BBC NEWS | Education | Lesson one: no Orwellian language: "The need to measure everything and to find equivalents for different types of education arises from a natural enough desire to achieve value-for-money, and to promote different routes for young people.
But it can also be a strait-jacket, implying that all types of learning can, and should, be forced into the same model."
Terrific article about the impact of language in education or rather, the language used to talk about education. Makes you think about the debate surrounding quantitative vs. qualitative methods and which is most appropriate for education. I think that the point is that there are strengths and weaknesses in all things and that by blundering on with scant regard for the weaknesses, focussing only on the strengths matching what you 'need' from education, then the impacts can extend beyond the immediate. Can language really change educational culture? The way it is perceived in general? If we talk about 'delivering', 'facilitating', 'customers' etc when we're describing the educational environment, do we risk forgetting that it's actually about people's development at all and it becomes a tick box, future-employee-producing exercise...
Very thought-provoking.
No comments:
Post a Comment