Pretty Vacant or Pretty Smart? Overcoming Educational Disadvantage in Language Education Through the Arts

The phenomenon of underachievement of working-class young people in the English education system reveals long-standing prejudices surrounding English language development. This article reports the findings of a small-scale, qualitative study exploring the power of aesthetic experience in supporting the acquisition and development of the English language in a Further Education (FE) college in England. Findings provide evidence of how engagement with aesthetic experiences enables learners to access new ways of thinking and relate to new and complex ideas and concepts that may once have seemed beyond their reach. Findings also suggest that experimentation with various forms of art, as sources of inspiration, impacts confidence, engagement, and the learners’ experience of education in profound ways. This study challenges hierarchical and class-based socio-political forces which elevate one form of language or expression above another on the grounds that this can cause serious damage to the confidence and self-esteem of learners from lower socio-economic groups. With reference to data from the study and the works of Gadamer, Bernstein, and Dewey, the article concludes that pedagogic engagement through aesthetic experiences in FE can help learners from lower socio-economic groups access their Pedagogic Rights, to which they have been previously denied.