Quality English
Jeff Farrow
"Quality" has been hijacked by Madison Avenue and extorted and demeaned. The
word itself has lost the impact it once had.
The word has gotten a bad rap. In our cynical world, people are contemptuous of
inferior goods and services that shamelessly use "quality" as a crutch to
bolster or mask shoddy products.
The other night I nearly tripped over something lying prone across the sidewalk
down on Skid Row. Sure enough, it was Quality, now only a spectre of its former
self, now only a fuzzy vague all-used-up Madison Avenue intensifier.
Jeff Farrow
Los Angeles
Paul Stevens wrote:
> I'm a high school English/History teacher. Our industrial union runs
> campaigns seeking to achieve 'Quality Education' and our superiors are
> always urging us to achieve 'Quality teaching' and 'Quality outcomes'.
>
> Each time I hear this usage my haclkes rise (daily! I have some very
> overworked hackles), because to me inner ear this usage of 'quality'
> connotes the very opposite of what it seeks to convey: it smacks of the
> language of cheap advertising ('Quality Used Cars at Auto Alley!', 'Quality
> Furnishings!' and so on.
>
> The complete O.E.D. does not even mention such usage so I presume it's
> sprung up fairly recently.
>
> Is my judgement astray here? Any comments would be welcome.
>
> Paul Stevens
>
> stevoUN...@acay.com.au
Paul Stevens
baldycotton
>campaigns seeking to achieve 'Quality Education' and our superiors are
>always urging us to achieve 'Quality teaching' and 'Quality outcomes'.
>Is my judgement astray here?
No, it's not. The word is much over-used and abused.
Quality post, Paul.
Dave
Kaye L. Maserang
hi-jacked by the advertising community, but it has also lost the ability to
convey shades of meaning, such as good, mediocre, and poor. "Quality" is a
noun which should be preceded by a qualifying adjective. Or else, it should
be used in its pure sense, as in this sentence: "Sanded wood has the quality
of smoothness."
From Kaye at mase...@flash.net.
Paul Stevens <st...@acay.com.au> wrote in message
news:37be1...@stargate.acay.com.au...
I'm a high school English/History teacher. Our industrial union runs
campaigns seeking to achieve 'Quality Education' and our superiors are
always urging us to achieve 'Quality teaching' and 'Quality outcomes'.
Each time I hear this usage my haclkes rise (daily! I have some very
Bob Cunningham
<mase...@flash.net> said:
>Your judgment is right on the mark. Not only has the word "quality" been
>hi-jacked by the advertising community, but it has also lost the ability to
>convey shades of meaning, such as good, mediocre, and poor. "Quality" is a
>noun which should be preceded by a qualifying adjective. Or else, it should
>be used in its pure sense, as in this sentence: "Sanded wood has the quality
>of smoothness."
[ . . . ]
>The complete O.E.D. does not even mention such usage so I presume it's
>sprung up fairly recently.
>Is my judgement astray here? Any comments would be welcome.
You might find it interesting to read the fairly extensive comments on
this subject that are in an excerpt from Mark Israel's AUE FAQ at:
<http://home.earthlink.net/~exw6sxq/excerpts/fxqualit.html>.
Paul Stevens
Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:37c16466....@news.earthlink.net...
Responses to this topic suggets that there is a debatable issue here, but
most seem to favour the view that 'Quality Education' is inappropriate in
that it does evoke the colloquial if not vulgar usage of cheap
advertisements.
Some pointed out modern dictionary definitions that indicated an adjectival
use of quality=excellent, and I was already familiar with these. These are
simply indicating meaning without regard to appropriate register.
The link provided by Bob Cunningham is very helpful, and encourages me to
mount a case contra 'quality', in a letter to the NSW Teacher's Federation
journal "Education".
Thanks for the help!
Paul Stevens
>
Fraser Hannah
<st...@acay.com.au> wrote:
> I'm a high school English/History teacher. Our industrial union runs
> campaigns seeking to achieve 'Quality Education' and our superiors are
> always urging us to achieve 'Quality teaching' and 'Quality outcomes'.
