“In Britain the education system is rigged.” An unsurprising comment, but it’s from Zadie Smith, formidable novelist and supreme essayist, talking about why British Black, working class, women novelists still aren’t happening.
“You need an education to write.” Can’t you get one at a state school? Not really. But didn’t she go to comprehensive? Well, it only goes so far: “Class swallows everything.”
She’s probably right. Basil Bernstein’s theories of language still seem to pertain. The acquisition of elaborate interior codes, without which novels can’t happen, still stifles working class expression. Novel writing is still predominantly an upper/middle class, predominantly White activity.
What the Black working class do is music, magnificently, “a monument to the ages”. That’s where their creativity mostly goes, because you don’t need money or a degree.
“But for the written form of a certain kind you need good schools.” But what’s a good school? Why did she do so well? Was it a god-given talent? Or just great parents? Would she have succeeded, whatever school she attended? She’s “one in a million”.
“Schools must change,” she concludes. I know but as an English teacher, it saddens me. Surely it’s not that simple. Children used to do terrific creative writing. Thrilling, urgent, charged, honest, and, yes, working class. It thrived. It took your breath away. We taught mixed ability and the voices were various and unique.
“I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me,” says a character in her fabulous novel NW. That’s exactly what we were nourishing. GCSE and A level actually had creative writing units. The work was not woolly, fuzzy or sentimental. It was tough.
We printed the best of it in magazines, lots of different voices. It was never picked up by publishers, who tend to be middle class.
Literature was also taught better. It was also mixed ability. We could fit books to pupils. They chose. I chose. We chose. Inner-city pupils really like American writing, especially Southern Gothic, perhaps because it cuts through English mimsy, English class.
Sixth forms had plenty of Black and White working class pupils, who crashed through those restricted codes. Still, it was apparently not “good” enough.
I’d instigate fierce, ruthless, elitist writing classes for the talented. English has been shrunk. It is thin gruel. Set texts, parrot answers and little serious creative writing.
Of course this needs changing. There are still profound issues of culture, class and race. Of course the system’s rigged, but you can only do so much.
Schools might change but, sorry Zadie, it won’t change much.
- Ian Whitwham is a former inner city London teacher.