Zetes craves authenticity and is allergic to its lack. The language of the modern school reflects this. [WYWIAD]

Dr. Sebastian Surendra: Certainly Heraclitus, which means very liquid. Language has been changing in an extremely dynamic way in recent decades and, from the perspective of young people, it is not a wind of change, but a real hurricane. Teenagers spend a lot of time on social media, they are both recipients of content and its creators. In addition, they play a variety of games on consoles and watch films and series on streaming platforms. All of this has a strong impact on their language, because a given space has its own specificity, both in lexical terms and, for example, in terms of order. I mention the latter not by chance, because English plays an important role in the life of a Polish teenager. I have often heard that students regret not being able to take their final Polish exams in… English. Linguistic thinking “in English” is completely natural for them. In fact, we could speak of youth languages, and not of one language, because there are many bubbles in which young people live and they are completely different – which has a significant impact on linguistic differences.

Dr. Sebastian Surendra: Communication on social media is all about brevity, so the number of abbreviations and acronyms is no surprise. However, many forms, both full words and abbreviations, have something of a musical star in them: they are intense but brief. Certain words gain high frequency for a moment, and after a while – for example, as a result of changes in the content watched by teenagers on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube – they become a marginal phenomenon.

Dr. Sebastian Surendra: Indeed. However, this is not due to their incompetence or laziness. The point is that if the core curriculum changes every year, many teachers teaches more than one subject, sometimes in different institutions, and there is a lot of bureaucracy, the life of teachers is not easy. Preparing for a lesson will take a lot of time for an ambitious teacher, so it is not easy to find additional resources to expand communication skills. At the same time, it is impossible to learn effectively without them. And the circle closes.

Dr. Sebastian Surendra: An open mind is a necessity, some institutional help to teacher then in this matter it would be worth its weight in gold. However, it is often not worth a penny. Polish universities still consist largely of teachers of theory rather than students of practice. Pedagogical specializations must be absolutely practice-oriented. Unfortunately, this varies. Schools they also tend not to provide such training to teachers. And if there is, the quality also varies – how many training courses are held “for training”, that is, sign in the appropriate field.

Dr. Sebastian Surendra: Teachers should seek interpretive communities with students – I would even consider it his duty. But he must remember that the search for common experiences (at various levels, for example, musical, literary) should be based on the power of passion, and not on the attempt to forcibly fit into someone. From a practical point of view, this is the worst conformism: zero benefits, huge losses. I do not need to mention the most important ethical perspective based on the value of honesty. A teacher should never approach a language thoughtlessly.

Dr. Sebastian Surendra: The desire to learn the language of young people means a respectable open-mindedness, but the “automatic” use of words or phrases is an open path to a lack of respect for the teacher’s voice. For example: if teacher If you are going to learn the results of one of the most overrated referendums in Poland, the Youth Word of the Year, and you want to ask your students about specific words, thus starting a discussion about the language, that is great. However, if you start inserting these words into your statements on your own, without any manner, it will seem funny (and we know that this is not the same as funny). First – because it will seem insincere, and second – because it may turn out that in real linguistic life a certain word hardly occurs or had its best moment several years earlier. If a teacher watches, for example, a series and knows that some of the class is a big fan of this production, such cultural (pop) references will be an option worth introducing. With one caveat: teacher he cannot imitate what he has heard, because epigone is not an unbearable lightness of being, but a grave sin of communication in speaking to a young person. In “The Little Prince” there is an extremely wise phrase: “All adults were once children, but few remember it.” The rule: “An adult is an adult and it is worth remembering” can be a complement and not just the opposite. What I mean is that a teacher must, as far as possible, know the language of his students, he must absolutely want to understand them and be understood, but this must have hands and feet, that is, an adult must want to understand the specificity of the language of a 10 or 15 year old child, but under no circumstances try to pretend to be a 10 or 15 year old child.. It is also worth following the old but true rule: “Know the proportion, my lord”. It may happen that teacher he will say some text that will win the approval of the class. Let your hand protect him and repeat the same statement in the same group based on this successful communication. Such secondness will inevitably find not a literary “revenge”, but the most real students, that is, pity.

Dr. Sebastian Surendra: The teacher must bear in mind that language, not only of young people, changes very quickly and, as I have already mentioned, is extremely heterogeneous.. Talking to everyone? To paraphrase the classic: “Abandon, teacherseveryone waits in this dimension. student It should be a rule implemented in life, not a dead theory, so I consider this diversity of communication something positive.

Dr. Sebastian Surendra: There are situations where artificial intelligence can successfully replace humans, but the artificiality of language is immediately exposed by everyone. To avoid a revealing scene – let’s face it, an embarrassing one for everyone – one must do one simple and at the same time difficult thing: do not pretend to be anyone, do not imitate anyone. There was only one Professor Pimko under Gombrowicz, but this kind of thinking, speaking and behaving still occurs today. Perhaps not in such a grotesque form, but with the same effect. Probably even worse, because the Zets especially crave authenticity and react allergically to its lack.