This article discusses what seem to us to be some of the key features of Chris Searle’s approach to language and literacy education within school classroom settings in England, as portrayed in his own writings and reflected in work done by his students and published in numerous compilations from Stepney Words (1971) to School of the World (1994). We understand his work as a sustained engagement in critical literacy, underpinned by an unswerving belief that being a literacy educator serving working-class communities is inherently a political, ethical and situated — material and grounded — undertaking. Throughout his school teaching life, Chris Searle took it as axiomatic that working-class children should learn to read, write, spell, punctuate and develop the word as a tool to be used in struggles — their own and those of people like them, wherever they may live — for improvement and liberation. Literacy education for working-class children must proceed from, maintain continuity with and always be accountable to the material life trajectories and prospects of these children. It can only do this by maintaining direct contact with their material lives and their situated being within their material worlds.
See, for example, Queensland Studies Authority, 2008 NAPLAN Test Materials (Brisbane, State of Queenland, 2009), <http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/assessment/7137.html>, accessed 3 April 2009.
2.
Training and Development Agency for Schools, 2009, <http://tinyurl.com/d7qc8k>, accessed 26 March 2009.
3.
C. Searle, ‘Afterword’, in C. Lankshear, Changing Literacies (Buckingham, Open University Press, 1997), p. 194.
4.
‘Tests "damaging" to school system’, BBC News (13 May 2008), <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7396623.stm>, accessed 26 March 2009.
5.
‘School literacy scheme attacked’, BBC News (2 November 2007), <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/education/7073275.stm>, accessed 26 March 2009; S. Palmer, ‘National Literacy Strategy - good or bad?’, My Child (October 2006), <http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Policy/strat. html>, accessed 26 March 2009.
6.
P. Tymms and C. Merrill, ‘How well are we doing? Research on standards, quality and assessment in English primary education’, The Primary Review: research briefings overview of 3/4, 4/1 & 4/2 (2007), <http://tinyurl.com/2wgso3>, accessed 26 March 2006.
7.
‘School literacy scheme attacked’, op. cit.
8.
J-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: a report on knowledge (Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnestoa Press, 1984), p. 4.
9.
J-F. Lyotard, ‘A svelte appendix to the postmodern question’, in Political Writings (Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnestoa Press, 1993), p. 25.
10.
J. Marshall, ‘Performativity: Lyotard, Foucault and Austin’, paper presented to the American Educational Research Association’s Annual Meeting, San Diego, 11-17 April 1998, p. 8.
11.
Students of Earl Marshal School, School of the World: writings from Earl Marshal School (Sheffield, Earl Marshal School, 1994); C. Searle, The World in a Classroom (London, Writers and Readers, 1977).
12.
C. Searle with M. Knobel, ‘Words and life: critical literacy and cultural action’, in M. Knobel and A. Healy, eds, Critical Literacies in the Primary Classroom (Newtown, NSW, Primary English Teaching Association, 1998).
13.
Ibid., p. 77.
14.
Ibid.
15.
Ibid.
16.
Ibid.
17.
Ibid.
18.
J.P. Gee , G. Hull and C. Lankshear, The New Work Order ( Boulder, CO, Westview Press/ Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1996), p. 4.
19.
Ibid.
20.
J.P. Gee , Good Video Games + Good Learning ( New York, Peter Lang Publishing, 2007).
21.
Searle with Knobel, ‘Words and life’, op. cit., p. 85; Students of Earl Marshal School, Lives of Love and Hope: a Sheffield herstory (Sheffield, Earl Marshal School, 1993).
22.
C. Bigum, ‘Schools and knowledge production: community informatics for a knowledge economy’, in S. Marshall, W. Taylor, and C. Macpherson , eds, Proceedings of the Fourth International Information Technology in Regional Areas Conference (ItiRA , Rockhampton, Australia, 2002), pp. 208-15.
23.
C. Searle, compiler, Stepney Words (London, Reality Press, 1971); Students of Earl Marshal School, School of the World, op. cit.
24.
Searle with Knobel, ‘Words and life’, op. cit., p. 74.
25.
Ibid., p. 75.
26.
Ibid.
27.
For fuller accounts, see C. Searle, Classrooms of Resistance (London, Writers and Readers, 1975); Searle, The World in a Classroom, op. cit.; Searle with Knobel, ‘Words and life’, op. cit.; C. Searle, None But Our Words: empowering words, empowering lives (Buckingham, Open University Press, 1998).
28.
Searle with Knobel, ‘Words and life’, op. cit., p. 78.
29.
Ibid., pp. 80-1.
30.
Searle, Classrooms of Resistance, op. cit., p. 8.
31.
Ibid.
32.
Ibid., p. 10.
33.
Ibid.
34.
Ibid., p. 21.
35.
Ibid., p. 29.
36.
C. Searle, ‘Words to a lifeland: literacy, imagination and Palestine’, in C. Lankshear and P. McLaren, eds, Critical Literacy: politics, praxis and the postmodern (Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 1993), p. 172.
37.
Ibid., p. 171.
38.
Compare, for example, C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination ( New York, Oxford University Press, 1959).
39.
Students of Earl Marshal School, Valley of Words (Sheffield, SUMES & Earl Marshal School, 1992), p. 34.
40.
Ibid., p. 76.
41.
Searle with Knobel, ‘Words and life’, op. cit., p. 81.
42.
Ibid., p. 81.
43.
Ibid.
44.
Ibid., p. 82.
45.
Searle, ‘Afterword’ , op. cit., p. 196.
46.
J.P. Gee, Social Linguistics and Literacies: ideology in discourses, second edition (New York, Routledge, 1996).
47.
Ibid., p. 144; J. P. Gee, Social Linguistics and Literacies: ideology in discourses, third edition (New York, Routledge, 2008), p. 177.
48.
J.P. Gee, ‘Foreword’, in Lankshear, Changing Literacies, op. cit., pp. xiii-xix.
49.
R. Powell, Literacy as a Moral Imperative: facing the challenges of a pluralistic society (Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield , 1999), p. 1.
50.
G. Thompson, ‘Where education and assimilation collide’, New York Times (15 March 2009), <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/us/15immig.html> ;, accessed 26 March 2009.
51.
Ibid., p. 6.
52.
Ibid., p. 9.
53.
Ibid., p. 10.
54.
Powell, op. cit., p. 65. See also H. Tinberg, ‘Are we good enough? Critical literacy and the working class’, College English (Vol. 63, no. 3, 2001), pp. 353-60.
