Ellis, Viv; Fox, Carol; & Street, Brian (Eds.). (2007). Rethinking English in Schools: A new and constructive stage. Reviewed by Adam Mendelson, University of California, Berkeley

Ellis, Viv; Fox, Carol; & Street, Brian (Eds.). (2007). Rethinking English in Schools: A new and constructive stage. London: Continuum Pp. xiii + 249         ISBN 978-0826499226 Reviewed by Adam Mendelson University of California, Berkeley September 19, 2008 Rethinking English in Schools: A new constructive stage is an edited volume borne out of a conference titled “Why English?” held at the University of Oxford in October of 2006. That conference brought together individuals representing fields such as literary studies, sociocultural psychology, ethnography, literacy studies, applied linguistics, and composition studies to discuss their concern that English is “a subject in need of reconsideration and renewal” (p.1). In this book the term “English” is used to refer broadly to curricular areas that are generally labeled locally as language arts, language and literature, composition, communication, or English. According to the contributors to this volume, these curricular areas suffer from multiple problems, including: a hierarchical and objectivist view of what counts as knowledge of English; a disjuncture between English as a school subject and its use in the everyday life of students; the marginalization of the aesthetic aspects of English; and the failure to confront the powerful ideologies behind English as it is commonly understood and taught. In preparing to write this review I did something that I don’t normally do with edited volumes: I read it from cover to cover, straight through from introduction to afterword. Typically I read edited volumes quite selectively, scouring the table of contents, introduction, and index for points of personal interest and familiar authors. By those criteria, I probably would have zeroed in on Brian Street’s chapter that argues for integrating multimodality into English as a way to bridge the gap between home and school communicative practices (chapter 10), and Shirley Brice Heath’s afterword that reminds us that despite the importance of validating students’ use of English outside the classroom, privileged practices are not likely to lose their position anytime soon and therefore cannot be disregarded. This book is organized in a way that caters nicely to those of us that do take a hunt-and-peck approach to reading edited volumes. The introduction by Ellis, Fox and Street, in addition to setting the tone through the presentation of three thought-provoking scenarios that typify the problems of English as a school subject, provides concise snapshots of each chapter that would facilitate selective reading of the rest of the book. Furthermore, the volume is divided into three thematic sections, each of which consists of three chapters and then a response to those chapters. These responses provide another level of summary that might help the selective reader find what he or she is looking for. From an organizational perspective, my only criticism is that as a hunter-pecker I would have preferred to see notes and references included at the end of their respective chapters as opposed to being presented together at the end of the book. Despite the ease with which this volume could be read selectively, having read it from cover to cover I must stress the advantages of having done so. This book is not simply a collection of related essays, but a cohesive piece with themes that run deeply across chapters and sections, themes that might not be fully appreciated by reading some chapters and skipping others. As an example of the way in which each author’s contribution represents a part of a greater whole, I consider Tony Burgess’ call for applying a Vygotskyan approach to rethinking English (chapter 2). He illustrates his point with a description and transcripts of himself and his grandson playing with toy cars. I must admit that initially I did not see the applicability of this example to the greater objectives of the book. However, as later chapters alluded back to similar Vygotskyan principles in the context of English classrooms, the foundation set by Burgess became increasingly useful: language is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Just as Burgess’ grandson used and learned language in order to mediate his play and interactions with his grandfather and his toys, students of English should not be asked to master linguistic and generic forms for the sake of displaying mastery, but for the sake of using language to achieve personal goals, make meaning of their lived experiences, and construct their own identities. This powerful message emerges organically over the course of the volume through the presentation of multiple examples that on the surface sometimes seem unrelated. My own experience with this book exemplifies what Fecho, Amatucci, and Skinner refer to as a literacy transaction (chapter 3) as my understanding of prior chapters influenced my reading of subsequent ones while those subsequent readings also reshaped my prior understandings. I question the degree to which the experience would have been so generative had I hunted and pecked as opposed to reading from cover to cover. Rather than providing a chapter-by-chapter summary – the introduction and responses of the volume fulfill that function – in the remainder of this review I focus on the three themes that I found most prevalent. Interestingly, these three themes do not quite coincide with the three sections of the book, which are 1) the history and politics behind teaching English, 2) the role of literature in teaching English, and 3) the importance of recognizing multiple Englishes, literacies, and