Queen's English Society Closes

[Baby Deltic]

I fink itz reely orrfull wot they iz dooin clzin the oksfodd inglishh sosietee!

[Prometheus]

To be candid, I viewed the closure of this society with complete indifference. Charming and so completely British as it was, it was never going to achieve its stated aims and with a membership of around 1000 it was not an organisation that was ever going to be able to exert any influence either. It would have always been perceived as part of the eccentric end of the small-society spectrum and, whilst there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all, it would have suffered a credibility issue as a consequence.

 

Perhaps unfairly, I always viewed it as an intellectual equivalent of Mary Whitehouse's 'clean up television' campaign : small, well-intentioned, a little out of touch and completely failing to communicate its message to a largely-disinterested wider audience.

 

What is far more worrying than the closure of this society is the standard of english teaching in schools and that is something that we should all be shouting about. This is not a reactionary rant, nor just a 'things were better in my day' argument. I routinely interview graduates for positions in which the abililty to speak and write in clear, well-punctuated, correct english is absolutely essential. These candidates always have a first degree [often two] and frequently a higher degree also. Their applications are often very poor, with spelling errors, incorrect use of english and poor vocabulary. Now in their mid-20s, they passed through a primary and secondary education system in which essay writing and the use of grammar and syntax were, seemingly, no longer priorities, particularly if their 6th form involved sciences.

 

My own children suffered exactly the same experience. All four are, or will be, graduates but had great difficulty writing essays in their first and second years : they simply found essay construction a dark art and I spent [and spend] hours proof-reading, offering corrections and suggestions. I've talked to teachers about this but all too often was met with a lack of recognition that there was a problem at all. One told me 'well, you'll find that these days we don't beat the language into pupils'. Well, it wasn't beaten into me and this isn't a rant about teachers either. It is a rant about an educational system which, in my view, is failing its beneficiaries - our children - however and had the Queen's English Society made more noise about that I'd have not only joined but would be mourning its loss also, has it still failed.

 

Tony

[Ozexpatriate]

One told me 'well, you'll find that these days we don't beat the language into pupils'.

Attributed to Sir Winston Churchill:

By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. ... Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the British sentence - which is a noble thing.

By all accounts they beat it into him.

 

And of course, more famously:

 

On being scolded by an editor, not to end a sentence with a preposition:

This is the sort of impertinence up with which I will not put.

[Prometheus]

Quote

 

Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the British sentence - which is a noble thing.

 

Difficult to disagree with that......

 

Tony

[rodshaw]

Are those legal? ;-)

 

Dave.

 

Strictly under the counter to you, sir.

[chris p bacon]

. There was a whole vowel shift in the middle ages. Was that down to the bad influence of TV and the Americans?

 

No, probably more fibre in the diet....