Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009

The last BB comment quoted here (introduced by a question about
reintroducing elocution lessons in public schools, as BB says were
normal when her father went to school in Liverpool is "Half the teachers
today cannot speak properly."

This confirms the asymmetry of changes in schools (especially
changes in teacher training) since the 1960s.   The traditional idea
(say 1860-1960) was that schooling offered the best opportunity to
the working-class majority to "better themselves," demonstrated
by speaking and writing to standard norms.   Simultaneously teachers
were anxious to get secure status as professionals (which they
formerly did not have, i.e. they too sought to "better themselves"), best
done at this early period by exemplifying these standards.

Three changes occurred simultaneously and suddenly in the 1960s:
1.  Having won professional status, teachers relaxed significantly.
2.  The English social class system began to decay rapidly (cf.
BBC acceptance of non-RSP voices etc.)
3.  In the classroom doctrines of "progressive education" displaced
the empirical methods of 1860-1960.  Uniform drill, memory training
and strict examination standards were widely deplored (more for
ideological reasons than on the basis of any proofs concerning outcomes.)
In general, schools sought to relax discipline and offer students more fun.

A fourth contemporary change was the Americanization of the higher
education in Britain, as colleges began offering undergraduates a
wide range of elective courses rather than standard curricula (which
seemed by 1960 badly out of date at least in the humanities, viz.
the undergraduate curricula in English and History incuded almost
nothing after 1900 or 1914.)

I know of no reliable proof, but it seems likely that teachers who qualified
at college only after 1970 took back with them into the classroom both
(a) less detailed knowledge of the school-level curriculum than had
been deployed by the generation that taught them, and (b) changed
values too, deploring discipline and rote learning and hoping to
encourage children's spontaneity and imagination.

Cf. T.H. Huxley:  "Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is
the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought
to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to
be learned, and however early a man's training begins, it is probably
the last lesson that he learns thoroughly."   I'd claim this idea was
central to English education 1860-1960 (and probably American too)
but in the last 50 years generally deplored as too difficult of practical
achievement or likely to do more harm than good.

E.g. "learning to speak properly," especially when this meant
mastering RSP in an environment where only nobs and snobs
spoke thus.   We have abundant first-hand testimony that this
was often difficult, but changed lives for the better where it
was achieved.  Nowadays many teachers in England would
disavow this as either politically undesirable or psychologically
damaging to the child or his family.

Someone talking about elocution ought to be more careful about
"everybody ... they".