Language, Culture and Identity in the Early Years

Tözün Issa, Alison Hatt

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781441186584
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

In this engaging guide, the authors identify and disseminate good practice relating to language, culture and identity. They explore how children from a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds are supported through a number of pedagogical practices which are based on knowledge and understanding of the social and emotional development of young children.
Topics covered include:
- Perspectives on personal, social and emotional development
- Maintaining home languages in early years settings
- Supporting communication and oracy
- Developing strategies for parental involvement Essential reading for those working with young children from a diverse range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

1

The Early Years Foundation Stage: Historical Context and Recent Developments

Chapter Outline

Where should we start?

Summary

This chapter briefly summarizes some of the main historical and educational developments in the growth of state provision in this country for young children’s education. It also considers changes in the UK population which derive from its own history of empire and colonization and how these have affected education.

We start by stating that in our (and not just our) view, the history of what is now called the United Kingdom is one that illustrates that its growing populations are, and always have been, linguistically and culturally diverse. Our history encompasses more than the arrival of the Norman French in the eleventh century or the installation of a German Hanoverian monarchy (and its entourage) in the eighteenth century and the post-Second World War émigrés. If we read widely enough we will find that there is evidence going back to around 7,000 BCE (Before Common Era), when this country was separated from Europe by the rising sea level, that there were settlers in the south of ‘England’ and that some one thousand years before the Romans invaded (54–5 BCE) there were other settlers from Central Europe (Winder, 2004, p. 18). Our country has constantly absorbed new arrivals, modified its language to reflect their various influences and, of course, been responsible for our own various arrivals on other shores. In addition, the reader should also bear in mind (if s/he does not know this already) that the majority of the world is bi- or multilingual and that the monolingualism of Britain (and America) is the exception rather than the norm.

This book is mindful of how these facts link to our contemporary situation and this chapter is therefore written in the belief that this knowledge is fundamental for all who work with young children, whatever be their ethnic, cultural or linguistic background.

Where should we start?

We have to find a suitable starting point for our consideration of the historical background that precedes the discussion of children’s linguistic and cultural identities. For us, this starting point is in the nineteenth century with the Elementary Education Act of 1870 which led eventually to the provision of free elementary education funded by the state. We will find, though, that it is many years later that the interests and needs of young children begin to take centre stage and even later that their linguistic and cultural heritages start to receive due attention. In fact, it is in the Bullock Report of 1975, that these heritages begin to receive their due.

The title of the Bullock Report was ‘A Language for Life’; it was a report that took a very generous view of language development and promoted an inclusive vision of the meeting of the cultures of home and school between which children necessarily travelled every day.

No child should be expected to cast off the language and culture of the home as soon as he [sic] crosses the school threshold, nor to live and act as though school and home represent two totally separate and different cultures which have to be kept firmly apart. (Bullock Report, 1975, para 20.5)

This sentiment is, or ought to be, one with which those who work with or care for young children should be familiar and one which such workers strive to realize in their different settings. The title of the report – ‘A Language for Life’ – seemed radical at the time since it did not pin the language down as ‘English’ but appeared to be acknowledging broader dimensions to the linguistic experiences of children and pupils. Nevertheless, chapter 20, ‘Children from Families of Overseas Origin’ (the chapter the quotation comes from), even though it includes a (brief) discussion of children in infant and nursery classes, is a long way from chapter 5, ‘Language in the Early Years’ suggesting that the authors did not see any connection or overlap between the two headings. Chapter 5, indeed, presents a fairly neutral account of early language development, drawing on what was then recent research and considering the effects of social class on young children’s language proficiency but surprisingly, considering the nature of the report, making little reference to their linguistic, cultural and ethnic heritages. The Report, however, did make a strong pronouncement in favour of bilingual children:

When bilingualism in Britain is discussed it is seldom if ever with reference to the inner city immigrant populations, yet over half the immigrant pupils in our schools have a mother-tongue which is not English and in some schools this means over 75 per cent of the total number on roll. The language of the home and of a great deal of the central experience of their life is one of the Indian languages, or Greek, Turkish, Italian or Spanish. These children are genuine bilinguals, but this fact is often ignored or unrecognised by the schools. Their bilingualism is of great importance to the children and their families, and also to society as a whole. In a linguistically conscious nation in the modern world we should see it as an asset, as something to be nurtured and one of the agencies which should nurture it is the school. Certainly the school should adopt a positive attitude to its pupils’ bilingualism and wherever possible should help maintain and deepen their knowledge of their mother tongues. (Ch. 20.17)

