“And now I’d like you to make a start on the VIPERS task.” I told my class this morning. “There’s a WAGOLL on the board to refer back to but remember to PEE your answers.”
As I ended this flow of gobbledegook, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia for the days when teachers talked in real words. Of course, that was back when reading was an art, not a science. Now we’ve pulled back the curtain and displayed the mechanics, we can see the reading process for what it really is: a set of acronyms.
Primary education is currently suffering from acronym saturation (or AS as I like to think of it). Someone (I don’t know who, but I suspect they work for the AAS), has decided that acronyms are the only way to go. They are the silver bullet, the Parcelforce of skills delivery, and they must be spoken, laminated and written in margins up and down the land.
They have now reached such a proliferation that the teaching of core subjects can be accomplished almost entirely through acronyms. Children can start the day with some VIPERS, work their way through DADWAVERS (with a side order of FANBOYS), write a few APE and PEE answers, and round it all off with some SURPRISE editing and a WINK. While this is happening, you can wave your WAGOLLs to your heart’s content and festoon the books with EBIs and VFs.
Edu-jargon barrage
If you’re reading this and thinking WTF, then imagine how it feels being a key stage 2 child. As a teacher who still struggles to keep up with the changing face of edu-jargon, my heart goes out to the children who have to face a barrage of these things on a daily basis.
This is not to say that acronyms don’t have their place. UFO and CEO are brilliant. Nasa and Nato carry a nobility that their full versions couldn’t hope to emulate. My new favourite is a computing one my friend discovered when she summoned help from her IT department, who immediately diagnosed a PICNIC situation (problem in chair, not in computer).
In educational terms, there’s nothing new about acronyms. Everyone remembers BODMAS; Ros Wilson’s VCOP was a great success; and I am particularly fond of a lovely one about the planets that was totally ruined when they downgraded Pluto.
But in an environment in which we spend our days chasing the moveable feasts of ARE and GD, acronyms thrive. They multiply and mutate, as every literacy consultant and teacher with a blog offer up new and enticing ways to acronym your way to success.
It just feels a bit too much, but maybe I shouldn’t panic - trends in teaching come and go, and maybe this one will simply die out of its own accord.
In the meantime, perhaps it would help if there was some kind of professional body out there to regulate them. We could call it the Acronym Research Study Endeavour.
Jo Brighouse is a pseudonym for a teacher in the Midlands. She tweets @jo_brighouse
