Classroom no place for jargon jungle UK Education Secretary Michael Gove argues that language must be "concise, polite and precise." MICHAEL Gove, the UK Education Secretary, has had enough of education jargon and sloppy expression. In a memorandum to his department, Gove argues that, especially when communicating with parents and the public, language must be "concise, polite and precise." Gove also argues that the best way to improve expression and master language is to read the literary works of great English authors such as George Eliot, Jane Austen and George Orwell. And it's not just England; Australian education also has its fair share of edubabble and poorly written expression. Bureaucrats talk about holistic, negotiated goal-setting; learning to read is described as adopting a critical, social-constructivist framework where students are introduced to multi-modal and interactive texts. Teachers no longer teach; they facilitate and become guides by the side. Children are described as knowledge navigators or digital natives, and learning is about being future-oriented and socially critical. With the advent of open classrooms, mixed-ability teaching and personalised learning, the problem for parents is that it is getting more difficult to work out what is actually happening at school and whether their children are passing or failing. Children are no longer ranked in the class or marked out of 10; instead, they are placed on a developmental continuum and failing is described as deferred success. When planning lessons, teachers are told to use scaffolding and to be sensitive to what is described as a child's zone of proximal development. It's time to end the jargon, confusing language and poorly structured expression. As argued by Gove, education bureaucrats and teachers need to get honest with parents, simplify how they communicate and stop using vague and confusing edubabble. Teachers should be called teachers, children should be described as pupils or students, and open, digitalised, interactive learning spaces should return to being described as classrooms. When it comes to using better language, Orwell's Politics and the English Language is a good place to start. Orwell argues that sloppy and imprecise language hides confused and faddish thinking and that we all must be involved "in the fight against bad English." Instead of writing for effect and trying to impress, Orwell also argues that the challenge is to communicate directly and simply, and recommends never using a jargon word when an everyday English word will do. The UK Education Secretary is also correct about the importance of the classics. Given the prevalence of texting, Twitter and acronyms like OMG, LOL and SUX, good literature is one of the few remaining places where language is used poetically and with precision. At a time when it's easy for anyone with access to the internet to set up a blog and start pouring forth, it's also true that most of the language we are now surrounded by is second-rate and bland. Reciting and listening to poetry, ballads and rhymes teaches about the musical quality of language and the importance of rhythm and metre. Reading authors such as Patrick White, David Malouf and Christina Stead shows how writers can craft language with sensitivity and care. While now considered old fashioned, it's also important to rediscover the importance of being able to parse a sentence. Winston Churchill, England's war-time prime minister, is renowned for his powerful speeches and his Nobel Prize-winning writing. When explaining his success, Churchill talked about the fact that one of the best things he was taught at school was how to break down a sentence into its parts - including subject, predicate, verb, noun, phrase and clause. A skill long since lost because it is no longer taught in schools because of fads such as whole language, where children are told to look and guess, and where being creative is considered more important that learning correct grammar and syntax. It's a truism that sloppy expression and jargon disguise half-baked and poorly thought-through ideas. The alternative, while often frustrating and not always successful, is to use language with clarity and precision. Dr Kevin Donnelly is the director of the Education Standards Institute and author of Educating your child: it's not rocket science