ONCE upon a time, and a not very good time it was, English as a school subject was one long grammar grind endless drills in the mechanics of writing, parsing, analysis, clauses.

Eighty years ago a respected schools inspector in England exhorted teachers not to let children express themselves "as this would involve making errors's. Sixty years ago a report argued that "self expression should be rare and occasional". Thirty years ago research in England revealed that the study of grammar had no beneficial effect on pupils' spoken or written command of language.

Some studies concluded that such learning had harmful consequences. Long held claims that grammatical study encourages logical thinking that it teaches correct expression were dismissed as invalid.

The new approach to the teaching of English was based on the premise that every child has a knowledge of language. What the teacher should be doing we were told, is to introduce pupils to a coherent series of activities designed in the light of the child's own language development to build upon the command and competences they already possess.

Teachers felt liberated the days of the student as passive learner were over Fred Inglis (1969) described an English curriculum intended to serve all second level pupils at the heart of which was the study of literature. Its purpose was to inculcate a sense of the past, a sense of place, a language of tenderness, a sense of coherence and powers of discrimination.

The role of literature in the development of children's imaginative lives was finally recognised the idea of "English for personal growth" became fashionable. The focus shifted to beliefs that language and personal growth are indivisible. Seamus Heaney rightly described the teaching of English as "the cultivation of the spirit".

The Bullock Report (1975) A Language for Life declared. "What has been shown is the teaching of traditional analytic grammar does not appear to improve performance in writing. This is not to suggest that there is no place for any kind of exercises at any time and in any form."

Teachers took the Bullock Report to heart the straight jacket of grammar went out the proverbial window. Teachers were told that students could pick up language skills through usage grammar could be dealt with as it arose in the context of the students' own writing.

Traditionalists and conservatives were defeated liberals and progressives won the battle but the pupils lost the war, Clever students developed their own sense of style, the very weak students got entirely lost, but the greatest losers were the average and above average students.

Such was the ensuing chaos in England and Wales that the government imposed a National Curriculum which returned to the skills based models of English language teaching, a curriculum that identified a series of objectively identifiable skills that told teachers what work their students should be doing, and the criteria by which that work should be judged.

The recent chief examiner's report on standards of Leaving Cert English makes the introduction of a similar curriculum inevitable here.