My favorite story from this recent visit to England:
While researching in the Dean and Chapter Library of Norwich Cathedral, I was browsing the card catalog under the heading "Literature--17th Century" when I noticed that the cards in the "M"s were out of order (I was looking for books by Puritan poest Marvell and Milton). I brought this error to the attention of the sub-sub-librarian, whose face darkened into a worried look: "Oh, dear, oh," she gasped, stammered, and then said: "HE has developed a very complex classification system, so I don't think we should alter it; sometimes he has a classification order within a classification order." To which the sub-librarian overhearing piped in, "Yes and HE's dead, so we can't ask him."
Meanwhile on the streets outside the cathedral close, every third person was carrying a "mobile" cell phone. I never learned who "HE" was, but I gathered he was "The Librarian."
As the song and the cliché propose, "There will always be an England." However, it is increasingly looking like a high technology society that recognizes the need to "do different" (in the motto of one of its newer universities, the University of East Anglia). The Celtic Tiger across the Irish Sea is enjoying a blazing economic expansion (making up for British colonial hegemony before the revolution and Roman Catholic clerical hegemony afterward), given the English and the rest of Europe a run for its money.
British education has traditionally served its hierarchical class structure by strictly controlling access and by rigidly tracking students into occupational/technical or university/liberal studies tracks from a very early age. This began to change after World War II when university tuition was offered to qualifying students free of charge and when sixth-form colleges provided an alternative preparation to the grammar and elite "public schools."
Sixth-form colleges are the equivalent in the States of a last year of college-prep school and the first year of a general education university curriculum. Students in university typically only "read in" (i.e. study) their major field, unlike universities in the States where students are still not considered to be yet generally educated. Yet despite their focus on university-bound students, the sixth-form colleges display are remarkable balance between practical and theoretical education. For example, in May 2000 I had the opportunity to "invigilate" (i.e. proctor) one of the national exam sittings, specifically one in Information Technology at Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College. I was struck by the questions' insistence on both theoretical understanding of practical solutions to IT problems posed in the exam. Observing my colleague Jacky Clift's Media Studies classes (who at that point in the semester were designing their own magazines) I observed the insistent emphasis not only on the practical production aspects of their project but also the analytical narrative that they had to provide with the project.
Higher education in England is typically offered only to young adults (what we call "traditional students"). Those who have had difficulty with academic achievement as children or young adults usually go on to trades or business, and that's that. There are no second chances. This European model is not very forgiving; the real genius of American higher education is its willingness to admit qualified adults at any stage in their lives. Indeed, the only thing uniquely American about American higher education is the community college, which welcomes students whereever and whenever they are ready. However, the English are beginning to introduce greater flexiblity into their further education.
The Lichfield Centre of Staffordshire University is the result of a partnership with Staffs U and Tamworth and Lichfield College, supported by the European Union. Centre director Chris Birch, whom I first met at the International College Teaching and Learning Conference in Jacksonville in April 2000, told me that the centre committed its resources to bandwidth rather than bricks and mortar, with the result that the centre is so successful in attracting students that the resources for more bricks and mortar have followed. In addition, the centre is dedicated to the establishment of a relatively new model of lifelong learning, rather than the traditional model of university matriculation and credentialing. At the same time, instructors are trained in teaching as well as in their technical or disciplinary fields, emphasizing the need to be effective as well as to be knowledgeable. Finally, the centre is attempting to rethink curricular models.
A similarly remarkable partnership is The Learning Shop, located on the market at the center of Norwich, the provincial capital of Norfolk in East Anglia. In a storefront location, colleges, universities, and further education institutions work collaboratively, not competitively, to recruit and to advise adult learners in an environment that is more like a boutique or business than a school. It provides counselors, meeting space, and exhibit space. During its first year, The Learning Shop served 20,000 clients, guiding adult learners to the services of its partners: University of East Anglia, The Open University, City College of Norwich, Easton College, Norwich School of Art and Design, and Norfolk Adult Education Service.
While in England I had the opportunity to attend the London 2000 Roundtable of the Council on Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC), held in conjunction with the ISTC (the Institute for the Professional Communicator) Forum 2000. As a teacher of technical writing and technical communication I have tried to maintain my professional credentials and this opportunity was particularly rewarding since I saw many Americans whom I had met before but also listened to English and European (there's a difference!) perspectives. Perhaps the most interesting resource that I brought home with me was the National Occupational Standards for Technical Communicators (Accreditation Version 1999). The English education system is committed to national standards and to the national assessment of those standards. Thus students in sixth-form colleges undertake numerous three-hour essay exam sittings in order to qualify for university. (None of this three hours of filling in circles with number 2 pencils to determine your academic fate.) These technical communication standards were the work of a two-dozen-person working group from business and publishing in addition to dozens of participants in field trials. The result was 25 standards, each with two or more elements, suggested methods of assessment, and evidence guidance, in a document totalling 97 pages.
The English (and the rest of the world) have certainly kept their eyes on the successes of American education, but we had better work on continuous improvement of our own education institutions lest we find ourselves "out-innovated" by the English. Perhaps an analogy might convey what I mean. In the 18th century, the English appropriated an Asian technology, fine ceramics and porcelain, and applied their technology and ingenuity to its manufacture, marketing, and distribution. This resulted in the English china industry (located in "The Potteries" of Stoke-on-Trent), famous around the world for its quality and affordability. However, since the 1950s, Asian industries have taken back that product by applying their post-war technology and ingenuity (while the English potteries had rested on their laurels), with the result that North Staffordshire now desperately seeks a new industry to revive its sagging economy. We adapted our education systems from the English (and the Germans), provided innovations in quality and access, and have made them one of our major "exports." However, unless we continue to improve and reconfigure the ways that we provide education, we might easily find ourselves in second place with the Mother of our Mother Tongue.