The Currency of Language - Dr Patricia Gibbons

We face a difficulty when we use language, because we need it to stretch in all kinds of directions to say so many things.  The contents of one language is needed to do it all – from expressing feelings of elation, to making abstract thought concrete, to talking about practical things.  It is ordinary language but we need it to do extraordinary things.  The language we use about education matters.

Increasingly, language from the area of Economics is used about education.  Our colleagues in the Economics Department regularly use terms such as customers, market exchange, consumers, commodities, money etc.  It is entirely appropriate to engage those terms concerning the transfer of goods, such as coffee or oil, from one person to another.  Transactions occur when a person wants to secure an item they desire which they do not provide for themselves.  The transaction occurs through the exchange of money for commodity.  The value of the commodity has no intrinsic value but has the monetary worth of what someone is willing to pay for it.  But is the language of Economics appropriate in matter of education, and do the economic ideas and assumptions faithfully portrays the vision of education we hold?

I suggest that as far as education is concerned, and very specifically private education where parents pay fees, adopting economic language is inaccurate and has a potentially corrosive effect, devaluing and distorting the high vision we have of education.

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Has Rap replaced Poetry? - a debate presented by Kacper Kazaniecki (Upper Sixth Former)

If I were to ask you who’s the current Poet laureate, the people’s poet, I don’t presume many of you would know. I for certain didn’t until pretty much yesterday. However, if I were to ask you who won the latest Grammy award for the best hip-hop album, I presume many more would know. 

The MP Emma Dent Coad has pointed this out in the houses of parliament after the Grenfell Tower disaster. She says:
“At times of national disaster, poet laureates are often called upon to commemorate and reflect upon events. In North Kensington we have our own Ben Johnsons and Alfred Lord Tennysons. Our poet laureates are Akala, AJ Tracey, Lowkey, Peaky .. we have Stormzy and Potent Whisper calling out what he calls “Grenfell Britain” in gut-wrenching prose."

Although the two art forms share the same fundamental medium that of rhyme and rhythm, there is a great discrepancy between how the two are perceived within society. If you were to take the average GCSE student, chances are that they wouldn’t have the greatest opinion on poetry. ‘It’s boring’, ‘the language is too confusing, ‘I can’t relate to it’ they might say, views that they wouldn’t necessarily hold of rap music. So, has rap music replaced poetry for (at least) our generation? Or is poetry the eternal art of humanity that is here to stay for millennia to come as it has done in the past. Does one deal with the depths of the human condition, that of: love, eternal truths, and our relation to the world. And does the other cover the superficial and primitive aspects of humanity that of: greed, intoxication and sexual obsession. Or maybe the two aren’t entirely antithetical, as many parallels and influences can be drawn between them.

Before we delve deeper into the analysis of both, here are some sentences either from Shakespeare or from ­popular hip-hop.  Guess which one the line comes from.

• “To destroy the beauty from which one came” – Jay z, You Must Love Me
• “Maybe it’s hatred I spew, maybe it’s food for the spirit” – Eminem, Renegade
o Later in the song Eminem says: “See, I'm a poet to some, a regular modern-day Shakespeare”
• “Men would rather use their broken records than their bare hands” – Orthello
• “I was not born under a rhyming planet” - Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing
• “The most benevolent king communicates through your dreams” - Wu-Tang Clan, Impossible
• “Socrates, philosophy and hypotheses can’t define me” – Wu-Tang Clan, Triumph

The reason to play this mini-game, isn’t to cherry pick some obscure, unknown tracks just to be able to say ‘look, hip-hop has clever lines as well’. But more so to show that the boundary between the two, once the context has been removed, can be very blurred. The hip-hop bars were chosen from very well-known artists who are or were at the forefront of hip hop. Wu-Tang-Clan for example, had the first hip hop album to reach no.1 in the UK charts. Perhaps the appeal that the British audience found in the album was the resemblance to the more traditional aspect of English literature.

To read the full essay and other latest writings from Canford pupils, please visit www.canford.com/Academic-Blog