What the teachers say

Politicians blame"Schools Without Discipline"!

Emma Jones on the riots (The Guardian).

Read Ian Whitwham's "At the Chalkface" for further insights into the experiences of a London State School teacher.

Perhaps we should all re-examine the theories of Basil Bernstein, the sociologist who worked on issues of language, class and communication. I spent a year at the London University Institute of Education when Professor Bernstein was most active in this area of research, and if some young people's language codes seemed "restricted" then (in contrast to the middle class "elaborated" codes of teachers and politicians), how much wider the gap appears to have become in the course of the last 10-20 years.

One might almost talk of a total breakdown in communication.

I don't think Professor Bernstein dealt with the issue of Jamaican or Caribbean speech patterns, and their influence on the speech codes of young Londoners from many cultural and ethnic backgrounds. What would he have made of these controversial comments on street slang by 'hip-hop' intellectual Lindsay Johns?

In Bernstein's hey-day, the predominant influence, certainly on British rock music, if not in school or on the streets, was African-American vernacular speech.                          

When I was at the Institute of Education in London, one of the other outstanding lecturers was Professor Harold Rosen. I was at University with his son Michael Rosen, the poet and former Children's Laureate.


They both knew how to get through to the kids.