Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

2 comment(s)

Good morning everyone, and I hope the Easter Bunny crossed your path and left a little cheer this year. And speaking of cheer, how about another dose of Lex Talk on words, language and all things related? Sure! Read on:

Education-speak

I've been doing a lot of reading of various opinions, reports and news stories on the education system lately, given the public debate on the best way to teach English kids French. This is not the column or place to wade into the issues being debated, but gosh darn it is a fine place to take a swipe or two at the sort of language used in education circles, be it teachers of teachers, researchers, departmental bureaucrats, district administrators or, I fear, many teachers themselves. Call it "Education-speak" if you like: the realm's very own version of gobbledygook, bureaucratese, mumbo-jumbo inflated language meant to impress (and sometimes confuse) rather than enlighten. And I've always thought that of all the various forms of this widespread disease among our society, the prime symptom of which is the utter inability to say or write anything in plain and simple English, the most regrettable is that afflicting the field of education. If anybody should know better, it is these people! We want our schools to produce graduates capable of clear, quality thought, yet the whole system is riddled by muddy, fuzzy thought reflected in education-speak.

And they still annually come up with new words and phrases for the utterly mundane. Classes become "learning modules"; tests become "educational achievement assessments" and on it goes.

New ones

All that said, here are a couple new ones that I recently came across, both of which made me cringe as soon as I saw them. They are stamped with the classic hallmarks of education-speak. The first was a reference to students having "active interaction" in school. There is, of course, no other kind of interaction! Check out the dictionary, folks. My trusty Oxford defines interaction as "reciprocally active." It means a two-way flow of action. If there is not that, by definition it is neither "interaction" nor "active." Anybody involved in education in any way who uses such a blatant and stupid phrase should be made an "active participant" in a session of standing in the corner with a tall pointed hat! And yes, I know, "active participant" is every bit as redundant and stupid. If you are participating in something, you are taking part in it and again, by definition, are "active" in it. And yes, alas, "active participation" was the second of the new ones I've noticed.

Another one

There is a third one too; a distinction between teaching students "information" and teaching them "skills." Uhm. . . I know what those who make the distinction mean, but surely there's a better way to put it! It is a silly distinction, not to mention invalid. Just try to teach somebody a skill without giving them any information. . . not possible! It'd be much better and people would understand more clearly if instead of the silly distinction the educators said what they actually mean (in this case, the entire focus is on learning one thing rather than two things at once). Now what's so darn hard about that?

Kindergarten

This one is not related to education-speak, but it is a tidbit some might find interesting. I have long noticed -- and been reminded in recent days with all the education topics in the news -- that quite a few people have trouble spelling "kindergarten", that pre-school place we send our toddlers to school them for school! I know, put that way, it doesn't sound very logical, but that's how our society sets it up. But never mind . . . the most frequent misspelling of "kindergarten" that I see changes the "garten" part to "garden", although I have seen other variants. I've also seen "kintergarden", which transposes the "t" in garten with the "d" in kinder. It just seems to be one of those words a lot of people have trouble with.

Interestingly enough, if you look up the word in a good dictionary, you'll find that it is a borrowed German word, which is not be surprising since it sounds like a German word. But my trusty Oxford also says it is literally German for "children's garden."

So, while those who misspell it may not know what they do, they still often manage to get it sort of right! There seems to be an intuitive feel that the "garden" is a good metaphor and that "garden" is what it should be. . . . Alas, that spelling is still incorrect and no accepted at all.

The last word

Here is Matthew Arnold in 1898:

"People think I can teach them style. What stuff it all is! Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style."

n Lex Talk! is researched and written by Times & Transcript editorial page editor Norbert Cunningham. It appears in this space every Monday.