PROMOTING THE POLITICAL PARIAHS

I recently completed a Master of Teaching for which the topic of my final dissertation was “Eurocentrism, Assessment and Demotivation: The Treatment of Lesser Taught Languages”. I argued that despite the British Council annually identifying Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, and Urdu as key languages for Britain’s future, the Department for Education does little to support language learning beyond French, Spanish and German.

Beth Main OB 2007

Since my time at BGS I have accrued a colourful, and arguably controversial, set of visas and work permits in my passport – pages of Chinese, Taiwanese, Russian and Uzbek bureaucracy, which are equally as disturbing to passport control as they are attractive to me.

I am increasingly aware of this every time I see the news, as Putin’s war in Ukraine continues, and protests are repressed by the Chinese Communist Party.

I am always very careful as a teacher of Mandarin and Russian to be clear with pupils, colleagues and friends that the actions of a government are not those of its people and do not equate with the language and culture which we teach in our classrooms.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, my friends in Russia have been devastated – they are not only hurt that their numerous Ukrainian relatives are suffering, but also that they themselves have lost jobs, been conscripted, or fled the country. They are also heartbroken that Putin’s actions have caused the world to turn away from them, to reject them, when they were just becoming accepted, when they themselves do not support the war in any sense. They know that they are the Bond villain, and it hurts them.

My friends in China have been confined to their homes or hotels on and off since COVID broke out. A British friend is currently isolated in a hotel, where she was escorted by police, for having simply been in a bar close to the recent protests in Shanghai. I hear from them all less and less as the VPNs become less reliable to get them past the Great Internet Firewall of China.

I have been challenged recently on whether or not we should actually teach Russian and Mandarin given the political actions of the two countries – I am being asked why we teach languages. Is it for extrinsic reasons such as being able to communicate on holiday, to do business abroad, to be more effective diplomats, to spy? Is it for more intrinsic reasons such as the enjoyment, the accompanying sociocultural and historic knowledge, the broadened world view and increased empathy and tolerance? Is it for UCAS points?

Surely, if a country is politically powerful, economically influential, and seemingly more distanced from us than feels comfortable, this is more reason to learn the language – more reason to learn a non-European language.

Languages in the UK are in crisis: they are not popular, perceived as too difficult, or not useful in an Anglophonic global system; the lack of a language at GCSE is the leading cause for not achieving the EBacc. For Lesser Taught Languages (alternatively called Community or Minority) resources are scarce, assessments are too difficult, and the ratios of native to non-native students make attaining highly difficult for even the exceptional student.

Take for example the A Level for Mandarin, which demands the same as for French – amongst other demands, to write critical essays in Mandarin about a target language book and film, and to discuss the social impact of the 1978 economic reforms in China on a changing contemporary society. I can just about manage with an MSc in Globalisation and Development, which informed me about macro and microeconomics, gender theory, migration trends etc. Most Mandarin teachers do not have that knowledge, have no textbook to guide them and only three past papers.

The same stands for teaching Hindi, Polish, Biblical Hebrew, Japanese and Turkish etc.

The education system is political, the languages the DfE focuses on is a political decision. In addition to the enriching and useful European languages, we should also be promoting and facilitating the study of Lesser

Taught Languages. To be proficient in Mandarin gives us smoother access to the provider of the highest number of non-EU university students to the UK (contributing around £2.5bn annually), our fifth largest trade partner, and the second largest world economy. The study of Mandarin includes the nuanced understanding of a country with a deep cultural history influenced by the hierarchies of Confucianism, the trauma of famine and the Cultural Revolution, and the whiplash of rapid economic development followed by renewed political repression.

I manage eight wonderful peripatetic language tutors (Cantonese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish), whose students are primarily native speakers taking an A Level to gain UCAS points (these help them get into university when their English skills might hold them back from attaining the top grades in other subjects). I encourage all students to give any extra language a go, for the world it might open for them. I want young people to think about why they learn languages, which languages they explore, what is included in the course and how we assess them.

The languages education I received at BGS, in particular from Dr Ransome and Mrs Swain, gifted me some of my best life experiences. I hope that my current beginner Korean lessons are going to do the same for me… Because, especially as an adult, you should never not be learning a language.

BETH MAIN –– Head of Eurasian Studies Prior Park College

I began writing these lines in the alpine village of Grindelwald in Switzerland in September 2021, over 60 years since my first visit here with a school trip from Bristol Grammar School, led by Tony Warren.

Moving from northern small town Blackburn in 1956 to what seemed like the metropolis of Bristol, as my father took up a new post as Regional Standards Officer for the Electricity Generating Board, was a challenge and a profound change for me at the age of 11.

Bristolian (saying …“and John Atyeo bursts into the penalty areal…”), but I quickly became a 100 per cent BGS boy.

Roy Avery asked me to captain the Under 12 cricket team and I played and coached Saturday and Sunday for the next 36 years, revelling in the interweaving of eleven individuals joining together in a complicated team game.

Stanley Martin who cycled to school in his college scarf and white plimsolls enthused me about Latin and Greek in 4 Classical, housed in the redundant and quaint sports pavilion overlooking Tyndall’s Park.

