ABSTRACT
The Newbolt Report has often been characterised as an entrenched, conservative, even right wing report on the desire to make working class children ‘civilised’ by acquiring Standard English. The Report claims, for example, that ‘until they have been given civilised speech it is useless to talk of continuing their education … in a real sense’. It talks too of the ‘lack of English that is the cause. The great difficulty of teachers in Elementary Schools in many districts is that they have to fight against the powerful influence of evil habits of speech contracted in home and street’. While this may well be completely unpalatable to a modern audience it also includes much that present day English teachers would agree with. It claims, for instance, that ‘education is a preparation for life, not, in the first place, for livelihood’ and that ‘the first thought of education must be fulness of life’. This chapter explores the Report's belief that English is an arts-based subject and while this in itself is controversial, both as take on the subject itself and within the view that English is an arts subject, it is nevertheless worth considering.
