Often lost for words

20th January 1995, 12:00am

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Often lost for words

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/often-lost-words
A new report highlights the vast social and economic costs of communication breakdown. Michael Marland wonders what schools could and should do to help.

Inadequacies in language and communication can lead to violence, delinquency and marital and family breakdown - to “a severe deterioration in the quality of life for children, parents and the elderly. It carries vast social and economic costs.” These powerful claims come from a study by Janet Walker, director of the Relate Centre for Family Studies at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, published this week.

What does it mean for those of us in schools charged with providing young people with language skills? Quite apart from the national curriculum requirements for “speaking and listening”, an overarching statutory requirement of the Education Reform Act 1988 is that schools must prepare pupils for “the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life”.

This study, The Costs of Communication Breakdown, makes it clear that inter-personal communication is one of the greatest “responsibilities” and failure at it is one of the most common educational “experiences”.

As such, planning the curriculum for language in the context of social and personal life should be a key area of concern for schools.

The study, using an overview of previous research, presents a deeply depressing picture of family life in Britain and the United States, linking domestic violence and neglect of the very young and very old to weaknesses in self-expression. Janet Walker maintains that “stress and communication failure are undoubtedly contributory factors” in creating the conditions in which such abuse occurs, with an inability to reconcile difficulties verbally being a cause of frustration, resentment and violence between adults.

The children of such non-communicative relationships suffer in other ways. Where children are not spoken to in an effective and sensitive manner, and when parents are unable or unwilling to talk to one another, children can develop a sense of low self-esteem and low self-understanding, problems which in turn can be expressed by poor social behaviour and delinquency.

Parenting, that hugely important but difficult human art, depends on communication. We have improved the physical aspects of parenting over the last decades, but what have we done for the communication aspects of raising a child? The increasing number of child runaways and pre-teenage violence and crime is related by the study to young people “not being listened to and not being cared about”. One of the key factors leading to delinquency, Walker maintains, is “the inability of parents to communicate positively, consistently and effectively”.

Of course not all juvenile crime can be attributed to inarticulacy within family relationships, but Walker identifies poor communication between parents, particularly when they are separated, as a contributory cause.

How is it that after decades in which schools have emphasised learning through discussion and the importance of talk, that in practice these skills do not appear to have been converted into adult life?

The study addresses the particular communication problems of males. Walker rightly comments that “There is a need to reappraise the contribution of fathers, particularly in parenting boys.”

She explores the communicative weaknesses of many fathers, and in schools we see the corresponding lack of skills in boys. From the earliest years, boys are less verbally encouraged, their reading is less developed and poor co-operative behaviour is more readily accepted. They grow not to have the language skills necessary to explore their own feelings and even inner thoughts require words.

In consequence, boys express their feelings much less well than girls and listen to others less sensitively.

No wonder Walker argues that there is a need “to develop new role models for young men more closely associated with nurturing and family life”.

Janet Walker’s catalogue of researched communication failures casts a wide net, taking in the relationships between the elderly and those who care for them, employers and employees, and school and parents. She also attempts to put breakdowns in communication in a financial context, pointing to the astronomical costs of juvenile crime and stress-related health problems. In terms of the cost to the individual, she stresses: “When we fail to talk things through, negotiate and compromise, we are at risk of being unable to make the most of our relationships at home, and at school or work, with friends, neighbours or strangers that we meet.

When we are able to communicate openly we can take new ideas and situations forward, modify our positions, and find new levels of understanding and acceptance of ourselves and others.”

But in practice, what contributions can schools make to make their own pupils more effective communicators?

In checking the language curriculum against the new English Orders, schools should do so with both the “speaking and listening” and the “responsibilities of adult life” held in mind. It is a challenge, but one which could be managed by bringing together our profession’s work on both language and pastoral care.

The opening sentence of the English Orders could not be bettered in this respect: “English should develop pupils’ abilities to communicate effectively in speech and writing and to listen with understanding” provided that we all remember that in this sense “English” is not simply the name of a subject, but the teaching of language in all aspects of the school’s work.

But I fear that in practice the country will still see grammar, for instance, as the need to correct for external presentation, rather than its more important function of allowing for more effective thinking and subtle expression.

Somewhat similarly, many people consider spelling as a formal dress code of writing rather than a way into thinking about meaning and vocabulary growth.

The paucity of vocabulary in many British people should be nationally shaming and in schools should lead to some hard questions. Have we struggled so hard to accommodate children from homes of low language levels, that we have purged too large a proportion of the vocabulary from school books?

In group work, have we been able to shape the focus of talking sufficiently to enable growth in communication, or is too much classroom talk merely a repetition of playground language? Have we found sufficient ways of intervening positively to increase vocabulary, improve the relationship between thought and sentence structure and sharpen the sensitivity of tone?

Janet Walker’s study of the failures in lives is timely. We need more help in schools to enhance communication between us all for a better quality of life.

*The Costs of Communication Breakdown by Janet Walker and sponsored by British Telecom is available free. 071-831 6262.

Michael Marland is headteacher of North Westminster Community School and general editor of the Heinemann School Management Series.

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