Why Do I Need a Teacher When I’ve Got Google

classrooms but until ten o’clock at night too and at weekends. 4 The researchers’ main concern was your ‘vocal folds tissue’, which is on the end of the vibrations from your speech in the same way your hand is on the end of vibrations from a ‘jackhammer’. Just how much they can safely withstand is what the researchers were trying to understand in order to identify ‘safety criteria based on genetic disposition to vocal injury, degree of training in economic voice use, accumulated dose of vibration in a typical work day, and the amount of recovery available at night and on weekends’.
    In looking at the speech patterns of the volunteers they did not assess
what
was spoken, but
how
, using a special voice ‘dosimeter’ to record and analyse features such as the pitch, tone and loudness of the teacher’s voice.This was something they were able to do a staggering 33 times per second over a 14-day period. This produced a ‘voice dosimetry databank’ of 20 million samples, the analysis of which threw up some interesting (how dare you say unsurprising!?) facts. For example, did you know that female teachers speak more than their male counterparts? Not only did they use their voices 10 per cent more when teaching, they used them 7 per cent more when
not
teaching. (I suppose one argument is, if we had done what they told us to do the first time they wouldn’t have to.) The research also showed that female teachers speak louder at work than the male teachers. ‘These results may indicate an underlying reason for female teachers’ increased voice problems’, according to Eric Hunter, deputy director of the NCVS (and bear in mind that teachers as a whole are 32 times more likely to experience voice problems than non-teachers according to one study). 5
    Joking apart, the neuroscience points to the female propensity for language both from an evolutionary point of view, where the neurological imperative in the young female brain is to build a community network through language, and also from a health and well-being point of view. In the words of Louann Brizendine, author of
The Female Brain
:
    Connecting through talking activates the pleasure side in a girl’s brain … a major dopamine and oxytocin rush which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm.
    (Louann Brizendine,
The London Paper
, 13/09/06)
    What the research showed too was that, sex differences apart, teachers are a fairly verbose group and they’re not particularly quiet about it. Not only did all teachers speak about 50 per cent more when they were at work than elsewhere, what they said was louder and in a pitch that was ‘trending upwards throughout the day’. And when they got home they continued talking for what the researchers describe as ‘significant amounts of time’.
    To save our ‘vocal folds tissue’ and everyone else’s ears, perhaps it is worth trying our best to adhere to six language rules suggested by George Orwell in
Politics and the English Language
, (especially rule number one which sounds very much like a ‘no cliché’ rule to me):
    Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word when a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive when you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
    (Orwell 2000)
    I went on a course once led by NLP founder Richard Bandler and hypnotist Paul McKenna where they described the way in which your speech ‘bathed people in sound’. This is a nice way of thinking about it as you consider the effects your voice may be having on yourself and others. Remember, your voice is a tool, not just simply a means of getting across a message, but a way to change people’s thinking and their behaviours. Use it wisely. Talking of which, here is a question for you:
    Q: Why do teachers shout at children?
    A: Because they can.
    This is a thought that struck me during my teacher training when I observed a teacher shouting loudly, inches from the face of a year eight boy on the way into assembly one morning. Why do we do it to ourselves, let alone them? Research from Canada on nearly 400 children over a seven-year period starting in kindergarten, found that for some children, ‘verbal abuse