Labour will announce a review of the national curriculum that will seek to “weave oracy into lessons throughout school”....
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association for School and College Leaders, said: “Oracy should be a core entitlement, and held in the same regard as reading and writing. Indeed, if students can articulate effectively in conversation, they are more likely to be assured readers and able to express themselves well in writing.”
Oracy. I don't remember seeing that word before, perfectly easy though it is to understand. The OED traces it back to 1965 where we see the author coining a set of words:
1965 A. Wilkinson Spoken Eng. 14 The term we suggest for general ability in the oral skills is oracy; one who has those skills is orate, one without them inorate.
"Oracy" goes nicely with "literacy." Note that, in the grand scheme of human history, literacy may undermine oracy. The OED also has this quote:
1972 T. A. Shippey Old Eng. Verse iv. 89 Though literacy and the fixed text may have killed ‘oracy’ in the long run, the change need not have happened as quickly as in the present century.
The decline of oracy is an interesting topic, as people today communicate in text and hesitate to make a phone call. Of course, I'm writing this to you. We're not speaking.
Oracy is something we can talk about. I mean, write about. I say "talk about" when I mean write about. And I say "I say" when I mean "I write." But keep in mind when you do talk about it... write about it... that it's something they say over in England. I checked the NYT archive, and the word "oracy" has never appeared, so I think in America, you'll get bogged down talking about the word itself. As I just did.
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It's an old idea. This was the whole point of the play Pygmalion.
"Just you wait, 'enry 'iggens, just you wait..."
Meanwhile in America, teachers are already helping students improve their oral skills.
Law school does that with the Socratic method.
Apparent actual meaning of 'oracy': sophistry.
Academics have a product to sell, and they want it to be a fresh product that no one has ever sold before. "I'm a genius. I'm an innovator" they loudly tell themselves. But, they most often cynically steal, dust off, or repackage an idea from one or two generations prior. It's a great formula to get tenure. It's a great formula for a NYT Best Seller pop culture / pop science book.
And this is one reason why academia is allergic to the fundamentals of education.
The Nebraska Unicameral passed a bill that allocated $25m in state tax credits for private K-12 schools. The teachers’ union is trying to repeal the law by circulating a petition to get it on the ballot. I looked at the math and reading proficiency numbers for Omaha high schools and was shocked. The numbers are terrible! I had no idea. The kids aren’t even learning the basics. The rural high schools are much better.
Let me go out on a limb here - oracy, linguistics and the skill set classes that will enable it are not going to be popular in inner city public schools. The students, teaching staff and Admins will not have it. Private or Catholic inner city schools might prove different.
Puts me in mind of the Democratic National Convention where Obama came onto the scene - was it when he was running for the US Senate? He spoke marvelously effectively - told a very Republican life story, and told it very well. I pegged him right then as a future presidential contender.
Thereafter, everything about him was, "He's so brilliant! Barack Obama, Super Genius!" and I never understood any of that; I never picked up on any particular signs of extraordinary intelligence, and when he was speaking off the cuff, he was much less effective. We all know his educational credentials and what he actually did with them; there was nothing of great brilliant there either, it seemed to me. But he could orate.
A spat of articles pushing the importance of language skills.
Reading
Writing
Vocabulary
now Speaking.
Can I add? Elimination of cursing. Farm raised, I was no novice at cuss words. But mom always admonished us kids that swearing was the venue of a man that just didn't have a large enough vocabulary to express themself.
We have come a long way from the very well educated promoted the language called Ebonics. It was supposed to help blacks get a leg up in academics.
Their is a huge disconnect with Obama. Smartest man every, oratory skills that could literally heal the physical injuries of others. But speaking extemporaneously, is unable to eliminate noise between his words.
Successful Blacks instead counseled, that learning the Queens English was a path to success.
Let me go out on a limb here - oracy, linguistics and the skill set classes that will enable it are not going to be popular in inner city public schools.
Until the phrase "acting white" loses its insult value in inner city public schools and, for that matter, in university Education programs, I fear you're right.
