Falling standards (or not, as the case may be)
A former advisor of Tony Blair, Peter Hyman, has made headlines this week following an interview in the Times Educational Supplement. In it he bemoaned the falling standards of the youth of today, complaining that they were monosyllabic and lacking in eloquence.
It seems he had some good points to make, complaining about the decision by Ofqual to remove speaking and listening from the GCSE English exam and highlighting how important it is to be able to express yourself clearly. Yet these points were overshadowed by his expression of frustration with the youth of today. It's hard to know without reading the actual interview (I can't find it online but will keep looking) exactly where his priorities lay but the articles reporting the interview have taken and run with his implied complaint that standards are falling.
Standards are not falling.
Complaints about the 'youth of today' have existed since time immemorial. As soon as people started writing, they started complaining about how standards were falling. In 1780
Thomas Sheridan complained that:
It's important to note that the variation within a generation is far higher than the variation between generations. There will always be those with the gift of the gab and those who have difficulty finding the right words to express themselves. Teenage years are also the years where a child is first able to properly express themselves as an independent person and patterns of speech are a wonderful way of identifying yourself as a member of an in-group and exclude those, such as you're parents, from whom you wish to distance yourself. This use of language as social divider and unifier is demeaned when used by teenagers but accepted when used by adults. 'Management-speak' and technical jargon are also ways of forming in-groups: those that understand the language are accepted, those who don't are ignored. Yet we rarely hear, except in occasional light-hearted articles, complaints about their use.
Everyone thinks their generation was the best. They have the best music, the best films, the best clothes, the best adventures. The generations that came before are old and uncool. The generations that come after are scary and rude and worse than they ever were. Kevin and Perry , Vicky Pollard and Lauren Cooper are only the latest in a long line of 'monosyllabic teenagers'. I'm sure if I knew more about social history I'd be able to find examples dating back decades, probably centuries. They will continue for centuries more.
Complaining about the 'youth of today' is a perennial hobby of the older generation. Give it 20 years and the teenagers Mr Hyman complained about today will be complaining about their children's generation. However, it's frustrating to see someone who clearly has ideas worth hearing on the subject of English education having his views overshadowed by a complaint that has no basis in reality. For someone trying to encourage clarity and eloquence of speech and ideas, this seems particularly ironic.
It seems he had some good points to make, complaining about the decision by Ofqual to remove speaking and listening from the GCSE English exam and highlighting how important it is to be able to express yourself clearly. Yet these points were overshadowed by his expression of frustration with the youth of today. It's hard to know without reading the actual interview (I can't find it online but will keep looking) exactly where his priorities lay but the articles reporting the interview have taken and run with his implied complaint that standards are falling.
Standards are not falling.
Complaints about the 'youth of today' have existed since time immemorial. As soon as people started writing, they started complaining about how standards were falling. In 1780
Thomas Sheridan complained that:
The total neglect of this art [speaking] has been productive of the worst consequences... in church, in parliament, courts of justice, county courts, grand and petty juries, vestries in parishes, are the powers of speech essentially requisite. In all which places, the wretched state of elocution is apparent to persons of any discernment and taste . . . if something be not done to stop this growing evil, and fix a general standard at present, the English is likely to become a mere jargon, which every one may pronounce as he pleases.What's particularly amusing about his proclamations is that he blames the decline in standards on the ascendance of the foreign Hanoverian line to the throne, whereas today we refer to "The Queen's English" or as the gold standard. It's also worth noting that he wrote that over 230 years ago and, despite us not having any effective attempts to "fix a general standard", it is as clear and comprehensible as if it was written yesterday. His fears were unfounded.
It's important to note that the variation within a generation is far higher than the variation between generations. There will always be those with the gift of the gab and those who have difficulty finding the right words to express themselves. Teenage years are also the years where a child is first able to properly express themselves as an independent person and patterns of speech are a wonderful way of identifying yourself as a member of an in-group and exclude those, such as you're parents, from whom you wish to distance yourself. This use of language as social divider and unifier is demeaned when used by teenagers but accepted when used by adults. 'Management-speak' and technical jargon are also ways of forming in-groups: those that understand the language are accepted, those who don't are ignored. Yet we rarely hear, except in occasional light-hearted articles, complaints about their use.
Everyone thinks their generation was the best. They have the best music, the best films, the best clothes, the best adventures. The generations that came before are old and uncool. The generations that come after are scary and rude and worse than they ever were. Kevin and Perry , Vicky Pollard and Lauren Cooper are only the latest in a long line of 'monosyllabic teenagers'. I'm sure if I knew more about social history I'd be able to find examples dating back decades, probably centuries. They will continue for centuries more.
Complaining about the 'youth of today' is a perennial hobby of the older generation. Give it 20 years and the teenagers Mr Hyman complained about today will be complaining about their children's generation. However, it's frustrating to see someone who clearly has ideas worth hearing on the subject of English education having his views overshadowed by a complaint that has no basis in reality. For someone trying to encourage clarity and eloquence of speech and ideas, this seems particularly ironic.
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