I'd like to rise up

in fury and tell them what

a chance we're missing

Willie Hershaw

This article is in part a personal reminiscence based on 30 years experience of teaching English and partly a response to Robert Downie's article 'The Mither Tongue' (16 February). Sadly, the professor took a fairly typical provincial line in as much as he implied that those who uphold the case for Scottish studies in Scottish schools and particularly the promotion of the Scots language are guilty of parochialism and self-interest.
     It is my belief that the very opposite is the case – those who would deny Scottish pupils access to their cultural history are maintaining a cringe-worthy and backward-looking approach that is harmful. Curriculum for Excellence offered an opportunity to reverse centuries of educational negativity but unfortunately it seems that the movers and shakers behind it have either lacked the necessary vision or shared the hauden grey outlook of the nae sayers.
    
My teaching career began at an inauspicious time in 1980 at a high school in Kirkcaldy, one year after the first, failed, devolution referendum. In the 30 years since I've spent most of my working life in the classroom, teaching English in secondary schools in Fife. The majority of the pupils I've taught during this period I would describe as native Scots speakers (brought up in communities where the Fife dialect of Scots is the spoken norm) and as I would class myself also as a native Fife Scots speaker, the greater part of my teaching and verbal communication with these pupils has been through the medium of spoken Scots.
     I have always considered this a great advantage in terms of establishing positive relationships with pupils as well as in being able to communicate effectively and impart information. At the same time, this has created a situation that I would describe as teaching one language (or to be more precise one group of linguistic registers) in a different, albeit closely related language. Because of my own personal experiences and consciousness of the sometimes subtle differences and similarities between Scots and English – the concepts of abstand and ausbau that Professor Derrick McClure explains more clearly in his book 'Why Scots Matters' – and due to a life-long interest in Scottish literature and language, I have always been interested in the role and function and status of Scots in secondary education in Scotland.
     Back in 1980 the argument for including Scots within the English curriculum in Scotland had long since been accepted, if not supported. The polemical work of MacDiarmid and his renaissance had been carried on and indeed, as a pupil myself in the 1970s, I was introduced to the poetry of Burns, MacDiarmid and Henryson by a very fine English teacher, Dennis MacNamara. This introduction came in the last few years of my school education however – I had never been exposed to any Scots previously at all until my fifth year at school and this was due to the enthusiasm of one particular teacher rather than because it was a mandatory component of the higher English course.
     In my first year as a young probationer teacher I remember observing an irascible head of physics skelp a pupil across the lug when he asked him a question about Newton's third law, appropriately enough, and the answer came back to him,'I dinnae ken, Sur'. You were allowed to hit pupils back then. 'Don't use that gutter language in here, son', was what the pupil got skelped for, not for not knowing the correct answer.
     What was interesting to me was that this same teacher of physics, apart from his psychotic tendencies, was a habitual and fluent Scots speaker himself. He would often cheerfully slap pupils across the back of the head with a copy of Jardine's 'Physics Is Fun', a weighty physics tome, and inform them that 'facts are chiels that winnae ding'. They hadn't a clue what he was on about.
     This dichotomy existed throughout Fife Region. My first principal teacher was very keen to promote Scots and Scots literature. He would be. Not only was he weill acquent with the works of contemporary writers such as Donald Campbell, Sidney Goodsir Smith, Robert Garioch, Alan Bold and Norman MacCaig, but most weekends he could be found in Rose Street with them, unco fou and hauf seas ower. On the other hand, the Fife English adviser, an Inverness man, perhaps for political reasons, took some pains to take me aside to inform me that, whatever I thought to the contrary, the rauchle tongue of Burns, good as it was, was a regional dialect of English and on no accounts could it be afforded language status in its own right.
     In the years to follow, changes occurred within Scottish education in general and in my subject of English in particular with bewildering rapidity. The infamous tawse, manufactured by Mr Dick the sadler in Lochgelly, met its nemesis when challenged in a European court of law by an irate parent from just a few miles along the road in Cowdenbeath.
     O grades were replaced by standard grade as education became more inclusive. Importantly, talk became a mandatory component element of the new standard grade English course. It could be argued that this represented the first acknowledgement that children should be heard as well or seen or perhaps it was the first indication that what you say can often be more important than what you do. What did you assess, we asked? Was it the style or the substance?
     Since then the changes have continued to be rung, particularly in the subject of English: in no particular order, we have implemented 5-14, an attempt to integrate the curriculum from P1 to S2 while quantifying progression of attainment in reading, writing and maths; we have experienced the revised Higher with its insistence on the study of set texts; we have had Higher Still as greater numbers of pupils opted to stay on at school in S5/6 (unemployment began to rise during the Thatcher years).
     Higher Still brought with it new courses at intermediate 2 and intermediate 1 level for those unable to access the traditional university entrance benchmark. At one time the subject name even changed from English to communication. In 2010 the Higher English course changed again back to something more resembling what it had been like in its first changed form – before it was changed, that is. If that seems a bit bewildering it is because it is. If Scottish education had remained a calm and unruffled pool for 100 years or so, within a few decades it became exceedingly turbulent waters.
     With new courses came new proposed methods and concepts for teaching and learning: group work, peer assessment, assessment is for learning (as if it ever wasn't), language across the curriculum, even a bendy thing called flexible learning at one point. Most of these initiatives contained the seeds of what canny old teachers had always referred to as 'good practice'. But new jargon and buzzwords can become alarming for teachers, parents and pupils alike, especially when they appear, disappear and then reappear with regularity like Jesus after he was crucified.
    

