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development and imagination that characterised the teaching of English a century later, children were issued with “graded readers” (Mercer & Swann 1996:177) that were of a didactic, moralistic nature and were designed as much to instil primary-school children with core Victorian values as they were to teach them to read. There was very little emphasis on the child as an individual, and a considerable amount of concentration on the child as a member of a society with firmly established ideologies. This was particularly apparent in the way in which Celtic languages were dismissed as inferior. As Mercer and Swann highlight, the suppression of Welsh and Irish and Scottish Gaelic in favour of English “undoubtedly led to greater standardization in the English language” (Mercer & Swann 1996:173) which, in turn, led to the suppression of Welsh, Irish, and Scottish cultures. While this clearly paved the way for the standardisation of the curriculum that took place in the 1980s and extended the consideration of English as a scholarly subject worthy of respect, it raised many questions about the imperialistic activity of imposing the English language and culture on all primary-school children. As the British Empire and the values it represented began to disintegrate, therefore, English as a taught subject became a significant way to unify the country.
The importance of language in the establishment of national identity cannot be underestimated. Throughout history, the standardisation of national languages has led to greater national unity, while one of the main aims during the colonial period was to impose the coloniser’s language on the subjugated people to weaken their sense of cultural and national selfhood. Following the mass destruction and political upheaval of the First World War, then, the literature and language of Britain came to the fore as the government attempted to reinstate a sense of national unity. The extreme changes occurring in British society as a result of the First World War, the steady disintegration of some class and gender barriers as more children attended school and women won the right to vote, and a general climate of political upheaval, led to the influential publishing of the Newbolt Report by the Board of Education in 1921. For the first time in British history, the study of English literature began to replace that of the Latin and Greek classics as the significance of the Ancient World to modern British society after the war they believed was ‘the war to end all wars’ was diminishing. While the replacement of classical texts for English literary texts was resisted by many, the Report advocated their introduction at all levels of education including primary-school level thereby setting the stage for the development of English as a major subject of study later in the century. Moreover, the teaching of basic literacy skills in primary schools began to develop considerably as speaking and listening skills were added to the already established reading and writing skills. In contrast to the dismissal of Celtic languages and regional dialects that prevailed at the end of the nineteenth century, the Newbolt Report placed greater emphasis on local variations in language use and their importance within the child’s educational framework. This was coupled with the Report’s recommendation that the teachin