Several times a week, I teach a small group of 'disaffected' youngsters some of whom are very bright but low achievers and the remainder of whom have various learning difficulties. Most of them behave quite badly, they say inappropriate things to me and each other and their main objective on the course is to improve their English and maths skills and learn citizenship so that they can become more employable.
Yesterday morning, during their literacy class, we were playing the noun game. They were required identify five common nouns by pointing to them in the room. Despite weeks of work on nouns, verbs, adjectives and sentence building not a single one of them could name five nouns.
In the afternoon, as part of their 'Rights and Responsibilities' module, they had a visit from the college nurses and the topic was sexual health. Asked to name a few sexually transmitted diseases, every single little darling was able to name at least six and had a detailed knowledge of the symptoms of each disease.
I am thankful that if they never grow up literate, at least they know how to get tested for the clap.
