Friday 8 April 2011

Mangling the English language; using plain words when writing about home education

Readers were probably as amazed as I was to read S. L.'s comment here a few days ago, when she rebuked me for wreaking 'havoc and ill-repute upon the goodly cause of HE'. Why on earth, they might have been justified in asking, was this person writing English in a style which would not have looked out of place in The Duchess of Malfi? The answer is simple. For some reason, many home educators habitually write in a very strange way. Admittedly, not all sound as astonishingly weird as S.L., but many still manage to sound pretty peculiar when commenting on lists and forums or submitting evidence to select committees. They use a very stilted and slightly archaic style, as though they fear that using plain English will make them appear ignorant or naive. In fact of course, this sort of writing creates precisely the opposite effect.


I think that part of the problem is that parents feel that they have to write in a formal or 'posh' way when communicating with officials or saying anything about education. Perhaps they think that ministers, civil servants and teachers will look down on them if they write just as they speak. This is not so; the best written English is natural and unforced. I call this sort of language that so many home educators use as their written medium, 'ill-educated formal', as it is popular with people who do not really know how to express themselves or convey their ideas and so fall back on jargon or long and half-understood words. Mike Fortune-Wood provides some brilliant examples of this. We recall with pleasure one particularly pompous letter which he wrote, which included the phrase 'it ill behoves yourselves'! Perhaps I am doing him an injustice; maybe he speaks to his wife over the breakfast table in this way, although I am inclined to doubt it.


I recently came across the best example of this sort of thing that I have ever seen when reading about home education and felt that I simply had to share it with a wider audience. It is, regrettably, written by people from a university, who really ought to know better. The original document may be found here:


http://edyourself.org/research/primaryfuture.pdf


I want to look at one paragraph of this document, because it encapsulates what I have been saying about the forced and inelegant use of language which one often sees when people are writing about home education. My own opinion is that this is not really English at all, although it contains so many loan words from that language that it appears on the face of it to be a passage of English. Let us look at this paragraph, The authors are talking about different kinds of home educating parents in this country:


One substantial and growing group is comprised of those who have abandoned formal schooling because they believe it to be too constrained by the imperatives of performativity and the curriculum limitations imposed on the cultivation of the imagination in consequence thereof. In this group are parents who wish to see a greater emphasis on cultural and aesthetic engagements as well as those who want to see the world brought into learning in an unselfconscious way. What many home schooling families share across their political, religious and cultural differences (and indeed something shared with small school movements) is a significant emphasis on engagement with story. Moreover, there are many home school resource providers who offer curriculum materials that meet nationally determined targets. Most are values-based,


This truly is so dreadful that it has a weird kind of beauty! What can they mean by the 'imperatives of performativity'? One supposes that they mean that children at school are made to demonstrate what they know, to 'perform' in other words. The problem is that the word which they have used 'performativity' has a very precise technical meaning which does not fit this context at all. I think that they have used it because they think it looks grander and more impressive than simply saying 'performing' or 'performance'. What about, 'a significant emphasis on engagement with story.' Does this actually convey any meaning? I know what curriculum materials are which meet nationally determined targets; this is stuff which ties in with the National Curriculum. But how do such materials differ when they are 'values-based'? What about 'in consequence thereof' ? Do these people really not know how hideous and contorted this sounds? Why not 'because' or 'as a result' ?


There is something about the whole subject of home education which seems to attract poor writing and execrable English. Parents can make a start in tackling this by avoiding words like 'thereof' and 'whereby' when they are writing about it; words that no normal human being uses in ordinary speech. When one sees academics like those above writing in this way, it almost looks as though the battle is lost. With examples like this, no wonder ordinary home educating parents are coming on here and writing about 'goodly causes' and 'havoc and ill-repute'!

19 comments:

  1. Mmm...I have a suspicion that academics write in a deliberately impenetrable way in order to justify their salaries. If it's hard work to read, then it must be really good!

    I don't think home educators in general write like this, do they? There are a couple of people on lists whose writing I never understand. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt through and assume that English isn't their first language.

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  2. "There is something about the whole subject of home education which seems to attract poor writing and execrable English."

    There's lots of poor writing in the world. This isn't really about home education at all.

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  3. 'If it's hard work to read, then it must be really good!'


    Yes, George Bernard Shaw said that all professions are conspiracies against the laity. By making it all sound hard, they can persuade us that we are ignorant fools. No, not all home educators write as terribly as this, but I have noticed a particular style which seems to creep in when parents write about home education. I don't want to shame anybody by drawing attention to particular cases.

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  4. A search for 'goodly causes' finds links to religion and gaming sites.

    "but I have noticed a particular style which seems to creep in when parents write about home education."

