LANGUAGE, TEACHING, AND FAILURE

This research derives from my experience of working as a teacher in an English Comprehensive school during the noughties. During that time I felt as though a particularly weird and sceptical approach to language had insinuated itself into the culture of schooling. This manifested itself in a number of troubling ways. At that time, Ofsted (the school inspectorate in England and Wales) gave four grades to both individual teachers and schools. We could be marked as ‘unsatisfactory’, ‘satisfactory’, ‘good’, or ‘outstanding’. I recall a talk in which the Headteacher informed us that ‘satisfactory’ was no longer satisfactory, and that the majority of teachers should aim to be ‘outstanding’. This sort of scepticism in the face of language (where one can no longer rely on words to mean what they ordinarily mean) had its corollary in approaches to language in the classroom. As teachers, we were told that we should not talk too much, and what we did say should be utterly transparent if learning objectives were to be met. In the meantime we were expected to ensure that certain contextual factors (such as seating plans) were in place so as to achieve maximum control of the learning environment. The aim of the research presented in the extract is to bring the work of Jacques Derrida on the performative dimension of language to bear on issues regarding the role played by contextual factors when establishing whether or not teaching fails or succeeds. Derrida was a French poststructuralist philosopher of language whose writings revolutionised the philosophy of language.