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These timings have been adjusted from the strict dates when the units are due for relief so that the run down would be completed in accordance with the long-term defence plans for the Army. The dates should be regarded as approximate only, as they would need to be fitted to the trooping programme. They might also need adjustment to allow for the withdrawal of the R., F. squadron which can take place at any time.
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THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HER BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT
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Printed for the Cabinet. November 1953 bedind oft velimi neku nie net
SECRET
C.P. (55) 175
15th November, 1955
CABINET
Copy No.
76
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7
THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH OVERSEAS
MEMORANDUM BY THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION
The Working Party of the Middle East Oil Committee ask (C.P. (55) 172) that the teaching of English in the Middle East shall be subsidised. This recommendation applies, with little change of emphasis, to all countries and territories where there is a demand to learn English.
2. English could become the first truly world-language; that is, the second language in every school and university in the world where a language other than the native tongue is taught. This will happen only if we catch the tide that for the moment runs in our favour. The young nations are asking for English because their own languages are too weak to be the vehicles of the new sciences and know-how they wish to learn. This could change: either their own languages and scholarship could be built up (e.g., Hindi in India; Egyptian universities as the cultural centre of the Arab world) or the sciences and technics may be offered to the non-English speaking races through the medium of Russian. We have, one may guess, no more than a generation in which to establish English as the universal instrument of agricultural, industrial and scientific progress.
3. At present all that is done to promote the teaching of English overseas is done by the British Council and the Colonial Office. The Education Ministers have no powers. The Secretary of State for Scotland and I are like manufacturers who have covenanted not to sell their goods abroad. The British Council must act as a free-lance merchant pushing our teachers overseas with no security of supply and quite inadequate resources.
4. Proposals to improve this situation must start from a recognition that to teach English to foreigners requires special training. This training can be given in this country to British and foreign students, or in colleges overseas staffed at any rate at first by British teachers, e.g., Allahabad. Having offered training in the United Kingdom it is then necessary to make service overseas as widely attractive as possible. Apart from salaries and reinstatement it must be worth consideration how to link up English teaching in the Commonwealth, the Colonies and foreign countries in order to improve the prospects of promotion and to afford the widest opportunities for sharing experience both while training and in the field.
5. The following are lines of action which need to be drawn into a single policy. The references to Ministers and others are to those who are, or who should be, responsible:-
(a) Teacher-training in the United Kingdom. The Education Ministers and the
(b) Selection of teachers to go abroad.
!
(c) Subsidising the salaries of teachers to go
abroad.
(a) Reinstatement of teachers when they of teachers when they come tage of 321
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Universities.
The Overseas Ministers with the
British Council; the Education Ministers with the local authori- ties.
The Education Ministers.
The Education Ministers with the
local authorage 125 of 321
ar
(
2
(e) Splection of overseas students to train in
the United Kingdományoz
(f) Aids to teaching abroad, e.g., books, films,
laboratory equipment, &c.
(Better facilities to learn science and kindred subjects in universities and British colleges, and, through British teachers, in overseas colleges. Tech- nical education is the bait which attracts the new nations to learn English; and if English is the medium of their technical studies all sorts of benefits for our industry and defence follow.
The Opens Ministers with the
The Education Ministers and the universities, with the British Council.
The Education Ministers and the
Universities.
21 122) 80'S
6. It is essential to remove from all aspects of this work the suspicion that our real intention is propaganda for the British way of life. The foreigner, like the Welsh at home, prefers his own culture; what he wants from us is straight education with a practical end in view. Here the British Council, and still more the United States Foreign Information Agency, are handicapped. Education is not information.
7. Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools have been looking at what is being done in the same field by Commonwealth nations and the United States. Research is going on, and we are in touch with it. But in practical teaching we can build on what the British Council has done under such difficulties and very soon be far ahead of anyone else. Her Majesty's Inspectors suggest that the best way to get the Americans and the Commonwealth to join us in this work would be to tell them what we intend to do, to do it, and to let them see the results, hoping to encourage them to help us.
8. This paper is very much of a first thought on a large problem which the Ministers concerned may think needs further consideration,
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Ministry of Education, W. 1.
15th November, 1955.
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sri dina vizuri west, mb? su
Page 126.
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