What we is doing wrong in da education shitstem....

Having heard the news that our literacy rates have declined, I was disappointed but in no way surprised. The UK came 21st in a survey of 24 so called 'developed' countries. Even more damningly, the U.K was the only country whose results were actually going backwards. Prosperity and material wealth has increased, but that has not been reflected in our educational wealth and intellectual richness.

Why? A rotten education system that has stagnated and has been beset by politically expedient knee jerk policies which have been hurriedly enacted  with little thought for the benefit of the children being taught. Governments over the past 20 or 30 years have been target driven, often measured by exams such as the SATS. SATS which are of little consequence to the pupil taught but which act like a guillotine hanging by just a thread above the teachers head. The pressure that the teacher is put under is therefore bound to be passed on to the student. I can remember myself as being a very nervous 10 year old doing the tests, despite the fact I had never actually been made aware that in reality they meant nothing to me. 

On hearing the news my mind was cast back to a day sitting in the SOAS bar and shooting the breeze with a few friends. I hadn't been long out of school and we were recounting our school days, pranks, good times and bad times. We then started to talk more seriously about the school systems. One of my friends, a Jamaican, was shocked to hear what I had studied at the age of 16, as his whole year group had been studying something similar up to 3 years earlier. His numerical skills, knowledge of language and also general life skills were far more advanced than mine and my British contemporaries.This is also reflected in other so called developing countries. The focus on academic life and also importantly competitive sport I think played an important role in this difference. The focus didn't seem to be simply on being an automaton who could pass an exam but a bigger focus on growing a young individual and giving him the skills and education to go out into the wider world.  

I am an English Teacher who teaches foreign students. Both my and my peers knowledge of grammar has only grown through experience. Students that I have taught in the past have been startled by the fact that we learn nothing about our grammar during 11 long years at school. It should therefore come as no surprise that foreign University student essays are often more linguistically accomplished than English people's, in the most part because of their higher understanding and consciousness of language construction. Holding an Arsenal of vocabulary is no good if the person has no idea how to fire it.  

This brings me on to the airheads at Harris Academy, South Norwood.  Fools of the highest order who clearly have no idea what language is and how it works.The Harris Academy has decided to ban slang! How can young people be expected to engage in the use of language if they're constrained?  You cannot tell people not to do what comes naturally to them. I'm sure I would continually break their 'rules'. What does  banning slang actually mean? Slang IS English and is part of the natural evolution of any language. Young people expressing themselves often use slang and lyrical acrobatics. This creativity and ingenuity should be encouraged and nurtured and not stunted. If this were to be fostered and focused then maybe the interest of young people in all aspects of language might be heightened.

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Slang banned from Croydon school to improve student speech
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24522809

Akala is the antithesis to what the fools in South Norwood are doing. http://www.hiphopshakespeare.com/site/