The nuances of language.

I recently received some student work from Sao Paulo focused on a lecture I gave to students in a very wealthy school in the city.

I was fascinated when visiting this particular school by the educational philosophy.

In the mould of Summerhill, the lunatics were running the asylum.

The school was typical of trendy educational experimentation where the students call the teachers by their first names, students attend classes if the choose, work at their own pace as and when they choose etc. etc.

I am not against working at your own pace and indeed I have been a vocal international voice, both in journals and newspapers, in support of the portfolio model of the National Writing Project.

To my mind, after some thirteen years of educational research, I believe that children need boundaries. That we can only function in the adult world where deadlines, competition, unjust action and ineffective management are often the norms of the workplace; if we have been educated to the very best of our abilities.

Students need to be stretched and driven to achieve all that they can achieve.

This does not mean hot housing, rather it means traditional schooling. Education designed for the specific student population that will enable them to function in society.

It is essential that such education is open to interpretation to meet local need.

In the 1960´s great designers built award winning concrete utopia´s. They, of course, would never live in their constructions.

All too often in the designing of these monoliths no account was taken of the social class of future occupants, no account was taken of its structure, its education and its behavioural patterns yet we expected people to build their lives here. We were then surprised when such beacons of modernity became crime-ridden dens of vice, drugs and poverty?

So with education. As a middle-class intellectual it is easy to philosophise over a crisp chardonnay and a goats cheese salad about what people need. More often than not in reference to the working-classes and the so-called socially deprived.

So in education, trendy theorists design pedagogy that rarely takes account of social class, societies structure, its behavioural patterns, future economic demands and most importantly personal esteem.

What amazes me is that so much trendy pedagogy eminates from an intelligencia that has no connection with the world of the working-classes.

I grew up on, and was educated in, a working-class housing estate all my life. I was never socially deprived. ALL of my colleagues at school can read and write. Many have gone on to be doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers...indeed to join that band of middle-class intellectuals to which I refer.

We are the product of the traditional, not trendy, rote learning on which the Scottish education system once prided itself and in which it was the envy of the world.

In my teaching career I have taught almost exclusively in traditional state and private schools. Traditional, not in the strictest sense of the word, but rather in the teaching methods. ALL possess one common characteristic, they put EDUCATION FIRST and not the ego of the administrator.

What fascinates me about this particular work from Sao Paulo is the lack of understanding of the nuances of language in the student population.

I have delivered the same talk to students across South America and indeed to students in a favela project in Sao Paulo itself.

In every other institution it has been understood.

Infact, in talking to the students at this particular school I refered to the fact that my dress was not as I would dress in the UK, or indeed, on a normal lecture tour. In apologising for what I felt was overly casual attire, I explained that travelling for fourteen months with one back-pack and covering extremes of climate meant options for dress were limited.

It amazes me that the student body choose to focus on attire rather than the academic content of the talk. Indeed, I was surprised on a personal level at how casually attired the students were for the school day.

I actually spoke about the arrogance of the British in not learning other languages and assuming that everyone would speak English and linked this to business topics. This point has been understood in all my other audiences.

Further, my Spanish has improved dramatically since coming to South America. That said I have had limited exposure in Portuguese.

It is interesting for me that the greatest difficulties in understanding me have come from the students who are products of a very liberal educational philosophy.

The command of English from such privileged students was very weak and in the short day I spent with them it was evident that their command of wider academic and cultural matters was equally so. I knew more about their home city than they did...this cannot be correct?

From Bryanston, to John Burroughs, to Summerhill, the CEB and beyond; I am happy for such experimentation to be conducted and amongst the wealthy. After all, a lack of education is no barrier to making money (some would even argue that it helps!).

As long as there is nepotism then I am all for letting the lunatics run the asylum, because whether educated or not they will be future CEO´s, but please policymakers...just don´t experiment on the masses.

Do enjoy what was written about my talk and please feel free to enter into a debate about what I have said.


To the students at CEB...

Muchas gracias para tu carta, que llegar hoy. Will

Last Manday, a scottish man calles William Glover came to our school to show your new project.
The name of the project is the Building Blocks Scholarship. He is going to travel around the world to make people aware of the importance of learn English, and the experiences will be reported in a book.
The students were disappointed with the way he conducted the speech. In a polite way, he said everything he really think about our country, sometimes saying that was the European vision. For example, he said that the clothes and the atitude we to do are not usual in England, but what we thought was that in Brazil people are not polite. He is traveling around the world and doesn´t have any curiosity to learn any other language . When a student asked this to him he was very rude: it´s an absurde, he said, “ I´m British, I don´t need to learn another language. “ But the last straw was when he said that it you don´t learn English you will never be a successful person in any career.
In a nutshell, that wasn´t what they really expected.
Everyone knows that English is important nowadays, but have much more to learn than English. We need culture as well. Knowledge everyone could have, but what really makes difference in your life is your culture.
It is clear that we, from South American have more culture than the developed country, because we have to learn about all the world, and they just know about their culture. But the real point is that they must know more than we. After all, they are “ the king of the world”. No, sorry, they think so.