Should English be taught in school?
I don’t think it should.
Let me explain.
In 9th grade I took biology.
I hated it.
But one week, Mr. Beetly announced we were going to dissect dead rats.
And my dissection partner was going to be Liz Schumacher.
Now biology was interesting.
Every day Liz and I cut up the rat, we removed pieces of the rat, and we learned the names for the pieces.
I really loved that dead rat. He taught me so much about anatomy, myself, life, death…
Liz, on the other hand… well, she didn’t find the situation so romantic…
15 YEARS LATER
I arrived in Prague on a Saturday and after a weekend of sightseeing I was siting in a classroom learning how to be an English teacher.
And suddenly, it was the story of the dead rat all over again.
They gave us the language.
We cut it up.
We learned the names of the pieces.
And then we taught students how to do the same.
But this time, there was an extra:
Put the pieces back into the rat and tell the rat to jump off the table and run back to the sewer.
In other words, our students had to use the language. They had to speak. And they had to speak fluently.
Unfortunately, my students didn’t find that very easy to do.
ENGLISH SHOULD NOT BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOL
The problem starts in school.
You have a math class and a history class and a science class.
And then you go to English class.
And you use the same methods to learn English as you did to learn math, history and science.
And that’s the problem.
English is not an academic subject.
It’s not something you need to study and take apart and analyze.
Instead, it’s something you need to DO.
When I was in school we had all our academic subjects – science, math, etc. – during school.
Then after school we did activities, like sports or music.
Now imagine this:
What if instead of dissecting English for years in a boring, stressful classroom…
You spent those years doing English after school?
Speaking, listening, reading, having fun…
Where would your English be today?
