Talking is just an important a skill to learn as reading and writing to combat the image of the “grunting, monosyllabic teenager”, a leading headteacher and former senior adviser to Tony Blair says today.Hurrah! Is this finally a bid to erase the street-dialect-speaking, slang-slinging, Jafrican-accented suburban white kid?
Because bring…it….ON!
“Speaking eloquently is a moral issue because to find your own voice both literally and metaphorically and be able to communicate your ideas and your passions is crucial to how they [young people] are going to be a success in the world,” he said.
“If you can speak and articulate yourself properly that will happen.”Hallelujah!
He said that some people believed “the silent classroom is the good classroom” when in reality it meant “the death of learning, unless there’s a particular reason for it”.
He said he liked to go round classrooms in his school and hear children talking to each other, discussing things, debating and questioning.
“High quality talk” was at the centre of his school’s day - from morning assembly to round table classroom discussions with the spoken word “built into the DNA of the school”.As long as it is high quality talk, and not meaningless babble about the latest reality show or school gossip, then fine. Good luck finding an OFSTED inspector who can look up from his ticksheet & judge the difference, though...
Janine Ryan, of the English-Speaking Union, which has run 50 workshops in schools under the theme “discover your voice”, said: “If the young people are silent, it doesn’t mean they don’t have anything to say... it can be that no-one has ever asked them for their opinions before.”I find that hard to believe - aren't they consulted on every tiny thing nowadays?
"it can be that no-one has ever asked them for their opinions before."
ReplyDeleteWhy would you need to? Just go on facebook and READ their opinions...on everything.
Back when I was 'young' we HAD to give voice to our opinions because otherwise it meant breaking into the school's typing room and one fingeredly typing them out then spending an hour trying to get the roneo-vickers mimeograph to work.
Most teenagers now can tweet faster than they can formulate an opinion let alone an actual 'thought'.
Yer wot?
ReplyDeleteI remember Roneo stuff at school...the school magazine was produced on it, it was shit quality.
ReplyDeleteSo was the magazine.
From the age of 13, pupils at my school were encouraged to search out newspaper and magazine articles of interest to them. Each pupil would then stand in front of the class and read the article out loud. We would then discuss that article. To make things interesting, we sometimes had to read out someone else's chosen article prior to discussion. As well as giving us confidence in oration and discussion, it also improved our sense of humour in the choice of reading material. Mind you, we had a brilliant English teacher - no real teaching qualifications but who was a Major in the British Army in Burma during the war and who sometimes gave us excerpts from his diaries to read.
ReplyDeleteKids today seem to be 'taught' - if that's the word - by left leaning clones of insipid stupidity.
Penseivat
This is good news! Ms. Ryan should be encouraged in promoting such sensible measures (revisiting 70 years past or so) about involving and interacting with the pupils in a positive way. For too long the pedagogic approach has limited the freedom of expression of children in the classrom - now the lowering of barriers between teacher and pupil-groups will encourage free dialogue and a synergistic development of unbounded positive results.
ReplyDelete"Why would you need to? Just go on facebook and READ their opinions...on everything."
ReplyDeleteIndeed!
"From the age of 13, pupils at my school were encouraged to search out newspaper and magazine articles of interest to them."
Ditto! We called it 'Social Studies'.
I wonder how many of my classmates still read the news, now they don't have to?