The importance of language

"They are so rude!"

"African people can be very resourceful."

These are both statements which have come from senior and experienced colleagues recently.

At best these are lazy statements, at worst these show the underlying prejudices of the person making them.

Who are these "they"? All African people are resourceful?

It is vital that teachers address language with their students, that we consider the meaning language and the power it can be imbued with. Lazy language such as that exemplified above can lead to bad habits for learners.

So what should educators do to ensure that their wards don't develop these habits? They must consider their language at all times. They must use precise language which carries as little bias as possible.

It is no longer acceptable (if ever was) for teachers to use lazy and prejudiced  language whilst teaching.

And in case you need an indicator of unacceptable language, it is anything followed by the spurious, "Oh, you know what I meant...". Yes, we know what you mean, that's the problem.

What is education?

So this might seem like a daft question, but that's no reason to not ask it!

Everyone knows what education is because we are all experts in it; we have all been there and done that. Some of us are still there and still doing it!

The problem becomes when we need to coordinate our action, work together, assess reality and it becomes obvious that we don't all know the same thing.  What I know to be education might vary greatly from what you know.  It probably does.

So what should we do.  We cling very dearly to our understanding of education, even people who will tell you how awful there experiences as a learner were will defend the institution or teachers which delivered those to them.  How do we come to a common place, a starting point of shared understanding so that we can discuss, assess and change education?

It is tempting to address both the original question, "What is education?" and the one which derives from it with complex, grand and worthy answers such as; "Set up a think tank.", "Bring together learners from all over the world to a conference...", "Study the curricula of different states across the world and identify common threads."

However, there seems to be a much simpler solution; success criteria.

If we can agree that education must serve many needs of many peoples in many places at many times then education by definition must not be one thing, but it can have a single set of success criteria!

And that is what I would like to explore.  In fact that is what i would like to co-construct through this blog and any other tools that help us to connect.

So let's try a simple task.  Suggest three criteria that education should have to be successful.  Just three.  Let's see if we can start to find what education really is! ('Cause while I kinda know, I'm also pretty sure I don't really know.)

Just three!