Just what we need.
More people who talk too much.
Any educated person should be able to adjust their speech to accommodate the level of formality in the situation. Of course, I doubt schools will be able to teach it adequately given that expecting context-appropriate communication is white supremacy.
We're going to end up back with the trivium for students: logic, grammar, and rhetoric. This will be a good thing.
The teachers’ union is trying to repeal the law...that allocated $25m in state tax credits for private K-12 schools.
Stffling efforts to produce competent, independent minds is all the NEA does these days. It's bad for socialism, doncha know...
So oracy is a 'core entitlement', eh? Would that it be so, but.....Son, if there ain't a ton of money in it, it's going to be pushed straight into the ditch. There's bigger hogs at that trough.
I think Michael actually nailed some of it at 6:47.
But...I love the concept of 'oracy'. I do think that the person who can speak effectively to inspire, or move people through an idea puts themself in a more valuable position than others. And to have oracy, a person must also have a grasp of the written word. They go hand in hand. But to speak clearly, effectively, using proper language skills, is a skill in itself that can set you apart from the crowd of mediocre faces.
I wish we would do that here. But in a manner that enforces- if I can use that word- proper English (American version). I see people on TV now- talking heads- who cannot even speak properly. They're on there because of their notoriety or their athletic ability but...they sound like idiots, even if they are not. Oracy would raise the bar, raise the standards for all of society. I like it.
But...I also agree with Heartless Aztec- our public schools and their Union Masters would not allow it. Black leaders like Cori Bush- who cannot speak- would call it racist. And, once labeled as such, it would become a 'Conservative' trick and therefore become an evil.
It would not stand a chance in a country insistent on decay.
Extrovert privilege.
"Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
No one on earth would ever know"
"For in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays."
The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
Teaching how to articulate in the white man’s English? 3, 2, 1: Raaaaacist! Colonialism!
The seven liberal arts used to be the foundation of education, the quadrivium of the sciences, music among them, to know the nature of the world, and the trivium to affect it. We tend to think of grammar, logic, and rhetoric as components of writing, but it was not before the 18th century that paper and ink became relatively cheap commodities. Through much of Western history, students mainly practiced the trivium by standing up and declaiming in a clear and measured voice before their fellows and the master, the costly pen and paper being reserved for the dissertation.
Sir Kier makes a good point, but he's a leftist politician, and therefore his motives are suspect. Like the Democrats here, the Labourites there have done little but hobble the minds of the young to make them compliant and malleable. There as here the problem isn't the curriculum, it's the teachers.
As a former member of the Toastmasters (which teaches/promotes public speaking skills) I think this is absolutely necessary. Toastmasters teach courses in prisons, high school, various other places in the community, beyond their own clubs. It is the most important skill you have, really - your ability to make yourself understood clearly to others. But I agree with the Heartless Aztec - inner city public schools will not accept it. They will say it's too white (as I have already heard so this is not conjecture.)
I'm not sure why there's a need for the word, "oracy" when a perfectly suitable word is just sitting there, gently used: Namely, "rhetoric".
The US public school system was designed early in the last century to produce competent and compliant factory workers who could read instructions for running tools, measure parts, and not complain about oppressive working conditions. That now has changed to production of activists who cannot read or write or speak or do math, but who can scream and join mobs and demand ... whatever they are told to demand. I do not think this has been an improvement in the citizenry.
Oracy used to be called "public speaking" or "reading aloud" or "debate club" and is a fad subject designed to allow today's student's, lacking any skills in reading, writing, and math, to be better activists. Just get up on your hind legs and orate! That's all you need to do to be a successful activist, just like AOC!
Oracy: the latest form of white supremacy.
I'd be in favor of requiring every student "perform" in an oratorical faire every semester, as my daughter's (private) elementary school did. Having to cogently develop and express a thought on any subject while at the same time mastering the fear of public speaking has paid off in countless ways, even to this day, decades later.
David Begley @ 6:52: “Law school does that with the Socratic method.”
