The end of the world as we know it..

OK may be not quite the end of the world but the end intellectual debate and the dumbing down of the English language.

I am designing some new assessment materials at work based around communication skills, part of the folio is some group discussions. These group discussions have now gone out to consultation with our partner groups and I am collating the feedback.

One topic included the world "eradicate", one comment has suggested that we use the word "remove" instead, as people may not understand the word "eradicate".

I am all in favour of not over complicating things, I started nodding and thinking what a good piece of advice that was. Then I had one of those record screeching moments where the needle is taken off the record scratchily (that reference probably lost 90% of the audience but I shall struggle on, if you are not sure what a record is try wikipedia). If someone doesn't know a word it is not cruel or unfair to use it or a reason for me to change it, that is a reason for someone to pick up a dictionary or use the internet to look up the meaning.

To me the two words have distinctly different meanings so I feel it is important to use eradicate. The English language is currently rich with many great words for all occassions, we should not reduce it to a language where there is only one word for everything. What next, get rid of blue and call it light black, where do we stop, eradicate is a good word and I say it stays.

"Say no to the eradication of eradication"

My point is that everyone, if they dont know something should take the opportunity to learn and look it up. It should never be that if people dont know something its the other persons fault for not using the right word. Individuals need to take responsibility, develop themselves and protect the richness of the english language.

Another comment was that I cant use a discussion topic about insurance because some people might not understand the concept. Well if they dont that should form part of the discussion and if they dont, why dont they? Insurance is virtually fundamental to several aspects of life and surely it is a fairly simple concept. Even if you cant explain how insurance works you know about premiums, claims and have a vague knowledge of risk. Again we shouldnt avoid discussing things because people might not know, the things people don't know are the exact things we should be discussing. Humanities job is to learn and develop, there is nothing wrong with ignorance if you do something about it, if you ignore it and hope it goes away then the only person you are failing is yourself.

End of moan, join me next week when I tell you about the new course I have been on, "Effective moaning for professionals". Apparently it even comes with roleplays.