For a while a thing called 'direct teaching' was very much in vogue. It proposed the revolutionary method of standing in front of a class and telling them things. Underpinning much of this change was a concept that I believe transferred, virus-like, from the worlds of business, right-wing economics and the private sector. It assumed that in some way education was like manufacturing and selling baked beans. There must always be a drive towards improvement, and therefore improvement must be measured, the drivers forward of improvement must be measured in case they were skiving and therefore there must be a means of measuring the measurers as well as the measurements.
     Eventually, as in the case of 5-14, the measuring process took over at the expense of what was being measured. To stay in the same place in such a system is not good enough – it means that you are stagnant. Education does not only reflect society, it is society. Thatcherite ideas sustained by Blair and Brown have had an influence on Scottish education no matter what we might like to believe about our noble traditions of democratic intellects, lads o pairts and the early ideals of comprehensive education. As a result of all this came an urgency for schools, headmasters, departments, individual teachers and even entire regions to become more publicly accountable.
     Post McCrone, heidies and AHTs, who had formerly had a tangenital connection with the teaching process and therefore children, started assuming the role of Ricky Gervais in 'The Office'. Through no fault of their own they became personnel managers rather than educational facilitators. As I write, there is probably a shedful of classroom refugees and other educational parasites holding a conference somewhere to decide what and how teachers should be teaching with a keynote speaker from Finland. Statistics became used more and more to decree who was winning and who was losing (despite the fact everyone knows perfectly well it's to do with post codes and class sizes) – for the former predicates the latter. The metaphor of competition has become now commonplace and accepted (league tables and failing schools, etc).
     Then there was all the crazy PC inclusion guff: guidance became a first-line defence against mouthy parents and full-time arse wipers for messed up kids whose feckless parents took no reponsibility. Learning support teachers were stopped from taking away poor souls who needed help to access the curriculum and had to flit from desk to desk like hapless butterflies in the classroom. (How many learning support teachers does it take to change a light bulb? None, although the learning support teacher may advise the classroom teacher how to approach the light bulb.) A Wayne Rooney soundalike could tell you to get to f*** and write a lovely heartfelt letter of apology afterwards.
     And in the midst of this whirlmagig of often tapsilteerie and heligoleerie education birlans – whaur staunds the Scots leid nou? Well, the honest answer is – on the furthest periphery where it pretty much has always been. I think it was The Clash who were not too bothered about London drowning because they lived by the river. Does the same apply to the Scots language?
    

