Breaking Stereotypes: My Journey from a Local Accent to Academic Achievement
When I was young, I had a strong local accent from the area in which I lived. The dialect was associated with farm labourers — which is what many of my ancestors had been. The other side of my family were South Wales coal miners.
It was often assumed that people who had my accent were not intelligent. Even my teachers in school would ask me to say words that had R’s and L’s in them — such as world — and would fall about laughing when I said them.
My handwriting was also extremely poor, because I was left-handed and my primary school teacher had tried, and failed, to make me write with my right hand. It was difficult for teachers to read anything that I had written in the age before word processors and tablets.
Because of my accent and handwriting, I was placed into the bottom group for English in my secondary school. Many of the other pupils in the group struggled to read and I often helped them in classes.
It was assumed that I was not clever enough to read challenging work, like the plays of Shakespeare, write sophisticated essays, or take the top level exams needed to go to university.
Nobody in my family had ever gone to university, we didn’t have any books about literature or theatre in the house and I hadn’t read novels or seen any plays outside of school work.
One day, when I was about fourteen years old, a drama teacher asked me if I wanted to be in a play. Until then I had not had a strong interest in drama, and spent my time outside classes playing sports.
It was a play performed by older drama students who were preparing for university and were all incredibly talented. I played the character of a farm labourer with a strong rural accent like my own. In fact, I had got the part because of my accent.
Although I only had a few lines in the whole play, I was in rehearsals for a long time. I got to watch the talented students and fell in love with drama (and if I’m honest one of the older students who didn’t even know my name), while rehearsing.
During the course of the play, the drama teacher would talk to me and found that I was more intelligent than my accent implied. He suggested to the head of English that I could sit the exam for the higher qualifications that would prepare me to go on to study for University.
The main text for the exam was Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I had never read Shakespeare in the bottom group.
I studied the play the night before the exam, passed, and was moved from the bottom English class into the top group overnight.
I went on to pass my exams and developed a love for Shakespeare which led me to study English and Theatre at University. Eventually I got a PhD in Shakespeare, and became a University lecturer. I taught English literature and Drama to students for over twenty years.
It strikes me that although we know little about his life, Shakespeare may well have had a local accent. Evidence also suggests he could not spell his own name, and it is possible that he joined a travelling theatre company as his way out of life in Stratford (and perhaps a charge of poaching!).
My life transformation happened to me because of the way I spoke. Yet over time, and particularly when I went to a University full of people who spoke with posh accents, I slowly lost my accent.
My way of speaking — the very thing that had initially led to me being regarded as stupid, started me on a course to a find a career in which I was happy. I was able to use my own love of language, writing and drama. But this was pure chance.
Before this opportunity I was labelled as not being clever enough to study English at a high level, because of my accent and my handwriting
Our education systems still make too many assumptions about students.
They often fail to take account of diverse intelligences, learning strengths, passions, and capabilities. Instead, we label students, with negative consequences on their learning experiences. Narrowly defined curriculum and assessment methods compounds the problem by failing to engage diverse learners.
As a lecturer, I sometimes taught teacher training students, and would recount my own experience of education to encourage the students to not make judgements about their pupils based on surface observations and assumptions.
An approach which recognises the true capabilities of each individual student has been advocated by many writing about education, including Howard Gardner, Clayton Christensen, Ken Robinson and Carol S. Dweck. It is true to say that there is greater recognition of neurodiversity in education today.
However, much of the curriculum and assessment in education is still designed as if all students were the same. It does not account for the passions, interests and the diversity of individual students.
I believe we can create new curriculum, teaching approaches and assessment methodologies. These could harness creative approaches to learning that enable students to develop their strengths according to their abilities.
This new curriculum would bring together students with diverse skills and backgrounds in creative working approaches, across levels and age groups, in a collaborative educational environment which brings out the best in students.
My own background and experience in education convinces me that we need to fundamentally change our approach to achieve the most fulfilling outcomes for our students and graduates.
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