What is The Point of Learning English?
Have you ever sat in a Maths class wondering why you will ever need to be able to do long division without a calculator? Or silently cursed your Geography teacher while learning about the formation of oxbow lakes? And History? That’s all in the past and irrelevant, isn’t it?
In this series of articles, we will look at some of the subjects we learn at school, and try and answer the question: What’s the point in learning this?
Last time we looked at uses of Maths, both in day-to-day life, and for your future career. Today we will focus on learning English. Once we have learned how to read, write and spell, what is the point? Will we ever need to quote Shakespearian sonnets? And who, other than writers, needs to be able to write stories and poems?
Great Women You Should Know – The Suffragettes – Things That Shape Our Lives
Contributor Kait is 15 years old. This is her fictional diary entry of a 14 year old girl called Daisy, whose homework this week is an essay about Women’s Rights and Equality.
A Short Story – Concrete
Cold, rough concrete beneath my burnt yellow hands, ash under my nails. I hold the butt of an already smoked cigarette in my mouth, looking hopeless. Not even the phrase, “Any spare change?” will get anybody to notice me, the old tramp of Brixton, sitting on the side of a busy main road. Every day I get unhelpful comments from young school kids, such as, “The local druggie! Ha, ha, ha…” These don’t make me feel better. It’s not my fault I’m unemployed, homeless and either drunk or high most of the time. Or is it?
People ask me how on earth I find all the money to buy over fifty cans of beer a week and a rather large variety of harmful grasses from drug-dealers. Sometimes I wonder too. I’ve only ever stolen something once. Twice then. OK! I’ve stolen eight times! Where else am I supposed to get money from (not including vulnerable children’s purses)? But, I’ve been thinking… Maybe, just maybe, it would be a slight possibility – just a slight one – that I could consider starting afresh. By ‘afresh’ I mean a new life in which I give up all my addictions, that are slowly rotting my bones, and make lasting friendships, that won’t break. Ever.









