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'Orwellian language' in schools turns pupils into 'customers', finds damning report

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posted on Jun, 9 2009 @ 08:06 PM
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I have found the news coming out of the UK regaridng restriction of speech in the last few years to be particularly disturbing...I've been to the UK several times; beautiful country and nice people, but this sort of thing irks me to no end, to put it mildly...it seems to be the bleeding edge of the sickness of political correctness.

Interestingly, the examples cited in the text are less the usual sensitivity jargon that surround touchy racial and cultural issues, and more to do with instilling a consumer mindset. I find the latter direction no less hideous than the former.



'Orwellian language' in schools turns pupils into 'customers', finds damning report

Schools using the 'Orwellian language of performance management' are undermining teenagers' education by turning them into 'customers' rather than students, a landmark report says today.

Teachers who are forced to use phrases such as 'performance indicator' and 'curriculum delivery' lack enthusiam for the job, the six-year investigation found.

The Oxford-based Nuffield Review, the most comprehensive study of secondary education in 50 years, said that 'the words we use shape our thinking'.
It notes: 'As the language of performance and management has advanced, so we have proportionately lost a language of education which recognises the intrinsic value of pursuing certain sorts of question ... of seeking understanding [and] of exploring through literature and the arts what it means to be human.'

Teachers are inundated with the language of measurable 'inputs' and 'outputs', 'performance indicators' and 'audits', 'targets', 'customers', 'deliverers', 'efficiency gains' and 'bottom lines', the report continues.
In a damning indictment, the report said that a culture of hitting targets, where 'cuts in resources are euphemistically called 'efficiency gains', has led to 'the consumer or client' replacing 'the learner'.
Among the jargon were such baffling phrases as 'performativity' (the emphasis that government monitoring has on achieving targets) and 'level descriptor' (the outcomes that a learner should reach).
'Dialogic teaching' (an emphasis on speaking and listening between teachers and pupils) and 'articulated progression' (allowing pupils options for their next step in the qualification system) were also singled out in the report for censure.

And the report's authors accused the 'micro management' of education by minsters for forcing schools 'to teach to the test' and called for 'a return to an educational language'.


More at source
www.dailymail.co.uk...



posted on Jun, 10 2009 @ 07:53 PM
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Hmmm completely aghast really, its amazing to see whats changed in education in the last 12 years since I was in the system as a pupil (although the UK sounds worse than my country).

Think ill print the article off and show it to my dad seeing as hes a teacher whos gonna retire after this year, hes also become alot more jaded by the 'speak' and rubbish they are slipping into the education system.

Explains alot about the woes of the wests teens and young adults. Where doomed I tell ya.

Hmm wonder if its all done to ingrain confusion and compliance to this stupid talk in young people so they dont go 'What is this trash your spouting off' when they face alot more of it in their adult lives.


[edit on 10-6-2009 by BigfootNZ]



 
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