    I don't think it's peculiar to HE. I've seen similar styles when parents write to hospital authorities, for instance. The piece you quote is written by a Professor of Religious and Philosophical Education, a Research Fellow in the Department of Curriculum Studies and a Professor of Teacher Education. They just happen to have written about HE on this occasion. Are you suggesting that their writing style changes completely when they write about school education? As Allie says, this isn't about HE. If anything, it says more about schools where the vast majority of these writers have been educated.

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  5. "There's lots of poor writing in the world. This isn't really about home education at all."

    I agree. I've seen similar writing styles wherever people write about something that's important to them and they feel the need to impress others. Parent's writing to hospital authorities about the child's treatment is an example that springs to mind. The piece Simon quotes above is written by a Professor of Religious and Philosophical Education, a Research Fellow in the Department of Curriculum Studies and a Professor of Teacher Education. They just happen to have written about HE on this occasion. I don't think their writing style will completely when they write about school education.

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  6. or even,

    I don't think their writing style will *change* completely when they write about school education.

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  7. 'The piece Simon quotes above is written by a Professor of Religious and Philosophical Education, a Research Fellow in the Department of Curriculum Studies and a Professor of Teacher Education'

    That a Professor of Education could write such gibberish compounds the felony considerably!

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  8. Maybe these people have receptive aphasia?

    "People with receptive aphasia can speak with normal grammar, syntax, rate, intonation and stress, but their language content is incorrect. They may use the wrong words, insert nonexistent words into speech (neologisms), or string normal words together randomly (word salad)."

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  9. So perhaps we should all dumb down our use of the English language and join the majority of people who are semi-literate.

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  10. 'So perhaps we should all dumb down our use of the English language and join the majority of people who are semi-literate.'

    Or simply write sufficiently plainly so as not to obscure our message.

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  11. Coming from a person whose writing conjures up (for most folks) images of Arthur Daley trying to sell the Encyclopaedia Britannica or an Alf Garnett reading of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, methinks ‘tis as usual with his blogs – Much Ado About Nothing or maybe ranting about people that have a literary skill that escapes him.

    Bereft of profundity and lacking any degree of wisdom, poor old Webb evolves rapidly into the senility of the old codger in the corner of a pub that hates everyone (including himself) and thinks that every other human inhabitant of the Earth is just not worthy.

    Fan of S. L.

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  12. Warren Mitchell who played Alf Garnett does Shakespeare rather well.

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  13. 'Coming from a person whose writing conjures up (for most folks) images of Arthur Daley trying to sell the Encyclopaedia Britannica or an Alf Garnett reading of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet'

    This is excellent and I am bound to say caused my wife and daughter to fall about laughing!

    'Bereft of profundity and lacking any degree of wisdom,'

    This, on the other hand, is precisely the sort of writing which I think of as 'ill-educated formal'.

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  14. 'Fan of S. L.'
    You poor thing!

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  15. 'Bereft of profundity and lacking any degree of wisdom, poor old Webb evolves rapidly into the senility of the old codger in the corner of a pub that hates everyone (including himself) and thinks that every other human inhabitant of the Earth is just not worthy'

    This is of course none other than S.J. herself. There are two stylistic giveaways. The first is the use of 'that' rather than 'who'; as in 'that hates everybody', rather than 'who hates everybody'. We saw this same solecism in her post a few days ago. The second clue is in the use of the word 'worthy'. Used as it is here, it gives an odd effect, as well as making for an incomplete sentence. Ending a sentence with 'just not worthy' invites the question; worthy of what or of whom? It ties in neatly with her use of the word 'goodly' the other day.

    This passage illustrates so neatly what I said in the post that I am once again tempted to think that S.J. is another of my sock puppets, like Peter Williams.
    'Bereft of profundity and lacking any degree of wisdom,' could much better have been expressed as 'shallow and foolish', for example. The mention of not one but two plays by Shakespeare is an attempt to demonstrate the writer's erudition. She is shouting, 'Look at me, I am educated, I know about Shaespeare!' I could not have produced a better sample of the sort of thing about which I was complaining in the post had I sat down and written it myself!

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  16. 'bereft of profundity'

    Aaarrgghhh! Why? Why do people write like that?
    It's not big, it's not funny and it's not clever.

    Go away and think about what you've done.

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  17. Love's a bit of Shakie me...
    'beetle headed, flap ear'd knave'
    'veriest varlet that ever chewed with a tooth'
    'canker blossom'
    'not so much brains as earwax'
    'light of brain'
    'long tongu'd babbling gossip'
    'thou art a boil, a plague sore'
    being some of his nicer insults.

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  18. Sort of puts the 'prick' comment into context..as the ramblings of a toilet graffiti scrawler.

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  19. 'light of brain'? Love it.

    Exit, pursued by a bear.

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