A Vision for Teaching Early Adolescent Children

Martin Smith

The greatest necessity in teaching English to early adolescent children is to catch their
attention; and the only way this can be done is to have a theme.
A theme is an all-encompassing and known subject around which the series of lessons
revolves.
I say, series of lessons because it is axiomatic that all courses should have defined beginnings
and ends : administrators need to realize that English is not sold by the yard as if it were a
fabric for making something but rather as individual pedagogic artefacts, like Persian carpets.

The reason for this is that if the childrens interest is caught, the teacher gradually acquires
increasing freedom of movement; as intelligent children aged 10-12 can quickly progress

towards many themes. They are setting out on the journey of life and discovering many new
things every day: or one would like to think so. Even if, in fact, elsewhere they are following a
predictable school routine and are not viewing the universe more widely than from their
particular slot in cosmic space, they are at a stage when the most important thing for them is
their imagination, which is at a wonderful early stage of development : after the first challenges
of establishing a physical foothold on the planet have been met ; and before the more tricky
ones those of establishing an emotional and truly individual presence present themselves.

Almost all that is written about teaching is unreadable; and not worth the effort of looking at,
even, because it is written cold. Teaching can never be done cold, if we are to be successful
children only get this way if the inherent life in them is drained away by a hostile social or
learning environment from the start.
Fortunately, Georgian families at least of young customers at private, after-school classes
seem highly supportive; and it is only the received mindset of traditional, grinding, competitive,
numbing and predictable state schooling which is the enemy. It sets like jelly. I am finding that
Ring of Bright Water and Swallows and Amazons are exactly right. The children can identify
with the otter in the first case and with the children in the second. Presentation skills (describing
what has been learned to date), word searches, summarizing the plot, and so on) all follow
easily; and can be integrated here and there with a small diet of nutritious herbs removed from
the least hostile growths in the cosmic debris of textbooks; and, as a slightly modified species,
grown under glass.