11 August to 18 August

Not all stories are equal

Recently, I was intrigued by a story I encountered during a conference in the UK. Told powerfully and effectively by a group of drama students, it concerned the NEETs (young people Not in Education, Employment or Training). 'What is this preoccupation with labels by the media, policy-makers and social commentators?' I wondered. I was still pondering this question as I returned home to find the results of my student evaluations.

Students in my university evaluate their teachers on a range of criteria, and administrators then rank them relative to other faculty members. A single number can thus allow teachers to gauge their popularity by comparison to other teaching staff. In effect this means that students' stories about their teachers and their teaching, are reduced to a number, a label. Thinking back to the story with which I began, I thought about how the NEETs' stories are reduced to the acronym by which they are labelled. Labels minimize and confine, but in essence they are simply mini-narratives, designed to manage and control. I like stories and storytelling, but we must hold them to account, asking 'Whose story is being told here? Whose voice is being heard?' Not all stories are equal.

Christine Savvidou, EdD, Lecturer, Department of Languages, University of Nicosia, Cyprus.  savvidou.c@unic.ac.cy