In fact we find that very little attention has been paid to this aspect of young children’s lives in most government documents and legislation. Worse still, the broad and wide-ranging needs and the education of young children have received patchy and spasmodic attention since the school starting age was arbitrarily set at 5 years via the 1870 Elementary Education Act. Nevertheless, the under fives have had their champions, although it is not, as we have said, until we reach the end of the twentieth century that we see attention being paid, in this country, to their languages, cultures and identities. The history, then, is a twofold picture of political neglect – that of young children generally and their languages and cultures specifically.

Katherine Bathurst – An early ‘champion’ of young children

Concerning young children, it might be useful to consider some of their previous ‘champions’. One such figure was Katherine Bathurst (1905), an Infant School Inspector, who drew attention to the plight of 4- and 5-year-olds who, were ‘entitled’ by the 1870 Act to go to school but were receiving a totally inappropriate curriculum. Her report graphically describes the discomfort and distress experienced by very young children assailed by a curriculum, surroundings and teaching which were all completely unsuitable.

Let us now follow the baby of three years through part of one day of school life. He is placed on a hard wooden seat . . . with a desk in front of him and a window behind him. . . . He often cannot reach the floor with his feet, and in many cases he has no back to lean against. He is told to fold his arms and sit quiet. He is surrounded by a large number of other babies all under similar alarming and incomprehensible conditions, and the effort to fold his arms is by no means conducive to comfort or well-being. . . . If he cries quietly, he becomes aware of the following proceedings. A blackboard has been produced and hieroglyphics are drawn upon it by the teacher. At a given signal every child in the class begins calling out mysterious sounds: ‘Letter A, letter A’ in a sing-song voice, or ‘Letter A says Ah, letter A says Ah’, as the case may be. (Bathurst (1905) cited in Woodhead and McGrath, 1988)

There is much more in this bleak account of life in an elementary school and Bathurst also has some pithy remarks to make on the unhelpful ‘contributions’ made by male Inspectors. She quotes one such person who in a Manchester school logbook wrote that ‘the babies should learn to sit still and attend’. Amazingly, this statement was echoed in the proposed Early Learning Goals of the late twentieth-century early years curriculum.

By the time that Bathurst wrote her report, schools were no longer run by the School Boards which had been established by the 1870 Elementary Education Act to run non-denominational schools. An Education Act of 1902 handed this responsibility to the recently established local authorities, extending this to London in 1903. In 1918, towards the end of the First World War, an Education Act enabled the local authorities to provide nursery education. Women were already at this stage forming a large part of the work force so that nursery provision served an economic and national cause, not just an educational one. As we will see, economic arguments have been a main factor in the provision of early years education. In addition, the South African wars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and, of course the First World War itself, fought between 1914–18, revealed the appalling physical condition of many of the army and navy recruits from the impoverished working class. Much of the ensuing health and welfare legislation stemmed from the discovery that fighting men were undersized and malnourished.

It should also be noted that many people, probably over 1 million, from the British empire and its colonies fought in the First World War. This has a bearing on the arrivals, later in the century, of the grandparents and great grandparents of the young bilingual and multilingual children that our book will be describing in the following chapters.

Other important women educators

Around the time that Katherine Bathurst was arguing on behalf of young children, the McMillan sisters, Rachel (1859–1917) and Margaret (1860–1931), both with training in Health, Hygiene and Sanitation, were also concerned about young children’s (and young women’s) health, diet and physical development and, rather less attractively, with the racial health of the nation. They established health clinics in Bradford and, later, in South-East London, and Margaret eventually established the Rachel McMillan Nursery, an open-air nursery school, where outdoor physical activity formed a central part of children’s education.

In the 1920s Susan Isaacs (1885–1948), later to become the first Professor of Child Development at the University of London, worked in a progressive school in Cambridge, ratifying observation and conversation as one of the key methods for extending children’s learning and thirst for exploration and investigation. Her major interest was in children’s intellectual development and she was much influenced by the work of Jean Piaget (1896–1980).

