THE PRESS TUESDAY, JULY 22, 1986. When teecha carnt spell

Press, 22 July 1986, Page 24

THE PRESS TUESDAY, JULY 22, 1986. When teecha carnt spell

Trainee teachers seem surprised and dismayed by the comments from the principal of Christchurch Teachers’ College, Dr Colin Knight, on the low literacy levels of some trainee primary schoolteachers. Dr Knight has said that an increasing number of trainees lack an acceptable level of literacy. This means that more and more people seeking a career in the education of young children are poor spellers, have bad grammar, and have difficulties with punctuation. It also suggests that many of them will have limited vocabularies and could have trouble expressing themselves clearly and accurately in the classroom. This will tend to confirm the opinion of employers, who have contended for years that schools are turning out students deficient in the “three Rs,” and of parents who spot spelling mistakes and wrong grammar in schoolwork that supposedly has been corrected. When raising these points with their children’s teachers, parents are sometimes met with the response that the exercise “was one of comprehension, not grammar,” or that “the spelling is not as important as the development of little Johnny’s (or Jane’s) imagination.” In such circumstances parents can be forgiven for suspecting that such permissiveness in education is not intended so much to encourage the development of youthful imaginations, but more to conceal the inadequacies of teachers.

Behind Dr Knight’s comments is an assessment by the head of the college’s English Department, Mr Tony Tritt, that between 5 and 10 per cent of the present student intake may have low literacy levels. The corollary to this is that nine out of 10 trainees display a standard of English that is at least adequate; and no doubt many pupils are well-served by their pedagogues. The failings, however, have a way of becoming self-perpetuating; indeed the erosion of literacy has been going on for years. When aspiring teachers are deficient in English — in skills that all seem to agree

are best gained at primary level and hard to remedy at tertiary level — there can be little hope for an improvement in the standard of education.

The response of the trainees’ association at the college has been curious. First the association dismissed the college’s estimation of the number of students with literacy problems because, it asserted, assessment is difficult and relies heavily on the judgment of lecturers. This is an incongruous attitude when teacher organisations are campaigning for an end to external examination of pupil proficiency — and coincidentally of teacher effectiveness — in favour of internal assessment, based, of course, on the judgment of teachers.

Next a spokesman for the association argued — red herrings about stylistic variations and the so-called “degrees”, of literacy acceptable in different contexts aside — that the rules of language are learned “largely unconsciously and one is not necessarily able to explain the language rules involved.” If a teacher cannot explain these rules, who on earth is meant to be able to? And what is the use of teachers who cannot explain these necessary rules? Employers, parents, students, and presumably the teaching profession — indeed anyone with an interest in maintaining an acceptable standard of education — might find food for thought in the fact that the Canterbury Education Board is the only one still using an English test in its selection of training college entrants. The number of teacher trainees with low levels of literacy at the other colleges, where no test is made, might well be higher than has been Canterbury’s experience.

The Department of Education has asked the board to dispense with the test. There is talk of making the selection procedures more realistic in terms of the trainees’ abilities. This is accepting second-best and conceding to an accelerated decline in the level of literacy not just of teachers, but of the whole community.