The joy of teaching and learning!

Back in the day, when I was a happy teacher of Modern Foreign Languages, one of the things I used to ask students enrolling on AS and A level courses in French and Spanish was whether they had a favourite word in the language they were planning to study to a higher level. To non-linguists this may sound like an odd question but it worked like a treat for finding out who were the really enthusiastic ones. The ones with a true passion for learning the language would come out with a list of words they adored. 

Today Phil reminded me of one of my favourites. Translating a chess book from Spanish to English, he came across "estrambótico". It means wild and strange, outlandish, eccentric, flamboyantly odd. But what a wonderful word "estrambótico" is; it looks and sound just like its meaning! 

That level of enthusiasm needs encouraging. Every student should have at least one teacher who fires them up with a love of learning. Our daughter was lucky enough to have an English teacher who inspired her. So far her children don't seem to be having the same experience. Her daughter can tell me who are good teachers, the ones who keep the class on task, but she doesn't talk with delight about any subject area. What a shame! 

And yet, I had inspiring people as colleagues. I remember observing A Level Maths lessons and seeing students taking great delight in solving problems as quickly as possible. Someone must have fired them up! I also worked with a young History teacher who gave his students every week the "word of the week", a precise bit of vocabulary which they had to try to work into their written answers as often as logically possible. Extending the vocabulary of ordinary kids from ordinary housing estates in an ordinary sixth form college. 

It's that level of commitment that is getting lost in the current era of results tables and target-setting and meeting! It's just not economically viable to be so enthusiastic. 

And so it was with further dismay that I read yesterday about the huge decline in numbers of young people studying Modern Foreign Languages at university. It has reached the point where some universities are now offering ab initio courses in French, Spanish and German, the kind of courses they used only to offer for languages not often taught to A Level: Chinese, Japanese, Arabic. And as yet another major exam board has decided no longer to offer GCSE, AS and A Level exams in those formerly basic modern foreign Languages - French, Spanish, German - the situation becomes more and more dire. I wonder if the courses in Chinese, Japanese and Arabic are still managing to recruit. It used to be that a good grade at A Level in a European language was a requirement for such courses. If fewer A Level students are taking those European languages, how do the other courses gauge ability at language learning? 

 The UK education seems to be frantically testing children but not actually achieving much in all round terms.