modalities. Instead, the three themes that I’ve chosen to highlight transverse those three sections, again reflecting the greater coherence of this volume as a whole. These three themes are interrelated and intertwined such that they overlap not only within each section but often within individual chapters. English as a means, not an end The first theme that I wish to highlight is eloquently summarized by Janet Laugharne in her response to the first section of the book: “English is a means to bringing meaning and understanding to one’s life, rather than content to be received” (chapter 5, p. 63). As was touched on above in my mention of Burgess’ chapter, this theme finds its basis in the fundamental Vygotskyan principle that language is a system of signs that mediates not only our interactions with one another, but also our own thought processes (Vygotsky, 1978). Teaching English should therefore be viewed as at least a two part process. Students do need to be provided with opportunities to master specific linguistic forms and genres, but this is only the beginning. These forms and genres are only abstract “germ cells” that then need to be cultivated by providing students with opportunities to ascend from the abstract to the concrete by actually using these forms for the purpose of communication and meaning-making (Engeström, 1999). Mission and Morgan (chapter 6) expand on this theme by considering the post-structuralist notion that we construct ourselves and others through everyday language use (e.g. Weedon, 1987), and by alluding to the Bakhtinian notion that we become who we are by acquiring language from others and making it our own by putting it to use (Bakhtin, 1981). Again, we need to learn language in order to do things with it, to understand and establish who we are, not simply for the sake of showing others that we’ve fulfilled a requirement. Joy Alexander builds on this theme in delivering a sharp criticism of genre, or “painting-by-numbers” (p. 106) approaches that treat English instruction as a checklist of forms to be mastered and displayed while depriving students the opportunity to use these forms to develop a better understanding of the world around them and their place in it (chapter 8). She claims that such an approach leads to stale and “jargonized officialese” (p. 103) that may satisfy normative assessments, but is devoid of any true expression of self. The intimate relationship between form and meaning While Halliday is never mentioned in this volume, I dare say that his ground-breaking claim that “it is impossible to draw a line between ‘what [one] said’ and ‘how he [or she] said it’” (Halliday, 1978, p. 34) underlies a second theme that echoes loudly throughout. The rationale behind this argument is that the form that a given message takes is an integral part of the meaning of that message. Accordingly, several of the contributors to this volume are explicitly critical of approaches to teaching English that attempt to isolate these two sides of the coin from one another. Alexander is deeply disturbed by those who teach poetry with the objective that students will be able to identify and describe the characteristics of a sonnet, for example, without delving into the impact that these characteristics have on the sonnet’s power to express and evoke emotion (chapter 8). Mission and Morgan suggest a dialogic approach (Bakhtin, 2004) as an alternative in which students experiment with expressing supposedly the same message with different forms and genres in order to discover the way in which formal and generic changes can’t help but impact the meaning of the message (chapter 6). A key component to the development of this form/meaning theme is a distinction made by multiple contributors between “aesthetic” and “efferent” reading. Aesthetic reading is motivated by experiencing, and ideally enjoying, interaction with textual forms while efferent reading is motivated by extracting information or learning from text. While Alexander calls for aesthetic reading in English classes because of the emphasis on efferent reading in other classes (chapter 8), Carol Fox, consistent with a Hallidayan collapsing of form and meaning, claims that students must learn to engage in both types of reading simultaneously because it is only through experiencing and feeling text that rich and multifaceted meaning can be constructed (chapter 7). In fact, as Patrick Walsh illustrates in his analysis of the historic imperialism in English textbooks, an aesthetic reading that considers the feel and form of a text is necessary for critically uncovering the ideologies behind that text (chapter 4). Linguistic variability as a resource The third and final theme that I wish to highlight is the argument that English as a school subject would benefit from being conceptualized not only as one language among many in a global world, but also as a language that itself is filled with variability and multimodality. This theme is the explicit focus of the third section of the volume, although it also surfaces earlier. The theoretical foundation of this argument for leveraging linguistic and semiotic variability in teaching English is built upon Street’s New Literacy Studies (chapter 10), Kress’ (2003) work on multimodality, the foundational notion of multiliteracies developed by the New London Group (1996), and Moll’s notion of “funds of knowledge” (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992). Particularly original are the contributions of Horner and Lu (chapter 11) and Brutt-Griffler and Collins (chapter 12), both of which call for taking a multilingual approach to English. For non-native speakers of English and for speakers of non-privileged registers, such an approach focuses on adding to