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To understand why this week's government proposals to teach children to speak properly matter, think back to the US election.
Early on, one journalist came up with an original way of explaining why Barack Obama would beat Hillary Clinton. Read this speech on the web, he said. I did and registered a competent effort that, I thought, would never inspire anyone.
Now click this link and watch Obama deliver it, the journalist continued. I clicked and saw Obama using every rhetorical device to sway the audience.
If people talk of "rhetoric" these days, they mean it as an insult. "That's just rhetoric," they say, implying that the speaker is a snake-oil salesman.
The view that oratory is phoney is a thoroughly modern one which has led to schools from the 1960s onwards abandoning the teaching of debating and public speaking. Virtually every other generation in history would have found their dismissal of the ability to convert your listeners absurd.
"Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men," said Plato, and Obama proved him right. Obama's victory renewed interest in rhetoric worldwide, and I am glad that in Britain the poorest children will benefit by being taught formal English.
Pupils in inner-city schools seem as far away as it is possible to be from the glamorous Obama campaign while remaining on the same planet. But far more people lose the chance for self-advancement because they cannot speak than ever lost a race to the White House.
The educational movements of the Sixties thought they were emancipating children by encouraging them to do their own thing and reject elitist rules.
Although it cleared out dead wood - no serious student of English believes that the old rules against split infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions were anything more than dogmas - the results for children from modest backgrounds have been disastrous.
Sir Jim Rose, a former head of Ofsted who is reviewing language teaching for the Government, says that employers have told him of job applicants who cannot talk confidently on the telephone or hold a formal conversation.
He wants schools to teach speaking as a separate topic.
He knows what the ancient Greeks knew, but our generation forgot: words are weapons, and if you deprive the young of the ability to use them, you leave them defenceless.
Reader views (1)
"He wants schools to teach speaking as a separate topic."
with a teleprompter. Without it Obama is lost for words.
- Out With Brown, London, 28/04/2009 14:35
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