Peter Jackson column

Sep 1 2005 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

Ritual story telling was a hallmark of ancient societies and is still to be found among many tribal peoples today.

Icelandic saga and the epics of Homer were told and retold, handed lovingly from one generation to the next, with improvements in narrative technique encouraged, but not any plot alteration.

So it is with us. Every summer we drink in eagerly the same story, but our appreciation is never diminished by the repetition.

It is, of course, the story of the exam results.

Our hearts thrill at the teenagers whooping for joy as they receive their results.

Our chests swell when it is announced that these results have broken all records, and we turn on those mean-spirited souls who question the truth of this old tale.

Personally, I like to keep an open mind. It may well be that youngsters just keep getting cleverer and cleverer, no doubt as a result of eating more fish or something.

Or it may be something to do with exam questions of the standard of the one featured in a Leisure and Tourism GCSE paper as quoted in one of the Sunday papers.

For one mark the candidates were asked: "Other then Indian food, name one other type of food often provided by take-away restaurants".

This does not seem to worry anybody much, at least not enough to demand that something be done about it, but most are agreed it is alarming that fewer students are opting for languages.

I also regard this as serious. Leaving to one side the importance of foreign languages to education and cultural development, they are of huge importance for business.

We English are not good at languages, largely, I suspect, because life is made too easy for us, with films and contemporary music being dominated by our mother tongue. All the more reason why our education system should emphasise the teaching of languages.

But a large part of the problem is, that while we allow students a choice they will tend to go for the option most likely to produce good results. With a language, you either know it or you don't and your exam results will reflect that brutal truth.

With Leisure and Tourism, on the other hand, you can get a result just by writing "fish and chips".