The Subject Centre for English is unique. Its origins and its impetus come from the subject association and as a result its character is not determined by any single institutional agenda. In this sense it is an extraordinarily wide-ranging partnership. For the partnership that exists is not merely a formal arrangement between Royal Holloway, King's College and the Council for College and University English (CCUE) but rather an alliance between the UK English departments whose membership CCUE represents.
The Centre took a long time to come into being, and was established six months later than the other LTSN centres in the UK. Its final configuration undoubtedly must have come as something of a relief to the joint funding councils. To the English subject community, however, its presence is more than relief. It is a triumph. For it demonstrates the strength of a united subject determined to take real ownership of its future.
We live in a culture that appears to be obsessed with audit. The RAE, QAA assessment, continuation audit, institutional reviews – to say nothing of all the 'dry runs' of these – mean that we are constantly having to defend what we do and how we do it. We drown in the paperwork that this causes and block the system with frenzied email attachments. Our natural eloquence becomes polluted with the rhetoric of officialese, and the filing cabinet fills to overflowing with old course materials because you must never, never throw anything away in case it should prove vital evidence for a review team at some time in the future! The English Subject Centre provides a respite from audit, but while it is providing a release it can simultaneously help us to cope with the pressures that the audit culture creates.
The Centre's authorised remit is to disseminate good practice in learning and teaching, and to aid pedagogic development in English. More importantly, if managed properly, it will dynamise the subject. By re-focusing attention on the central business of educating our students, the Centre can return academics to the genuine excitement of teaching, one of the reasons why most of us went into this business in the first place. In the first few weeks of its existence it has started its planned cycle of visits to sixty English departments, devised a series of events from workshops to a residential conference, and created a website as well as this newsletter. The enthusiasm with which these initiatives have been greeted, and the fact that the Centre is already receiving approaches from departments on a daily basis, shows how much its services are needed.
At the CCUE general meeting in November 2000, Professor Deborah Cameron spoke compellingly against the language of skills as it has permeated our universities and infiltrated the instrumentalist approach to subjects, with a particularly detrimental effect on English. She argued for a return to the spirit of intellectual enquiry, the solid subject knowledge and the encouragement to think critically that are intrinsic to the study of English language and literature in Higher Education. What can English do? Why is it important? Are there any fundamental beliefs about the subject that we share? What are the significant debates? These questions underpin the activities of the Subject Centre if it returns academics to discussions about the basics of curriculum design, assessment practices, and innovations in learning. Our provision will be immeasurably enhanced if we address these questions together.
In government definitions of university ethos and character, it has become a truism to classify teaching and research as discrete activities undertaken by different groups of staff. But some of the most distinguished research stars in English are also the most dedicated teachers and can be the most passionate advocates for the subject. It's rubbish to suggest that good teachers can't also undertake high quality research, or that blue skies research doesn't inform or invigorate teaching. The Subject Centre should help to disperse this sort of myth, and through its range of activities will engage academics from very diverse departments in explaining and sharing what goes on in the classroom and beyond. Quite apart from anything else it will thus become a tremendous information resource that can be tapped by all of us.
I'm writing here as the first Chair of the Centre's management committee, but also as someone who has taught (and who continues to teach and research) university English for twenty-five years. The other members of the committee, representing a diverse range of institutions across the university sector, have similar histories. We all believe fervently in the value of the Centre and what it can do for our subject. We will monitor and advise on the Centre's activities, ensure that the budget is being allocated responsibly and to the benefit of the subject community, and provide a first line of support for the Centre's team and for the college where it is physically located. We are enormously grateful to Royal Holloway for agreeing to take on the responsibility for accounting to the funding councils, and for providing premises for the Centre's home. Special thanks must go to Professor Drummond Bone, Principal of Royal Holloway, and Professor Kiernan Ryan, Head of its English Department, for their personal investment in the Centre.
Professor Philip Martin, the first Director, has described the Subject Centre as a form of dating agency. It can provide introductions, create a database of departmental strengths, and arrange support for the lonely hearts who work in isolated conditions. Like the best dating agencies, it will use the new technologies in an informed rather than a mechanistic way, and it can arrange exchanges between departments so that we have the opportunity to see how the other half lives. I'd rather not push this analogy too far. Most of all, we wish the new Centre, its Director and its team every success for the future.
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Newsletter Issue 1 - May 2001
© English Subject Centre