It may be a truism, but it’s worth stating and restating time and again: language matters. The choices we make in the words we use can be critical, and even subtly different approaches to phraseology can send out powerful messages with life-changing impact.
We’re reminded of that in our interview this week with Louise Hayward, the University of Glasgow assessment expert leading a group advising the Scottish government on reform of national qualifications.
When asked to predict how education will have changed in 30 years’ time, she doesn’t dive into debates about robot teachers, virtual reality or any other edtech utopia or dystopia. Instead, Hayward says this: “I hope that we will no longer be using the words ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ - that you will have different pathways that can lead to the same or similar destinations.”
Her reasoning goes something like this: although the promotion of “parity of esteem” has led to more kudos and opportunities for vocational learning, there is still something problematic about the word “vocational”. When set alongside “academic” learning - the supposed yin to its yang - old educational hierarchies are implicitly reinforced.
The language of the ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ divide
As Hayward puts it, when it comes to differing paths through education, “we still have it in our heads that there is one good way to do it - and other ways to do it if you can’t do it that one good way”.
However much they might intermingle in schools and colleges today, then, the notions of vocational and academic learning remain distinct and discrete; old prejudices about both remain, even if they are not expressed with quite the same abandon these days.
The terms “vocational” and “academic” remain an example of a tendency in education systems to sort and divide and, in Hayward’s view, to reinforce insidiously a young person’s own (often wildly erroneous) view of what they can and can’t do.
Of course, the Venn diagram of students who pursue so-called vocational and academic routes has, over the years, closely matched those showing levels of affluence and social deprivation. If you were from a well-off background with university-educated parents, it was almost a given that vocational qualifications were not the “good way”.
It is little wonder that the idea of two entirely separate educational paths became so entrenched when, as Hayward says, “for so many decades poverty was Scotland’s secret shame”. The unwillingness to address - or even acknowledge - the divisions and lack of meritocracy in wider society inevitably spilled over into education, where “academic” was code for “more important” and “vocational” was lesser, a receptacle for those who couldn’t hack it in the classes that really mattered.
Hayward does, however, express optimism about where we are now: the corrosive impact of poverty is now being talked about openly in Scottish education - and that dialogue is shaping approaches to education in a way that was never true in the past.
While poverty levels in Scotland remain “really shameful”, Hayward has a “sense that change is coming” because of the “radical shift” that now means poverty is being discussed constantly in schools and colleges.
“Once we take issues seriously, we are a sufficiently creative species that we find ways through,” she says.
Now, then, is the ideal time to reassess the language used routinely in education. Are there standard turns of phrase and jargon that reinforce attitudes better left in the past?
It’s good to see issues like the language of education finally being taken seriously at a national level. Education Scotland should be applauded for its ongoing Language Matters project, which is encouraging dialogue about unclear and misinterpreted terminology.
Endeavours like this are not a fringe concern. Language sets the tone, permeates the culture and signals priorities - in education and far beyond.
@Henry_Hepburn
This article originally appeared in the 3 December 2021 issue under the headline “Get the word out - we need to banish old language of prejudice”
