Dennis Richards: Tour’s lesson is that languages can help Yorkshire race ahead

THE great writer P.G. Wodehouse said it all in his own inimitable way: “Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique in Cannes, there had crept, that shifty hang dog look which announces that an English man is about to speak French.”
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Three-quarters of a century on and things can hardly be said to have improved. The recent A-level results revealed again the full horror of our pathetic record in Modern Languages. Entries have dropped in calamitous fashion in recent years. In German, only 1,701 boys actually did the exam – as oppose to 13,000 in Media Studies. And of the 1701, only 0.4 per cent got an A*.

By my calculations, that means seven boys in the entire country achieved the top grade in German. You can lay a bet on the fact that some of them were called Helmut, Hans or Heinrich.

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Things were not much better in French where 35 boys reached the summit. It doesn’t seem much to show for the massive investment schools are making into modern foreign languages.

There are obvious reasons why nothing much has changed in 100 years. English is the dominant language in the worlds of business, sport and fashion and European countries are fighting the opposite battle to us. The encroachment of English into the French language is causing academicians in France enormous angst. In short, in Europe, English is “cool”, especially among the young. Nor does the language of Voltaire, Rousseau and Flaubert necessarily appeal to Northern tribes like us.

Teaching French in Grimethorpe, of Colliery Band Fame, in the early 1970s could be described as a triumph of hope over experience. For children, who regarded a trip to Barnsley as an exciting day out, and for whom Wakefield was a foreign country, Paris might as well have been the other side of the moon.

Anyway Blackpool had a perfectly good tower and who needed an eternal flame at the Arc de Triomphe when there was a perfectly acceptable alternative at the Coalite works at the end of the road. Parochial was too broad a description. And was there really a council estate called “Dodge City” and a fish and chip shop which proudly announced “In Cod we trust?” But the pits were all open and the Colliery Band was conquering the world. “Grimey” as the locals affectionately, if somewhat ironically called it, was at this time most definitely not “brassed off” – that fame, or notoriety more like, would come later.

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Applying for a post at the newly named Willowgarth High School, it was easy to conjure up a vision of leafy lanes and rolling hills. There were hills all right. “And did the countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded hills?”. Not on these hills it didn’t. Those feet in ancient time probably didn’t walk on Grimey’s slag heaps.

As Brierley and Grimethorpe Secondary Modern, the school had known its place. The name said it all. It was the local grammar schools that gave us Geoff Boycott, Sir Michael Parkinson, Brian Glover of Kes fame, Martyn Moxon and a host of academics. If you went to the Sec Mod you were destined either for the pit or the knickers factory at Cudworth. No prizes for guessing which gender went where. Girls knew their place. The knickers factory belonged to S.R. Gent no less. Enough said. Comprehensive schools, for all their many faults, began to prise open the exit doors from the pits and even from Grimey itself for more than just a tiny minority. The modern-day version of the school has built on the hopes and dreams of the past, splendidly and proudly served its community through thick and thin, and remains the gateway to the wider world.

The interview for the new French job broke every equal opportunities rule in the book. Two candidates bothered to turn up. A young lady in the 1970s could be deemed unwise to wear an engagement ring when facing Grimey governors of that era. “When will you be thinking of starting a family then, lass?” appeared to be the focus of their interest.

There was little interest as to whether they were appointing someone to teach French, German or Swahili. “Speaking foreign” pretty much summed it up. Since the hapless young lady candidate spoke English with a Home Counties accent, she “spoke foreign” twice over.

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I got the job. I would probably have 
got it had a turned up for the 
interview in beach shorts and swimming goggles.

So is there any hope? Well, yes there is, and ironically it can start in Yorkshire.

Welcome to Yorkshire’s astonishing coup in securing Le Grand Départ of the Tour de France for God’s own county next year could be a catalyst.

Quite rightly we are discussing legacy in terms of healthy living and of more people cycling. But, in the end, it’s the Tour de France. And you can’t really, in spite of our best efforts, have France without French.

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So where will the inspiration come from? Well in my humble view, Sir Bradley Wiggins deserves his knighthood, not so much but because he can pedal a bike better than most, but because he can give a press conference in perfectly acceptable French.

And if the boy from Wigan can do it, most of us can. The Europeans will love us for it, as they do Sir Bradley, and will be more ready to do business with us. Jonny Wilkinson, rugby’s World Cup hero of 10 years ago, has pulled off the same feat in Toulon, Gareth Bale will succeed in Spain only if he gets to grips with Spanish.

Even Welcome to Yorkshire supremo Gary Verity spoke at the Tour launch on Wednesday in French.

I dare say all of them would struggle with the ridiculous written emphasis in the current A-level exam, but they have shown the way forward for the examination boards.

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Let us have less obsession with written grammar and more with spoken communication. There would be no greater legacy from Le Grand Départ.

*Dennis Richards OBE was headteacher at St Aidans CE High School in Harrogate for 23 years until January. He is now a French language assistant at St John Fisher Catholic High School in Harrogate.

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