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1984

Nineteen Eighty-Four (also titled 1984), by George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair), is an English dystopian novel published in 1949, about life in a dictatorship as lived by Winston Smith, an intellectual worker at the Ministry of Truth, and his degradation when he runs afoul of the totalitarian government of Oceania, the state in which he lives in the year 1984.

The novel's title, its terms and its language (Newspeak), and its author's surname are bywords for personal privacy lost to national state security. The adjective "Orwellian" denotes totalitarian action and organisation; the phrase: Big Brother is Watching You connotes pervasive, invasive surveillance. Doublethink is the act of simultaneously and fervently holding two mutually contradictory beliefs. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

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Lesson One: No Orwellian Language

Submitted by fatima on Sat, 03/01/2008 - 19:29.

Lesson one: no Orwellian language. By Mike Baker. From the BBC Report

An insightful speaker raised a massive cheer from the audience at an education conference this week. No, he had not called for a doubling of teachers' pay, the abolition of national tests, or even a ban on lumpy custard in school canteens. No, his rallying cry was much simpler and involves no complex administrative changes or financial costs.

Yet it went to the heart of what education is about.

He urged everyone to stop talking about "delivery" in education and to return to talking about "teaching".

The speaker was Professor Richard Pring, of Oxford University, and he was not just being fussy about the use of language.

His point was that education has been taken over by an "Orwellian language" which has started to control the way we think and act.

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