Teaching Vocabulary Is "Racist," Says British Professor Who Trains Future Teachers

10/11/2022

University education departments in the United States are seedbeds of nonsensical and harmful ideas, which are propagated among future teachers and spread to the population.

The Daily Mail reports a professor in a teacher training college in England propagating the same kind of stuff. This guy’s agenda is that teaching vocabulary is racist.

From the Daily Mail:

An academic at a teacher training college has claimed efforts to improve vocabulary in schools are ‘racist, classist and ableist’. Ian Cushing,
[Tweet him] lecturer in English and Education at Edge Hill University, believes tackling the ‘word gap’ — the difference between the language range of typical middle class and working class or disabled youngsters — has ‘colonial’ roots. In a study funded by his employers, he argues that helping children to learn standard English ‘perpetuates racial and class hierarchies’. [Schools branded ’racist’ for trying to improve pupils’ vocabulary because tackling the ’word gap’ between middle and working class children ’has colonial roots,’ by Eleanor Harding and Julie Henry, October 11, 2022]

Just let that sink in. A trainer of teachers who says teaching vocabulary is bad.

Dr Cushing is a passionate advocate of his theories on Twitter, where he expresses ‘solidarity’ with teachers who ‘push back’ against ‘elitist’ language requirements set by the education watchdog Ofsted.

The good thing is everybody’s not on board with it.

Last night his research provoked a backlash from other academics, who said pupils would not benefit from ‘dumbing down language’.

Studies have shown that vocabulary is a significant predictor of how well pupils do at school and beyond.

Well, yeah, that should be obvious.

Children with a poor vocabulary at four or five are more likely to struggle with reading in adulthood.

The more words you know, the more you can read. It’s not rocket science.

About one in ten youngsters need speech and language support but in some disadvantaged areas more than half of pupils start school with communication difficulties. Dr Cushing’s paper, published in the Critical Inquiry in Language Studies journal, claims that efforts to address these issues are discriminatory.

So Dr. Cushing just wants these children to remain ignorant?

It said that by trying to tackle language gaps schools were characterising pupils from ethnic minorities and low income families as ‘deficient and limited’ because they ‘failed to meet benchmarks designed by powerful white listeners’. The study claims that common interventions, such as encouraging pupils to speak in full sentences and use standard English, are ‘tethered to colonial logics’ and blame marginalised pupils and their families for their ‘apparent failure to use the right words’.

So helping students speak in full sentences and using standard English is “colonial logic”?

Remember, Dr. Cushing is a lecturer at a college that trains teachers.

If your schoolteacher doesn’t think you need to learn, what are the odds you will learn much?

Dr Cushing also criticises Ofsted for promoting the ‘word gap ideology’ and using terms such as ‘language-rich’ and ‘language-poor’ homes.

The article includes a criticism of such nonsense from a sociology professor:

However Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology at Kent University, said: ‘Nothing will be achieved by dumbing down the language that we expect children to use. Teachers who treat slang as good English are actually abandoning their responsibility for educating young people.’

Exactly.

Lee Elliot Major, social mobility professor at Exeter University, said studies clearly showed that too many children — disproportionately from poorer homes — leave school without the basic literacy and number skills.

We have the same problem here in the U.S. of A.

< Previous

Next >