Teach Secondary 13.7

John Lawson takes the opportunity to get a few lexical pet peeves off his chest... In December 2023, ‘rizz’ was chosen by 32,000 voters as Oxford University Press’ ‘Word of the Year’. Derived from ‘charisma’, said word refers to one’s ability to project style, charm, or attractiveness. And while it sounds...fine, I haven’t once heard it spoken out loud more than half a year later. Have you? Beyond the merits and real-world usage of rizz, this got me thinking about overused words, and those phrases I’d most like to scrap. Initially opaque I managed to decipher the initially opaque term double down eventually, but it still irks me – because, like alcohol and smoking, it’s difficult to fathom its genesis. Who first uttered the words, ‘ X is doubling down on Y ’? How did it ever survive its earliest usage? If someone finds three or four further reasons for reinforcing their original opinion about something, why aren’t they then ‘tripling’ or ‘quadrupling’ down – or even up? Voguish portmanteau words like ‘snaccident’, ‘jeggings’, ‘sheeple’ and ‘frenemy’ make me smile; ‘doubling down’ only makes me frown. Am I doubling down if I again request collegial support in my forlorn quest to stem the ubiquity of doubled adjectives and adverbs? Sadly, novelists and broadsheet journalists seem to have embraced this irksome tic. There will be no white flags above my desk until someone can explain how something very, very good isn’t ‘brilliant’, ‘excellent’, ‘superb’ or ‘terrific’. Riddled with holes Why is it that we then so often get the exact opposite whenever someone promises a robust response to anything? Today’s social leaders inject this term with a kind of rallying power, especially when the response in question is first being rolled out ( ugghhh... ) Yet ‘robust policies’ are usually riddled with holes. Are builders still robustly addressing RAAC problems in your school? Indiscipline still harms many schools, despite the robust policies that the DfE assures us are in place. Ministers demanded robust responses to the Post Office debacle, while the P.O. apparatchiks involved merely informed Alan Bates that he was the only one who considered their compensation offer derisory. The first person to formulate the expression ‘ in any way, shape or form ’ was showcasing a sharp, agile and ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Lawson is a former secondary teacher, now serving as a foundation governor while running a tutoring service, and author of the book The Successful (Less Stressful) Student (Outskirts Press, £11.95); find out more at prep4successnow.wordpress.com or follow @johninpompano THE LAST WORD analytical mind. Sadly, it has since become a catch-all, monolithic term that teenagers from 10C will wantonly throw into essays and utterances inanywayshapeorform that suits them! The bile pile When talking to teaching newbies, it appears that I can no longer discuss the long hours and hard work that might one day lead to teaching excellence without someone suggesting that I’m ‘virtue signalling’. Or that I’m somehow ‘woke’. ‘ Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. ’ I disagree. When did we become ‘woke snowflakes’ for flagging up the suffering caused by belittling and intimidation? Bullies aimmalicious jibes at the vulnerable spots we all have, and should be challenged on it. Doing so makes us humane citizens – not some ‘tofu-eating Wokerati’. Some words are devised solely to hurt, and right now, ‘woke’ tops the bile pile. Right-wing politicos in America and elsewhere are desperately trying to re-throne Donald Trump by weaponising the word ‘woke’ as a stick with which to beat their enemies. Is it ‘woke’ to feel compassion for thousands of innocent and vulnerable victims of war, whether in Gaza, Ukraine or Sudan? And if so – why is that bad ? Village bobbies who embrace, say, the idea of Morris Dancing tend to be seen as responsible, inclusive and sensitive, while inner-city cops who dance alongside people of colour, goths and gay people at a carnival are considered ‘woke’. Could it be that woke folk are just typically wise, open-minded, knowledgeable and empathetic people who seek to destroy hatred with love? Awesome, man! And then there are words that don’t cause harm, so much as irritation. I remember writing a pithy poem a couple of weeks after I started teaching in America in 2000: Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Whatever it is, if an American teenager spots it It will be kindalike awesome, man! American teens still seem addicted to that excruciating expression to this day – despite their teachers’ best efforts at outlawing its use... Mark my words 82 teachwire.net/secondary