SLANG AND SCHOOLBOYS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 133, 2 December 1937, Page 31

SLANG AND SCHOOLBOYS

If your schoolboy son .fells you this story is "all boloney"—it just goes to prove that it is not, and that the British Board of Education knows what it is talking about. For "all boloney" is typical of those youthful exuberances of speech to which the board gives its official blessing in a new "Handbook of Suggestions for Teachers." It calls them examples of "vigorous and racy expression." Some teachers (and parents) have been perturbed, and highbrows alarmed, by the .importation of "Americanisms" into the English language. But the Board of Education comes down on the side of the users of slang, saying: "In the senior school the teacher will find plenty of dccasions for the exercise of tact and skill in dealing with certain wider aspects of the children's speech. He will, for example, seek to encourage their vigorous and racy expression. He will realise that even slang has its place, and; will try to get them to understand what that place is." Then, remembering, that the "poppy-cock" of Shakespeare becomes the1 iveryday ex-. pression, the board in" its •most.: : human' mood, reminds teachers that "language' is the creation of the many atidnpt'the few."- • .■ " ,•',■■..'..■'•■ :-!