We are delighted to share a thinkpiece by FED Ambassador and CEO of Lexonik, Sarah Ledger. Here Sarah argues that re-imagining the English curriculum could help young people rebuild human connection in an increasingly digital and AI-driven world. It highlights the role of literature, writing, speech, and critical thinking in helping students understand themselves and others, while questioning high-stakes assessment models that prioritise performance over process. It also stresses the importance of reading fluency and shared responsibility for literacy across the curriculum. If English has the power to reconnect us with what makes us human, is it time to rethink how we assess learning as well as what we teach? Read more below.
Reimagining English – The Human Connection
I went to watch the dance troupe Diversity at Stockton Globe recently and after a flurry of body pops and backflips Ashley Banjo closed the show with:
“We need to re-teach ourselves human connection”
And it got me thinking about the re-imagining of the English curriculum.
At a recent FED event on re-imagining the English curriculum, themes such as empathy, listening, connection, speaking, arguing, critical thought, decision making, explanation, judgement, drafting, process… all came up. Many of which are about human connection.
So, in a landscape where our young people are leaning into the digital quick fix world, should the English curriculum be the place to reconnect with what makes us human?
The teachers and scholars amongst us know that it is within literature where we learn about ourselves, our past, our present and our future…
As we read and build our minds, the English curriculum should then teach us how to express our minds through writing. Whether creatively or critically.
Also, the English curriculum should then teach us how to articulate our minds, through speech. How to listen, respond, think on our feet, pivot, adapt, re-engage, challenge, question.
The problem with the current English curriculum at secondary school is we expect students to do all of the above and then perform their best work in 45 minutes, with no drafting or proof of progressive thought. So to re-imagine the English curriculum do we actually have to start with re-imagining the assessment?
In our AI ‘fake truth’ world and to get us closer to reconnecting as humans, is an assessment system that assesses process a way forward including: developmentally appropriate practise, drafting, viva voce, qualitative in the moment assessment, leveraging technology, where appropriate, to facilitate the assessment but keeping the human thought at the centre of the process?
We also have to be realistic. A large percentage of students reach secondary school lacking reading automaticity; with some still having gaps in decoding. Reading automaticity and fluency allows for freedom. Freedom in learning, thought, speech and progress.
There’s a dignity in reading automaticity. It frees up cognitive space to allow for learning, we know all this, yet too often we turn to the English department alone to fix it. The study of English Language and English Literature is a subject specialism and shouldn’t be confused with literacy. Literacy is needed across every aspect of the curriculum, and beyond, whereas only the English classroom needs the skills and knowledge to study literature and language.
To remove the ‘forgotten third’, having a simple vision that no student should leave school without possessing reading automaticity, the re-imagining of the curriculum will need to include a space for targeted interventions and significant professional learning to develop pedagogy of how to develop the literacy skills that facilitate mastery in the specialist subjects being taught. Not shoe horned into the peripherals of the content, but living and breathing in every aspect of instruction. It’s the old adage “teach them to read, write and think like a scientist”. This knowledge can be supported within the English curriculum, but isn’t the only component of the curriculum.
This is just the tip of the English curriculum re-imagining iceberg. We could talk about banishing key stages, scaffolding English learning from ages 2 – 19, seamless transition, reading for pleasure V’s reading for value, relatable content V’s association content, is what we study as important as the way we study…
The English curriculum is the one space where, through the study of literature, fiction and non-fiction, we can focus on the human connection. It can allow the isolated generation the skills to articulate their own thoughts through speech and writing. It can explore the human condition and through literature, exploring what we can learn from the past to make sense of our present. It can teach us how to form differing arguments and learn how to articulate an informed, educated stance. It can teach the craft. The English curriculum has the potential to teach young people their own minds before they get hacked!