one’s communicative repertoire, not replacing the supposedly inadequate with the socio-economically normative. For monolinguals, bringing the home language of their multilingual peers into the classroom provides opportunities for considering alternative perspectives and perhaps experiencing some of the cognitive gains associated with multilingualism. A key point to this theme that comes up earlier in the volume relates to the post-structuralist notion that we construct ourselves and others through language. Fecho, Amatucci, and Skinner expose the potentially damaging effects of the mismatch between the literary cannon and the lived experiences of students (chapter 3). For English class to provide opportunities for productive identity work, students must be exposed to texts that include positive and realistic images of individuals with whom students can identity. A related point is made by Walsh who explains that while the English language spreads as a colonizing force, resistant Englishes also surface that counteract this force, and students should have opportunities to consider these resistant Englishes as potentially productive learning outcomes (chapter 4, see also Canagarajah, 1999). An exemplary chapter Having elected not to write this review as a series of chapter snapshots – again, the introduction and section responses provide such summaries – I do want to highlight one particular chapter that exemplifies the interrelatedness of my three focal themes. Carol Fox’s chapter on the use graphic novels, or “comix,” such as Spiegelman’s Maus, is a powerful illustration of the type of instruction that is ultimately advocated by this volume (chapter 7). This chapter connects most obviously with my third theme: the use of this sort of popular and multimodal text can serve to bridge the gap between home and school communicative practices (Street, chapter 10). However, Fox’s justification for including such texts in English instruction is based heavily on the second theme: the variation and mixing of image and text in these works make them excellent for discovering and analyzing the intimate relationship between form and meaning. As Fox puts it, “comics [show] readers how text works” (chapter 7, p.90). Connecting to my first highlighted theme, Fox stresses that this sort of analysis is not an end goal, but rather a means to reaching greater goals. She claims that the benefits of working with such multimodal and multimedia works can be expected to transfer to working with more traditional texts. Rhetorical moves and metaphors, for example, may be more accessible in graphic texts, making them ideal starting points for eventually learning to understand and use such moves in all types of texts. This understanding and ability to use language in turn increases one’s options for making meaning of oneself and one’s lived experiences. Closing comments on theory and practice In closing my review of this volume, I feel a need to say something about its targeted audience. It is not by accident that this book is titled “Rethinking English” as opposed to “Redoing English,” and I suspect that it will be of more use to practice-minded researchers and teacher educators than to teachers themselves (chapter 14 by Viv Ellis address teacher education directly). Many of the chapters do describe instructional interventions aligned with the advocated reconceptualization of English, but I would say that the overall objective of the volume is to present this reconceptualization more so than to provide guidance for putting it into action. Furthermore, the contributors of this volume often assume a high degree of prior knowledge about the theoretical frameworks that support their contributions. Several theoretical pillars of this volume – Vygotskyan and Bakhtinian principles, post-structuralist notions, Street’s New Literacy Studies and distinction between ideological and autonomous views of literacy (Street, 1984) – may not be explained robustly enough for readers not already familiar with this work to fully appreciate the arguments being made. This issue is not necessarily a shortcoming of this volume, but it does situate the book as part of a larger conversation about the need to rethink English more so than as the definitive work on the subject. References Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). Discourse in the novel (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). In M. Holquist (Ed.), The dialogic imagination (pp. 259-366). Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (2004). Dialogic origin and dialogic pedagogy of grammar: Stylistics in teaching Russian language in secondary school. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42( 6), 3-11. Canagarajah, A. S. (1999). Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Engeström, Y. (1999). Learning by Expanding: Ten years after (F. Seege, Trans.). Marburg, Germany: BdWi-Verlag. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic. London: Edward Arnold. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge. Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132-141. New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92. Street, B. V. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weedon, C. (1987). Principles of poststructuralism. In Feminist practice and post-structuralist theory (pp. 12-42). Cambridge: Blackwell. About the Reviewer Adam Mendelson is a doctoral student in Language, Literacy, and Culture at UC Berkeley's School of Education. His general area of interest is social and situated approaches to language development and learning. In particular, he is currently conducting research on the use of computer-mediated communication to support foreign language teaching and learning. amendelson@berkeley.edu