>
> Each time I hear this usage my haclkes rise (daily! I have some very
> overworked hackles), because to me inner ear this usage of 'quality'
> connotes the very opposite of what it seeks to convey: it smacks of the
> language of cheap advertising ('Quality Used Cars at Auto Alley!', 'Quality
> Furnishings!' and so on.
>
> The complete O.E.D. does not even mention such usage so I presume it's
> sprung up fairly recently.
I have a couple of potentially useful thoughts about where this has come
from...they're probably both partially true, overlapping and reinforcing.
1. There was, a number of years ago, a movement in business management
called TQM - Total Quality Management. I have really no idea about the
details, but it was, as I understand, an administrative philosophy of some
sort.
2. The phrase "Good Quality Teaching" - which I suspect is what the
teaching union is trying to achieve - perhaps sounds as if it's modified by
"coordinate adjectives" that is, as if two first words both modify
"teaching". For example: in the expression "an old, bald man" , you could
switch them around and take one of them out ("a bald, old man"; "an old
man") and it would still work.
But in the expression "A new French wine" the two adjectives cannot be
reversed. (And there's no comma in there - did you notice?) Even more so
along the same lines: "Horribly overweight cat" - the first word actually
modifies the second. It just wouldn't make sense at ALL to switch it.
Okay, so here's the point. "Good Quality Teaching" sounds like "Good,
Quality Teaching". Like you might say "Good, Old-Fashioned Teaching" or
perhaps "Good, firm fruit". So if you make that mistake, you might believe
that the first adjective (or hm, is it an adverb - doesn't matter) was
redundant. And perhaps people dropped it because of that mistake, needing
perhaps (now I'm speculating wildly here) to save space when advertising?
Perhaps, in fact, the guy who wrote TQM made that mistake...?
Fraser Hannah
fr...@home.com
--------------
Victoria Linguistic Consulting
Victoria, BC Canada
Simplification, Grammatical Diagramming, Semantic Analysis
and other Linguistic Services in English.
Jonathan Graham Harston
It's like when I hear people say things like:
"He's got an attitute"
Yes, what sort of attitude?
--
Cllr Jonathan Harston <j...@arcade.demon.co.uk>
http://www.libdems.force9.co.uk/usr/jgh/
Office IT Administrator
Councillor for Walkley Ward, Sheffield City Council
Paul Stevens
state school system where we are in the midst of an era of rampant faddism
which includes the adoption (often later quietly discarded) of TQM.
To the degree that my daughter's report card from such a school informed me
that she had 'exceeded her client's expectations in English composition'.
The client, I suppose, was her English teacher, who should have been
stripped of epaulettes, rank insignia and buttons for such barbarism. TQM,
however appropriate in industry, seems to me totally inappropriate for
education.
But we have a fad a minute in our schools: Vertically unitised curriculum,
authentic assessment, middleschool integrated curriculum, 4Mat, the Canter
system, the 'I Can' system, the Glasser system, Controlled reality Something
Therapy - - you name it, we have to do it. Only to replace it next year with
the next Fad. Meanwhile the students desert in droves to private schools.
And our unions and bosses exhort us to practice 'Quality teaching'!
Deckchairs on the Titanic....
Paul Stevens
Fraser Hannah <fha...@smus.bc.ca> wrote in message
news:ettw3.142629$U42.3...@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
Paul Stevens
>
> <http://home.earthlink.net/~exw6sxq/excerpts/fxqualit.html>.
Paul Stevens
a long-time Sheffield expatriate
Jonathan Graham Harston <j...@libdems.force9.co.uk> wrote in message
news:37C28F35...@libdems.force9.co.uk...
> Fraser Hannah wrote:
> > <st...@acay.com.au> wrote:
> > > always urging us to achieve 'Quality teaching' and 'Quality
>