COMMENT: Time for schools to give elocution lessons?

Don't worry, this isn't going to be a rant about accents. It's not even going to be a rant about long or short vowels. What's concerning me is the noticeable increase in the number of adults who seem totally incapable of pronouncing "th" in words.

It's absolutely awful.

Guilty

Words beginning with "th" are pronounced as if there's an "f" there instead.

Words ending with "th" are pronounced as if there's a "v" instead.

Most of the time it doesn't interrupt the flow of speech - the speaker just sounds like an under-educated child who hasn't been taught how to speak properly - but there are times, when there are a lot of such mispronunciations, that it becomes increasingly hard to understand what is being said.

Don't these people realise they are making them sound stupid? Like a 3-year old still learning to speak properly?

Schools, as far as I am aware, have ignored such problems over recent decades, deciding it's accents, and regional and individuality is good. It's not, if it makes communication difficult.

Schools need to offer elocution lessons to those who don't speak properly and clearly and it's the duty of society to highlight adults who are destroying the language with their infantile babblings.

OPINION: Is your child fit for purpose?

Reports suggest that increasing numbers of pupils arrive at the school gate still wearing nappies, unable to use a knife and fork, incapable of changing themselves into a PE kit, and some, unbelievably, don't actually know what their name is.

How can this be the case in the UK in 2012?

This generation of semi-feral children can't be blamed but the generation of bad parents can. Why haven't they spent the time to teach their children such basic life skills? I wonder how much time these bad parents (yes, that's where they are, there's no getting around it) have spent with their offspring? Did they just ignore them as they grew up? Were the parents just too busy drinking or going out?

Sure, many people work long hours and have difficult lives but that is no excuse for child neglect. Presumably these children were being looked after by someone who might have noticed that the child was socially retarded. Or is this abuse of the youngest members of society a generational thing? In some families is it actually not the parents fault but the grandparents fault?

I think schools should require children to be able to do certain things before they're allowed to start school. I'd suggest being toilet trained is pretty fundamental but I think, before they are accepted into school, all children should be able to eat with a knife, fork and spoon; use a cup to drink (not a baby's bottle with a test); be able to change clothes without being helped; recognise their own name; be able to hold a pen/pencil/crayon appropriately; be able to sit properly on a chair... there's probably more.

Yes, if parents haven't done these things then school need to pick up the pieces but while the teacher, or classroom assistant, is busy changing some 5-year old's nappy, they're not able to give the attention the other 30+ kids in the class need and deserve. Why should one (maybe two or three) semi-feral children harm the education of the other 30+ children in the class?

And how embarrassing is it for the child when, as will surely be the case, that have that epiphany and realise they are socially retarded? And that their patents are bad parents?

It strikes me that we've had decades of social workers, social care, billions spent on people to help, oversee and identify problems in families.... we've got GPs and Health visitors who are meant to do checks on the development of children... we've got communities, neighbours, families, friends, babysitters, nurseries.... Where and why has it gone so wrong?

I agree that it's not just the parents' fault - so many others in our complex social network should be able to identify that there is a problem and for every child arriving at school unable to go to the loo properly there's a whole web of people who have failed but, surely, the bulk of the blame lands at the feet of the parents?

Bad parents are a niggling cancer on our society. Their actions, often their inactions, cast an ever longer shadow on the face of our civilisation. Their abuse of their poor patenting, which is really just a form of child abuse, causes problems for everyone including their own children who they fail to give a fair chance in life.

Something drastic needs to be done to stop bad parents, to bring a halt to generations of bad parenting, do that this cyclone of social destruction is ended.

In the meantime, I'd support any government who introduced minimum requirements to allow a child to start mainstream school and a clamp down on the various institutions that should be spotting these problems and doing something about it.It's time we made sure all children arrived at school fit for purpose.

OPINION: Should swearing be a crime?

Yesterday, the Court of Appeal decided that it wasn't a criminal offence to swear at a policeman. Today, I'm sure, the right wing press are having a field day!

Now, it's not often I find myself on the side of an argument that, no doubt, would include Richard Littlejohn et al but REALLY, it's not a criminal offence to swear at a policeman?

What sort of society have we become?

Sure, everyone swears at one time or another and that swearing varies in the vocabulary that is actually used. I'm not advocating that all swearing is a criminal offence but when the swearing is directed AT somebody, rather than just an exclamation or an insertion into an adult conversation for emphasis, then I think it should be a criminal offence.

Will it be an infringement of human rights if a school bans swearing? If a pupil swears at a teacher, is it no longer permissible for that pupil to be punished? Should that pupil not be put into detention or temporarily excluded or their parents called in?

As a kid, I used to get very embarrassed when I was watching a television programme with my parents and someone swore. The other day, I watched a movie on Sky, The Town, and cringed at the reliance of the F-word throughout. Is swearing really that commonplace that it is a part of every sentence that some people utter?

If the Court of Appeal think that swearing at a police officer is perfectly reasonable behaviour I think it's up to MPs to table a law that makes it clear that it's not acceptable.

Swearing has a place in our ever-changing language but it must, always, remain as something extreme and something that is wrong if it is aimed as a verbal assault on somebody. It's nonsense that using a racial name would see someone in court but to call them an extreme swear word wouldn't.

Context is everything.

This time the courts have got it wrong.