ABSTRACT
A history is a story that purports to be true. But ‘the’ history of English as a school subject, and of critical literacy within that discipline, cannot so easily be told. For there are always competing histories, trundling a barrow or taking the lead with a band wagon, coming from somewhere and going to somewhere. So I would situate my account in this chapter within another discipline, of geography. Not that one can evade history – mine and others’ pervade these pages. And not that a particular form of knowledge can claim to be the only bearer of ultimate truth. Different disciplines of knowledge offer different ways of ‘reading’ the world. Nonetheless, to talk of a ‘geography of English’ and a ‘map of critical literacy’ is to make the metaphor more salient: to remind us that this account offers viewpoints from various topographical sites rather than ‘the’ historical overview. (For sometimes controversial and always partial histories see for example Dixon 1967, Meek and Miller 1984, Hunter 1988, Doyle 1989, Elbow 1990, Goodson and Medway 1990, Willinsky 1990, B. Green 1993, B. Green and Beavis 1996.)
Here then is a first quick ‘mud map’ of the terrain, as I see it, to be critiqued and redrawn, with greater detail, in this and subsequent chapters.
