Where Do We Go From Here? The State of English Education
When I tell people I’m an English student, I usually get a variety of reactions: shock, horror, disgust. “Better you than me,” “I could never do that,” “I hated English in school,” they say. But when I ask why they disliked it, I struggle to disagree. For many, it was the monotonous essays, for others, they felt like the things they read held no value in their current lives. I mean, seriously, when was the last time you’ve thought about Holden Caulfield’s red hat or the tumultuous relationship of Gatsby and Daisy? So that raised the question, what should students be gaining from an English education, and what are the most valuable skills post-graduation?
When I set out to answer these questions, I was expecting an easy answer: look over a few English curriculums, some student testimonies, tie it up in a neat bow. But it quickly became clear that English today is not only struggling, it’s on the brink of collapse. Without serious development over the next decade, we’ll be in a serious world of hurt.
The State of English Education
My research began with a video essay, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” by Jared Henderson, a former college lecturer in Philosophy. In the video, he discusses a shift in higher education towards shorter reading lists, a preference to excerpts over entire texts, and a general easing of academic rigor. Henderson points generally at a pedagogic trend in Western English education called Whole Language Learning, which believes reading is naturally learned through absorption, similar to how children learn to speak. It emphasizes learning new words through context-reading, rather than focusing on individual phonics. The truth is, it didn’t work, and left many kids not only unable to read, but actively antagonistic to it. Of course, if reading is difficult, people won’t.
Although we’ve seen a shift back to phonics over the last few years, English scores among recent high school graduates are at an all-time low. According to the NAEP, 32% of graduates performed at a below-basic level on standardized English tests, and another 33% performed at a basic level. According to Dr. Grover Whitehurst, “Someone who is reading at the basic level can understand the words, can answer simple questions about the factual information presented in the written text, and can read with enough fluency to get through the material on time.” These are surface-level, foundational skills that graduates are missing, skills that could be detrimental in their long-term success.
And although I hate bringing it up, it’d be amiss to not mention generative-AI’s increasing use both inside and outside of the classroom. In a study of AI-usage across high school and college students, 42% of high school students who used AI used it for complete essay generation. But who can really blame them? When students are tasked to write a 1,500-word essay on a piece of literature they likely will never think about again, it becomes a challenge to convince them of the value of writing. English is naturally challenging, and when students have an easy cop-out, of course, they’ll take it.
The Concern
We live in an age of information abundance. Open any social media, any news (I use that term liberally) website, any Google search, and you’ll notice the overwhelm of informational noise. With so much distraction, it’s vital that our students learn to discern between trustworthy and untrustworthy sources and to reflect on how bias and motive can influence the information they consume. Without getting into specifics, we’ve seen this skill falter to extremes in recent years—people falling victim to disinformation without considering the incentives or motivations behind their consumption.
In a video essay, “How to Teach High School English,” Peter Shull argues that the purpose of the English class is not just to teach reading and writing, but to form critical thinkers. While the skills of reading and writing are fundamental to this goal, they are merely the avenues for students to begin thinking not in binary terms about right and wrong, but rather to gain a nuanced opinion about current political and social issues, often practiced in the essay form.
Shull goes on to add, “students should read widely and deeply, and they should have read some things that they like. They should like reading.” This brought me back to my conversations with friends, those who said the books they read, they neither enjoyed. This exposure to classic literature without conception of the student’s engagement with that literature has created a generation of graduates who not only dislike reading, but actively avoid it. Partner that with the range of bright, fast-paced technological distractions, and it suddenly becomes impossible to build a case for reading.
Where Do We Go From Here?
English classes, necessarily, are at the forefront of this societal shift. This is the only space for many kids to practice skills in critical examination, multi-perspectivity, and argument-forming. But English classes too need to be adapted for the modern student. While I do believe in the value of studying classic literature—in high school especially, it’s important for students to read a range of historically significant texts—an inclusion of more modern literature may help declining interest. If students are able to recognize aspects of themselves and their communities in the texts they read, they’re more likely to both complete the reading as well as engage more meaningfully in any assessed work.
I too believe ChatGPT has essentially killed the at-home essay, and with so much of the English curriculum reliant on essay-writing, this is where we need to focus a lot of our efforts. The core structural skills of writing can be used in contemporary mediums: think the video essay, PowerPoint presentations. Although these forms aren’t a complete replacement for their written alternative—mainly in terms of grammar and syntax practice—they provide useful practice in terms of argumentation and organization of a text, and include public speaking and technology skills necessary in the workplace.
Don’t get me wrong, none of these changes are ideal, but maintaining a pre-COVID version of the English classroom may spell disaster. Forcing kids into decades-old curricula when they are both disinterested and underprepared will only catalyze a decline in literacy. As a lover of English, I believe in the value of studying classic literature, writing essays, and pondering the symbolism of Holden’s red hat. But in the immediate present, it’s vital we adequately prepare our students for the fierce, information-rich world of their futures, which may mean meeting them at their level.