Two of the Hadow Reports

Susan Isaacs contributed evidence to two important reports, whose committees were chaired by Sir W. H. Hadow, on primary education (1931), that is, schools which included Infant classes, and Infant and Nursery Schools (1933). These two reports set the tone for primary education as can be seen by this brief quote:

Hitherto the general tendency has been to take for granted the existence of certain traditional ‘subjects’ and to present them to the pupils as lessons to be mastered. There is, as we have said, a place for that method, but it is neither the only method, nor the method likely to be fruitful between the ages of seven and eleven. What is required, at least, so far as much of the curriculum is concerned, is to substitute for it methods which take as the starting-point of the work of the primary school the experience, the curiosity, and the awakening powers and interest of the children themselves. (Hadow Report, 1931, Introduction quoted in Maclure, 1986, pp. 190–1)

The Infant and Nursery Schools report provides an extensive chapter on the history of Infant education and other chapters include aspects of child development, school organization, teacher training, premises and equipment. Much that was recommended in this report was not implemented, as the Plowden Report of 1967 made clear. Susan Isaacs, with Sir Cyril Burt, provided an appendix discussing the emotional development of children up to the age of 7. They were both psychologists; not surprisingly, the appendix reflects this. Ideas about and knowledge of child development have increased since this report but one striking observation they make is one that perhaps contemporary practitioners might think it worth their while to consider in their work with young bilingual children.

Observers who have approached the study of the young child from many different angles are all agreed upon one outstanding point: namely, that the emotional intensity of the young child’s life reaches its zenith about the end of the third year. At this age, every emotion the child undergoes is felt with a vividness and a strength that is never again experienced either in later childhood or in adult life; from this stage onwards experience and the integration of impulses tend more and more to control and moderate the child’s emotional excitement. This early vividness and intensity are seen with every type of feeling. (The Hadow Report, 1933, Appendix 3 para 3, pp. 246–7)

These two reports exerted considerable influence over the nature of a curriculum for Primary aged (or Junior) children particularly in relation to physical health and diet; certainly there was an expansion of provision for open-air activity and recreation (many local outdoor swimming pools were built in the 1920s) and of the schools’ medical services, schools meals, and so on. They set the tone for the expansion of education for the under 11s and for gradual changes in educational philosophy and pedagogy until the Plowden Report of 1967, although they do not directly address our concerns of language as it relates to identity and culture.

After the Hadow Reports

It is perhaps not until the Education Act of 1944 that we begin to see some governmental recognition of diversity in the population. In this Act, religious education was the only named compulsory subject and while this was embodied in Christianity, the national faith, it was also recognized that within this there were many denominations (Anglican, Catholic, non-conformist Churches, Quakers, etc.). There were also, of course, those who practised no religion. To begin to reflect this diversity, the Act established SACREs (Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education) which would address the beliefs and practices of the religious groups in each local authority. The Act also upheld the rights, via a conscience clause, of parents and teachers to withdraw children or themselves from any aspect of Religious Education (RE) with which they could not agree.

It should be remembered that this legislation, and indeed all preceding legislation, was enacted in a country which was still an imperial and colonizing force in the world. It is this complex and troubled history which led to the arrival of people from the countries that formed the empire, and, later, the commonwealth which will lead to the ideas that stem from the title of this book.

Empire, colonization and their after-effects

As stated in the introduction to this chapter, it is fair to say that the population of this country has always been mixed. Invasions and settlements by Romans, Scandinavians and Norman French, among many others, left their mark in many ways, not least by the intermarrying of the new populations with the established ones. There have been black people (i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Introduction
• 1 The Early Years Foundation Stage: Historical Context and Recent Developments
• 2 Minority Education: Developments in Britain
• 3 Setting the Context: Historical Perspectives on Personal, Social and Emotional Development and the Early Years Foundation Stage
• 4 Personal, Social and Emotional Development: Exploring Language, Culture and Identity
• 5 Multilingualism: Key Issues and Debates
• 6 First and Subsequent Language Acquisition: Key Issues and Debates
• 7 The Role of Home Languages in Supporting the Development of Purposeful Talk in Early Years Settings
• 8 Supporting Children’s Language Development: The Role of Parents, Carers and Other Adults
• 9 The Development of Communication and Oracy
• 10 Making the Transition to Reception Classes in Primary Schools
• 11 Conclusions and Recommendations
• References
• Index