7 June 2005

Dear Booktrust (cc Janet White, English21),

I'm sending you some comments on behalf of the Education Committee of the
Linguistics Association of Great Britain. I hope you will find them helpful, although
I'm afraid they question some basic assumptions which appear to lie behind the
document that QCA circulated. If our comments are based on a misreading of your
text - which is all too likely when interpreting a brief manifesto such as yours - then
we shall be pleased to hear back.
We agree that all the activities listed are valuable as part of a child's education, but we
have serious reservations about the privileged relation that you seem to assume
between literature (books, film, poetry, the theatre) and creativity. There are few
things less creative than learning a poem by rote; nor is sitting in the theatre or cinema
creative. On the other hand, solving a problem in maths or drawing a map in
geography can be just as creative as writing a poem or a story; and of course both
music and art are generally thought to be as creative as literature.
As far as language is concerned, strictly speaking a great deal of everyday
conversation is both creative and imaginative in the sense that it is created afresh and
adapted imaginatively to the context. However, we agree that children should be able
to go beyond this everyday level of use. For some of the most able children, mere
exposure to good models is enough to ensure this; but we do not believe this is true
for all pupils, and we fear that your proposals may divert attention from what these
children need: clear and effective teaching of the skills which are needed for creative
and imaginative language. To be creative with language, students need two things:
knowledge about language, and the opportunity to play with language. Without the
latter, the former appears less connected to creativity than it really is; without the
former, the latter is meaningless as an educational exercise. To make a parallel with
music: present a child with a set of drums and they may well be 'creative'; teach them
about rhythm, syncopation, time signatures, etc. and they get the opportunity to see
how the tension between adhering to constraints and overriding those constraints
operates in the history of (at least Western) music. Do both, and they get to understand
the theory and put it into practice for themselves.
To summarise, we question the logic of your argument for the literary activities that
you list: many of these activities arent particularly creative, and many other activities
are creative. Moreover, most children wont become more creative simply through
exposure to good models; they also need training in the relevant skills. These
criticisms apart, however, we do agree that children should have the chance to do the
things you list, and also, of course, that they should learn to use language
imaginatively and creatively.
Yours sincerely, Dick Hudson