Oracy?

Waking very late this morning after losing a lot of sleep the previous night, watching the drama across the pond I listened to the radio as I often do in the morning.
The snippets of news I picked up whilst I was dressing were all disturbing...stories of the Donald's well known aversion to taking advice from anyone....
Here at home I kept hearing about a new idea to give children confidence in school...
Lessons in "Oracy"
Oracy? Is this a new word? I take it to mean being able to orate!
This took me back thirty years to when my husband David was a judge in a competition organised every year by the English Speaking Union.
I often went with him and there were teams of three, a chairman, a speaker and someone to move the vote of thanks!
As many as five of these were held at any one time and it was regarded as a great boost to morale as well as a confidence booster!
I heard some wonderful orations....
Has this competition gone the way of all the other good things? It was certainly an incentive to achieve literacy in oration in schools around Essex.
It was being talked about this morning as though it was an entirely new idea.....but these memories go back to the eighties and nineties...
I would hate to think it had been abandoned in all the education "improvements " perpetrated by successive governments!u



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