I DIDN'T want to be one of those parents
Dec 16, 2013 8:01:05 GMT 9.5
Cullyn Of Cerrmor and iamjumbo like this
Post by Willow on Dec 16, 2013 8:01:05 GMT 9.5
I DIDN'T want to be one of those parents. The "what do they teach kids in school these days" kind. Or worse, the "that's not how they taught it in my day" kind. Teaching is a hard enough job without having to deal with middle-aged dads who don't understand that primary school has changed since Dexys Midnight Runners were in the charts.
But once in a while, an assignment arrives home amid the half-eaten sandwiches and softening apples in the bottom of the school bag that makes you wonder. It happened the other night night when I was having one of those just-in-the-door-before-bedtime talks with my 11-year-old son.
"So how was your day?"
"Good."
"Much happen?"
"Nah."
"What did you get up to after school?"
"Not much."
"So what are you studying at the moment?"
"Mission statements . . . "
"Mission statements?"
"Yeah, you know, company values."
Good grief. My son will this week finish grade 5. He is too young for girls. He is too young for Facebook. And he is way, way too young for mission statements. So am I, for that matter. When it comes to the semantic sludge that oozes off the home pages of corporate websites, I'd rather be dead than read.
Sound like an overreaction? I'm not alone. This is what Paul Keating's great partner in prose, Don Watson, had to say about it in his terrific book Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language.
"If I could write the curriculum, I would begin with language: from the first hour of the first day at school, and every day thereafter for 12 years, children would study 'the beautiful arrangement of words'.
"If at the end of their schooling they could not understand the language of their likely employers, I would feel that some of education's duty had been done. Innocence had prevailed a little longer, and with it hope that the corporate muck might be leached away by a populace in love with real language."
Education theorists will say I'm missing the point; that being able to read a mission statement and expose its assumptions and articulate the values invested in certain words is a valuable exercise in critical thinking. A text is a text is a text, they say. Maybe it would be a valuable exercise if my son were (heaven forbid) an undergrad marketing student or starting a traineeship in Unilever's department for brand awareness. Sorry, that should probably be Department for Brand Awareness.
If my son knew good writing from bad, then perhaps there would be no harm in spending a few hours picking apart the language of mission statements. Do they convey an ulterior meaning when you read them backwards? Is there a secret code to be unlocked amid the cliched clutch of buzzwords?
The trouble is, when you are 11, you don't know good writing from bad. So let's spare him the corporate claptrap for now. It isn't the fault of the teachers. This is how prominent US education advocate Diane Ravitch put it a few years ago when she assailed the emphasis on so-called "21st-century skills". "We have numbed the brains of future teachers with endless blather about process and abstract thinking skills. We have taught them about graphic organisers and Venn diagrams and accountable talk, data-based decision-making, rubrics, and levelled libraries, but we have ignored what matters most. We have neglected to teach them that one cannot think critically unless one has quite a lot of knowledge to think about."
I asked my son how the assignment went. He said he'd read mission statements for companies, charities and political parties, all of which left him nonplussed. "The one for the Liberal Park was pretty much the same as Safeways," he said.
In years to come I'll make sure he reads Watson's book. And if he grows up never wanting to read a mission statement -- much less write one -- I'll thank his teachers for having done a great job.
But once in a while, an assignment arrives home amid the half-eaten sandwiches and softening apples in the bottom of the school bag that makes you wonder. It happened the other night night when I was having one of those just-in-the-door-before-bedtime talks with my 11-year-old son.
"So how was your day?"
"Good."
"Much happen?"
"Nah."
"What did you get up to after school?"
"Not much."
"So what are you studying at the moment?"
"Mission statements . . . "
"Mission statements?"
"Yeah, you know, company values."
Good grief. My son will this week finish grade 5. He is too young for girls. He is too young for Facebook. And he is way, way too young for mission statements. So am I, for that matter. When it comes to the semantic sludge that oozes off the home pages of corporate websites, I'd rather be dead than read.
Sound like an overreaction? I'm not alone. This is what Paul Keating's great partner in prose, Don Watson, had to say about it in his terrific book Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language.
"If I could write the curriculum, I would begin with language: from the first hour of the first day at school, and every day thereafter for 12 years, children would study 'the beautiful arrangement of words'.
"If at the end of their schooling they could not understand the language of their likely employers, I would feel that some of education's duty had been done. Innocence had prevailed a little longer, and with it hope that the corporate muck might be leached away by a populace in love with real language."
Education theorists will say I'm missing the point; that being able to read a mission statement and expose its assumptions and articulate the values invested in certain words is a valuable exercise in critical thinking. A text is a text is a text, they say. Maybe it would be a valuable exercise if my son were (heaven forbid) an undergrad marketing student or starting a traineeship in Unilever's department for brand awareness. Sorry, that should probably be Department for Brand Awareness.
If my son knew good writing from bad, then perhaps there would be no harm in spending a few hours picking apart the language of mission statements. Do they convey an ulterior meaning when you read them backwards? Is there a secret code to be unlocked amid the cliched clutch of buzzwords?
The trouble is, when you are 11, you don't know good writing from bad. So let's spare him the corporate claptrap for now. It isn't the fault of the teachers. This is how prominent US education advocate Diane Ravitch put it a few years ago when she assailed the emphasis on so-called "21st-century skills". "We have numbed the brains of future teachers with endless blather about process and abstract thinking skills. We have taught them about graphic organisers and Venn diagrams and accountable talk, data-based decision-making, rubrics, and levelled libraries, but we have ignored what matters most. We have neglected to teach them that one cannot think critically unless one has quite a lot of knowledge to think about."
I asked my son how the assignment went. He said he'd read mission statements for companies, charities and political parties, all of which left him nonplussed. "The one for the Liberal Park was pretty much the same as Safeways," he said.
In years to come I'll make sure he reads Watson's book. And if he grows up never wanting to read a mission statement -- much less write one -- I'll thank his teachers for having done a great job.