It would seem to me that the position of Scots in education resembles the current political situation and the Scottish public's attitude to independence and fiscal autonomy. In other words, we'd like a wee bit of it but not the whole cooked breakfast. However, although the cultural landscape in Scotland is markedly different from what it was in 1980, the situation of the Scots language and its status in secondary education has not altered significantly. Scots language and literature are taught in isolated pockets across the central belt by a few dedicated enthusiasts.
     Although the presence of Scots from S1-6 is permitted, it is viewed as peripheral, okay in the above PC kind of way, an add on and in no way central or necessary in terms of the delivery of the main curriculum. There are a number of reasons for this: many young teachers, having come through the system themselves, do not have the expertise or confidence to teach it; the teaching of English has already become a complicated and demanding business without taking on any additional burden; Scots is in no way mandatory and tends to be given a kind of low-key lip service by institutions such as the SQA; although materials exist (such as Robbie Robertson's 'Kist', the fine work of Itchy Coo publications under the guidance of Matthew Fitt and James Robertson, publications and web resources from LT Scotland including the Glow project) you have to be interested in the first place to go and look for them.
     There already is a plethora of fine 'Scottish' authors who write in English such as Ian Rankin, Liz Lochhead and Carol Ann Duffy – who wants to waste time digging up others who aren't even as well known (and therefore can't be as good)? Finally, a large percentage of teachers either still regard Scots as a regional dialect or are unsure of its status or are disposed for political reasons not to teach it because they perceive Scots to be an expression of nationalism and nationalistic identity. In cultural terms, they are correct in this perception – it has to be.
     A good illustration of the problems facing teachers who wish to promote the Scots language would be to take the medieval poet Robert Henryson, who was included as an option in the current Advanced Higher English (formerly Sixth Year Studies) course (though he might not be now if they've changed it again since I started writing this). Henryson, many academics argue, is the greatest Scottish poet who ever lived so it would seem that he might lay claim, at some stage, to a small piece of the Scottish English curriculum.
     In many secondary schools in working-class areas Advanced Higher classes are small. Headteachers, in a time of cuts, do not want staff tied up with three pupils when they could be teaching 30, so timetabled periods for Advanced Higher tend to be on the smallish side also. If they go ahead, they want good results. To teach Henryson properly the historical context has to be gone into – medieval religion and philosophy and so forth – and all this before addressing the language, the syntax and vocabulary that will appear spectacularly alien to even the brightest of 17 year olds. Meanwhile an anxious principal teacher is breathing down the teacher's neck and stressing the importance of getting A passes. And all the while there are other options on the exam paper. Liz Lochhead and Eddie Morgan, Scotland's Weegie urban laureates, await and afford instant access in a way that poor old Bob Henryson can't. Maybe this is one way how things get dumbed down.
     From a pragmatic and Keynsian economics point of view it could be argued – who gives a fig? The language of international commerce is English. Given that nations like the Germans and the Swedes accept fully that they have to put aside national pride in the face of global capitalism and be prepared to play second fiddle to English in the grand proms orchestra of language, might it not be a mair wyce like approach to be steering our bairns in the direction of a Chinese/Indian inflected world web English – the future as it looks from a present-day window in Thrums?
     In his book 'Why Scots Matters', Professor McClure put forward many reasons why Scots might be considered a language. His conclusion, as I read it, was this: it can be, easily, but only if you want it enough. Exactly the same thing can be said for the case for political autonomy for Scotland. The reverse is also true: if enough people don't fancy committing, it will never take off.
    

