Language is an extremely emotive topic in Scotland. People
get awfully upset about the decline of Gaelic or the use of Scots. They worry
about the number of pupils studying French at school or German at university.
But while it remains an emotive topic, it is not emotive enough for anyone to
actually bother learning any of these languages.
In a university that has a Brittonic name that would
make you think it was in Wales, in a city that I have never been to and cannot
find because the road signs are in Gaelic and Doric, there are plans to shut some
language courses. Already there are petitions involving thousands of people who
speak none of the languages concerned and who have no intention of ever doing
so. Members of the Scottish Government too who speak none of the languages
involved are angry too.
The answer obviously is to have road signs to
Édimbourg, Edinburg, Caeredin and ایڈنبرا that way we can show how internationalist
we all our while still not learning any languages.
I spent part of my childhood in a Gaelic speaking area
but didn’t learn a word because although we sang in the Mod, the parents didn’t
teach their children to speak it. No one forced them not to teach their
children. I wish they had because then at primary school I would have picked up
quite a bit of Gaelic too and that would have been useful.
Learning languages as an adult is hard work, but none
of us remember struggling to learn how to speak our native language. But by the
time you get to secondary school, it starts to get much harder.
I studied French at school at a time when you were expected
to conjugate verbs, learn vocabulary and write without mistakes. If I had gone
on to study French at university, it would have been assumed at the beginning
that my French was good enough to read Flaubert and I would have spent the next
four years reading great French literature and writing about it.
But to get to that level requires an enormous effort.
A degree in a foreign language used to show that you had worked hard for years
not just in school but also at university.
This is the difference between studying Gaelic and
studying an easier subject. To show that you can speak, read and write Gaelic
you actually have to know a lot of words, you have to understand a lot of
grammar and you have to practice speaking.
The reason why classical languages were the foundation
of education until recently is that to learn to read Homer in Greek is hard work
right up there with learning mathematics.
This was the point of education. Bright pupils studied
hard subjects because they were able to distinguish themselves from the
moderately able by doing so. It didn’t much matter what you studied, and it
didn’t matter whether it was obviously useful. Someone who could translate
Shakespeare into Greek, was likely to be highly intelligent and a hard worker.
This is why you employed such people.
But education has changed. It’s not just the fault of
the SNP, though the curriculum for excellence [independence] made worse what
was already declining. The problem set in when schools ceased to try to
distinguish between ability ranges in the name of equality. This continued with
the expansion of higher education beyond what was remotely reasonable.
In the nineteenth century a tiny fraction of the local
population went to that Brittonic university, and they reached standards in Latin
and Greek that almost no one can reach in any language today. But the standard
was still high in most subjects in the 1970s and 1980s. If you studied English
literature you had to read Anglo Saxon, Chaucer and the The Faerie Queene. It meant that a decent degree from a good
university got you a job no matter the subject.
People are just as intelligent as they always were,
but the bright can no longer distinguish themselves from the moderate. If fifty
percent of the population, go to university it simply isn’t possible to make
them read the The Faerie Queene. It’s too hard, too long and too boring. It isn’t
possible to make them read Molière either let alone the Nibelungenlied, which
even Germans can’t read in the original.
School no longer prepares pupils for the level of
study that used to be required in university. So, you don’t begin reading
Flaubert, you begin with what should have been done in school and then instead
of discussing literature you find it easier to deal with political issues in
Guadeloupe and Nouvelle-Calédonie and even old Caledonia and even then, your
subject is too hard.
I didn’t reach a high standard at French in school,
but I learned how to learn and by the time I had finished university I had a
skill that is no longer taught. I could teach myself.
I like to learn languages, not just because there is
no point trying to study Dostoevsky if you don’t know Russian and no point
trying to understand the history of Poland if you don’t speak Polish. More than
this speaking a foreign language expands your own mind like nothing else you
can do.
But there is a very good reason why school pupils don’t
want to learn French and why university students don’t want to learn Spanish.
It is hard work.
To reach even a moderate level of Russian will need an
hour a day every day for year. To reach the stage where you can read Dostoevsky
will take multiple trips to Russia and perhaps four or five years. To reach the
same level in a harder language like Arabic, Japanese or Chinese will take
still longer and still more effort. After all that a five year old native
speaker will be better than you.
I would love to speak Gaelic better than I do, but it’s
not about road signs, it’s about learning 10,000 Gaelic words and lots of tough
grammar which will enable you to follow a conversation with a native speaker.
That would be really worth it. But where do you find the native speaker if you
don’t live in Stornoway?
People no longer learn foreign languages because it’s
too hard, they don’t start early enough, and the schools no longer provide a foundation
for the study at university level.
There are far easier ways to get a degree, than to
study French.
If you work hard for years and actually end up able to
read, write and speak Gaelic, French, German or Spanish, it’s still likely that
you will be in the same position as every other arts graduate. A few will find work
using their language, but most won’t, which means you are no better off than
your friend who spent four years reading easy books on the latest woke issues.
There was a time when a degree in philosophy or history
or French or Gaelic told an employer this person is highly intelligent and has
worked hard for years. But in the name of equality, we decided to make school
subjects easy enough that fifty percent of the population could go to
university and then we made many university subjects easy enough so that fifty
percent of the population could pass them too.
Employers realised that a degree told them little
about the ability of the student, so they required an additional one-year course,
which still didn’t distinguish between the bright and the moderately able,
because fifty percent of the population had to pass these courses too.
We have been turning gold into base metal for decades
hoping that no one will notice, but the students did notice which is why they
ditched languages for something easier.
But what happens when the students realise that five
years of education still doesn’t distinguish you from anyone else no matter how
hard you study? Ditching languages is the canary in the coal mine for ditching
everything else.
The SNP has destroyed Scottish education.
If you liked this article, then cross my PayPal with silver and soon there will be a new one. See below.