My Housemasters, firstly Dick Fox and then his successor Leslie Meigh, made me increasingly understand the value of team spirit and a supportive ethos, both of which were at the heart of the House system. I wore my red shirt proudly.

Remarkably Gordon MacMillan, my form master in Remove Classical and the epitome of strictness and good order, went along with my unheard-of initiative to set up and run a magazine library with everyone in the form contributing a few pence a week.

The following year, as form captain in John Radford’s 5 Classical, I learned to employ a variety of methods to get all my form-mates onside and agree to stop torturing the trainee teacher who took us for Greek. Persuading, cajoling, pleading, threatening, shaming, and joshing –I used them all.

I was too small and slight for rugby, but my enthusiasm for football (especially Blackburn Rovers, with the dashing Ronnie Clayton and the wizard of dribble Bryan Douglas), together with my nimbleness, were cleverly harnessed by Michael Booker. “Try it”, he said. I immediately loved being a goalkeeper at hockey, a game I continued to play for 25 years, captaining the School, my Oxford college and my Manchester club.

In the Sixth Form, at the third attempt and following the departure of the luminary Robert Lacey, I managed to win the annual public speaking competition, an experience which gave me a confidence I valued throughout my career as a teacher.

I spoke as an American explaining the game of cricket to his fellow Americans – a left-field humorous approach which stood me in good stead later in the Headship of two schools, usually considered a formal and serious role. looking out of the window, as the little train took us up from Interlaken to Grindelwald where the astonishing Eiger North Wall still reduces me to silent awe. I vowed inwardly on that day that I would never in my life play cards and I never have done. where we had the novelty of muesli for breakfast, then down to Lauterbrunnen and steeply up to Wengen. Next day it was up again to the pass at Kleine Scheidegg, a balcony onto the North Face of the Eiger, and then down to glorious Grindelwald.

Through all these varied experiences my time at Bristol Grammar School was enriching and significant, making me what I am.

Yet it was the four summer holiday school trips to Europe, led by Tony Warren, which had the most profound effect.

The first was to Konigssee in Bavaria in the summer of 1958, a holiday which began with 24 hours on the train to Munich.

Reading the account of that trip in the BGS Chronicle recently was like starting a visual tape cassette in my head.

Our hotel base by the lake, not far from Hitler’s “Eagle’s Nest” high above Berchtesgaden, was newly opened and here an unanticipated excitement was possible cherry brandy and, as the Chronicle rather surprisingly records, a party of English schoolgirls.

I left my Box Brownie Camera on a wall at Salzburg Castle and found it again 30 minutes later. I felt like death as we got up at 3 am to go by coach to the Grossglockner Glacier. I loved the salt mines where we whizzed down long steep wooden slides, with no thoughts whatsoever of health, or safety. I came home hooked on travel.

Tony Warren, with his correctness of speech, copperplate handwriting and precise organisation, personally arranged in minute detail our train travel, hotel and meals, our day excursions to Lucerne, to Montreux and to Kandersteg’s Blue Lake –it was our very own tailor-made package tour.

My third trip under Tony Warren’s leadership was a walking week in the Black Forest in Germany, made demanding by a heatwave. This time we stayed in youth hostels and were indebted to the amiable languages teacher, John Morris, who negotiated with the hostel wardens in German, a language foreign to Tony. A highlight was going up the narrow steps of the cathedral tower at Freiburg – on the outside not the inside – which took the breath away in several senses.

Here in the dark wooden hostel, we rested for 24 hours before our ascent of the Grosse Scheidegg pass and lengthy downhill to Meiringen. Nearly there now. Blue skies and sunshine promised a more relaxing final day to Engelberg.

“What is Mr. Warren doing there on the ground?”

we wondered, as we came round a corner ready to be photographed by Tony who had gone on ahead. A severely sprained ankle was the verdict at the hospital at Engelberg after we had virtually carried Tony who could barely hobble – a sobering and unexpected end to our trek.

Tony Warren, my form-master in Shell A, guided me through the first twelve months with skilled direction and careful sympathetic listening. My Lancashire accent and roots meant that I would never be a

Next year a Swiss trip to Aeschi, a rural village above Lake Thun in the Bernese Oberland, was even more memorable, as the grandeur of the Swiss Alps simply entranced me. We came to a halt in a snowstorm on an exposed chairlift from Beatenberg to the summit of the Niederhorn – what an adventure! We were shocked, whilst mistakenly walking up a waterfall, when Tony Warren remarked that our situation was “bloody dangerous”.

My friends Ken Cleveland and Chas. Burroughs played cards, never

The Black Forest’s rolling hills were fine, but the Alps were now in my soul. To my surprise Tony Warren agreed to my suggestion of a walking tour of the Bernese Oberland in the month after my A levels in 1962. I often popped into his form room on the main corridor after school and a route was progressively devised, discussed and agreed, together with a list of around a dozen keen and capable walkers.

Even more of a surprise came when Tony asked me to write to the youth hostels and make the bookings. Eventually, not long before the end of the summer term in 1962, small brown handwritten postcards arrived back from the wardens of the hostels, the only confirmation we had for our eight-day trip.

It was gruelling. We each carried our world on our back. We started by sleeping in a barn with bunks in Wilderswil, then up to Murren

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