English teaching to put collective memory to work in two ways: to recall salient features of the historical development of our field of study, and to revive the memory of certain historical realities that contemporary culture prefers to repress. The study of historical fiction can help to retain the kind of cultural memory that testifies to what humanity has suffered, and this essay concludes with personal reflections on the writing of novels set in times past.