Ahem: usage. Should be “Law school used to try to do that with the Socratic method.”
That said, I concur heartily. Oral argument (or oratory, or spoken performance such as reciting a script or a poem) is a very useful and powerful tool. It takes discipline, it rewards hard work, it builds both memory and attention and “presence.” And it’s cheap and simple. I think almost anyone can benefit from it.
We should all be required to learn by heart a few of the world’s great poems. We will take their music into our own habits of speech.
Far better to teach the students the power of doing useful things with their hands. It is easy to use words to make the worse appear better, to deceive even oneself. But with things, this is not possible. But the public is enamored with the chatters. We endure daily the assault of the chattering class on social media.
"It is possible for the mind to indulge in false logic, to make the worse appear the better reason, without instant exposure. But for the hand to work falsely is to produce a misshapen thing—tool or machine —which in its construction gives the lie to its maker. Thus the hand that is false to truth, in the very act publishes the verdict of its own guilt, exposes itself to contempt and derision, convicts itself of unskillfulness or of dishonesty."
"For example : The question being propounded, What is the value of the combined services to man of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, as compared with those of Sir Henry Bessemer? Ninety-nine out of a hundred men of sound judgment would doubtless say, " The value of the services of the two statesmen is quite unimportant, while the value of the services of Mr. Bessemer is enormous, incalculable." But how many of these ninety-nine men of sound judgment could resist the fascination of the applause accorded to the statesmen ? How many of them would have the moral courage to educate their sons for the career of Mr. Bessemer instead of for the career of Mr. Disraeli or of Mr. Gladstone?* Not many in the present state of public sentiment. It will be a great day for man, the day that ushers in the dawn of more sober views of life, the day that inaugurates the era of the mastership of things in the place of the mastership of words."
—Charles H. Ham, Mind and Hand: manual training, the chief factor in education (1886)
Never seen "oracy" either- will stick to oration.
What's wrong with "fluency"? Verbal fluency, if you must. Oracy is just showing off. Maybe fluency isn't thought to cover listening, although I don't know how else you could develop it.
Being able to talk proper (sic) is a skill?! That should be taught in schools?!
You mean like we were taught several decades (two to three generations) ago?
Learn to read in order to write.
Learn to write in order to speak.
Learn to speak in order to write.
Learn to write in order to read.
If the Dept. of Education dedicates itself to teaching 'oracy,' we will be a nation of mutes in fifty years.
I think this is a great idea! Learning how to think on your feet and express those thoughts live and in person is a habit requiring practice and understanding of your own thoughts, regardless of language or content. This is an art. Dismissing it as mere sophistry is a category error.
There isn't a paucity of people speaking up. There is a paucity of intelligent people speaking up.
Being able to express youself clearly and concisely without inserting fillers "Like, you know", "Um", etc goes a long way during a first impression at a job interview. I think all of us would have benefited from this if we had "oracy" as part of our primary schooling.
It's a great formula to get tenure.
=======
how did tenure become so important a goal and kill independence, honor and will to freedom?
I remember speech classes in high school. I think in even older days it was called rhetoric. Getting students to be comfortable standing in front of others to speak is a good thing combined with reading and writing.
English teachers are supposed to teach speaking ("oral language") and listening in addition to reading and writing. I saw "oracy" for the first time yesterday.
Some teachers explicitly teach kids how to discuss a topic. For example, "I disagree with X's point because ... " or "I agree with Z's idea, but I'd take it farther ... "
Politicians who use the word normalcy are accused of illiteracy. But oracy is fine.
Speech and debate class in hs was one of the most positive influences I had, actually educational.
Memorization, reading classics, grammar and rhetoric, debate, and writing, reading aloud and defending your argument and presentation of it in small tutorial -- central to British education, rare here.
A British person with a secondary school education can blow our college grads out of the water intellectually, even those who opt to go into trade schools rather than move on to college.
Didn't you know I could play the mouth organ?
Arthur Spooner
Please, don't call it that.
Doug Heffernan
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