Kate Chisholm

The young ones

issue 16 December 2006

I wonder whether Tony (‘Education, education, education’) Blair or any of his cohorts in the Education Department were listening to the BBC World Service’s School Day 24 last week. Children from around the world were brought together in live link-ups as part of the BBC’s Generation Next week of programmes designed to give young people, aged from 12 to 18, the chance to air their views, dominate the agenda, talk to each other across religious and ethnic frontiers. Mr Blair might have questioned the success of those ‘literacy hours’ after hearing the kids from a school in north London alongside those from New Delhi and Dar es Salaam. It was not that the English teenagers were lacking in confidence or self-expression. What disturbed me was their inability (when compared with their Indian or Tanzanian counterparts) to phrase an idea, complete a sentence, without a ‘you know’, ‘kind of’, ‘ummmm’. Happiness, from Tanzania, was far better equipped as an English-speaker to convey what she was thinking, eloquently and purposefully.

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