In recent years, Scotland has changed. Aslan has been on the move. The next few years will tell us whether this process will continue further or whether it will shrunkle up like a thistle with acute lumbago due to a national lack of confidence caused by a worldwide economic recession. The initial kick start that brought us a parliament at Holyrood was propelled by a cultural impetus from the nationalist inclined poets and artists in the 60s, 70s and 80s. These people shifted the scenery that allowed the politicians to take centre stage.
     Now the politicians have a new initiative for veteran teachers with battered flasks and patched elbows like myself. It is called Curriculum For Excellence and it may or may not happen as predicted. Based on the four abstract nouns of justice, integrity, compassion and wisdom, it aims to produce a future generation of young Scots who are responsible citizens, confident individuals, effective contributors and successful learners through an integrated curriculum from 5-18 that drives a coach and four horses through the traditional subject-based model of secondary education. As a product of the old style I tellt ye style of Scottish education there is much in this that causes me palpitations. Confident perhaps but not smug. After all, is lack of verbal confidence not what held me back in those university tutorials when the English under-grads were holding forth about Wordsworth? I've made a positive virtue out of my lack of the stuff.
     Looking at it in another, unusually positive way, all this confidence, responsibility, effectiveness and success talk, clarifies for me everything I have learned both as a pupil, a student and a teacher. There is a constant subliminal message that thrums and dings, that resonates and reinforces throughout Scottish education at every level but particularly in the secondary school. I think it has done so since 1603 and probably even before that. It is a hidden authoritative voice that soughs and whispers continually in the lugs of every pupil from a Scottish working-class background.
     The text changes but the message is always the same. It says, initially: you live in a dump, how you speak is not good enough, how your parents and grandparents speak is not good enough, how your friends and family speak and think is not good enough. And then there is the follow on: you must change; you must rise up to the light: you must get the hell out; to be considered in any way successful you must leave this awful place and never come back. And this is what we have been doing for years: teaching our children to be ashamed of who they are instead of saying be proud – by all means go to university and learn – but please come back to your roots and help us build.
     Whatever your opinion about Curriculum for Excellence – and there are some like myself who would settle for a broad level of competence in literacy and numeracy before aspiring to the dizzy heights of excellence – the document itself, the one ringbinder to rule them all, is a large object. It takes a wheelbarrow to get it to a teachers' in-service course. What does it have to say about the Scots language, an engine of immense potential to drive forward real personal and national confidence and a willingness to contribute successfully? Well, here it is, a smallish paragraph, almost a footnote on page six of the English and literacy: principles and practice section:
     'The languages, dialects and literature of Scotland provide a rich resource for children and young people to learn about Scotland's culture, identity and language. Through engaging with a wide range of texts they will develop an appreciation of Scotland's vibrant literary and linguistic heritage and its indigenous languages and dialects. This principle suffuses the experiences and outcomes and it is expected that practitioners will build upon the diversity of language represented within the communities of Scotland, valuing the languages which children and young people bring to school.'
     And that's it: three sentences written in a patronising tone (sic: indigenous). The Scots language isn't even specifically mentioned. On the face of it, the words, scant as they are, seem to make a positive noise. But that's all it is. Noise. Note the last five words 'young people bring to school' which indicate as clearly as possible the colonial attitude still held by Scotland's leading educationalists. The subtext is this: they bring it to school, these PC days we have to thole it, we'll even study it for a wee bit if you insist – but it is not the main thing that goes on here. We conduct our business in a real language. How can this promote confident learners let alone articulate communicators?
     An enormous opportunity has been lost here. The opportunity, after centuries of cringing, to give our children the chance to be themselves and maybe even in the long-term to begin to reverse that dreadful message of 'go away and don't come back' that every secondary school in Scotland has been endorsing for decades in one way or another. But maybe our educationalist 'thinkers' were frightened of being thought parochial. Maybe they were scared of the political fall out. In Scotland, Scots should not be regarded as something children drag into school from outside but as the main language of the school itself. For it is the language that the vast majority of the pupils, the janitors, the cleaners, the dinner ladies and even some of the teachers speak. The teachers who don't or who have forgotten should learn or relearn it.
     All Scottish children have a right, which they are mainly denied, to learn about their identity and what creates it: language, literature, music, art, history, geography and so forth. If this was attempted properly in a coherent programme of Scottish studies (and I mean this not in a triumphalistic, inward-looking way but in a truthful, unbiased and comprehensive way that makes children aware that our faults and failings have made us Scottish as much as our successes) then the Scots language could be the engine of enablement that starts to reverse the effects of centuries of colonialist unionist brainwashing in our schools that has resulted in so many individual futures being unrealised. I would go so far as to argue that if the Scots are to continue and thrive as a nation the means of their survival have to be cultural rather than economic. If you are to work as if you were living in the early days of a better nation, you need more than a cheese piece to keep you going.
     However, in the cold light of day it's Curriculum For Excellence, not Curriculum For Scotland, whatever I may think. It's a bit like Henry McLeish's commissioned report on how to fix Scottish football. It says nice things that no one would ever argue against but is it likely to happen? But I wonder about this: Why is it that, even when we let ourselves go a wee bit and allow some of the wattergaw of idealism to permeate our normal hauden grey vision of life, there's always somebody there tae put the hems on it, just in case we speir ower faur.
     It seems incredible to me that I went through most of my education in Scotland without learning much about the muckle ballads (the DNA of our national literature), Blin Harry's 'Wallace', the poetry of William Dunbar, Fergusson and Burns, the works of James Hogg, Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson right up to the poets, dramatists and novelists of the 20th century influenced by MacDiarmid's Renaissance. This was my literary tradition and 90% of it was written in my language – Scots. I didn't get it and Scots bairns still don't. We get somebody else's.
     I wish the suits who run Scottish education would get it too. I'd like to rise up in righteous fury and tell everyone in the assembly hall here about what an enormous chance we're missing, how we could put an old wrong right. The thing is, I'm not confident enough that I can express myself in hybrid English. So I'll just haud ma tungue, as wee Scots tend to do.

Willie Hershaw is a poet, musician and songwriter. He is currently principal teacher of English at Beath High School, Cowdenbeath