WHAT MAKES A GOOD TEACHER.

Was to be delivered at a meeting of The Institute of Ideas in The Royal College of Art, London, on the 31st October, 2010.

Surely for Britain sound English must be in the criteria. But there is something fundamentally wrong with teaching in most British schools, and the effect is now throughout British society. Nothing proves this so conclusively as the report by a don of Imperial College, that on the whole his foreign undergraduates were writing better English than many of his British ones.

I don’t need to say that Imperial College, one of the renowned scientific institutions of the world, admits only those with first-class school reports. If the language of that cream is below standard, obviously, so is the language in the rest of the bottle.

And the English Language is the main engine of all British culture, driving science, business, public service, ----- even the fine arts ----- and, of course, teaching in the schools.

Most of our struggling school teachers are not to blame: they themselves were children of that British schooling. They are in need of the same help as their pupils.

The best direct help I can think of now is the Language Advising Facility for the BBC that I have expounded. It would give an immediate boost that the schools cannot yet give. And it would give it simply, without pedantry, just by example. Millions would no longer hear from BBC voices DECIMATE for destroy, RISK for likelihood, OBLIVIOUS for unaware, MAJORITY for most, and so on.

In short, the BBC would be the nation-wide exemplar of accurate English, and its example would soon flow to ITV, the rest of journalism ----- and the schools. And I am sure that its good announcers, script-writers and producers would welcome the discreet, powerful help at their elbows.