Introduction
NL Clay’s Think and Speak (1929) was an unusual collection of lessons on oral composition. It was aimed at pupils in their first year of secondary school (that is, aged twelve) and was a bold implementation of the child-centred education encouraged by the Fisher Act of 1918.
THINK and Speak was the title of NL Clay’s first textbook, published in 1929. It was daring experiment in what was then quite a new idea, child-centred education, in which the teacher stepped back and encouraged the class to take ownership of the lesson. Textbooks were banished: the raw materials of the lesson were to be the children’s own experiences. The focus was on getting them to think about what they had observed around them, and then put it into speech whether realistic or imaginative.
The section named Think and Speak on Clay Lane is inspired by the kind of exercises Clay gave to his pupils in Think and Speak and in his later textbooks too. Although these were more formal (perhaps because in several cases they had been commissioned as preparation for State examinations) they kept much of the character of his first adventure. Grammatical terms were kept to a minimum — it is difficult to do without them altogether — and exercises continued to draw on a pupil’s own powers of observation and imagination.
As a result, these exercises rarely have a ‘right answer’. Answers need to be right in terms of spelling, grammar and punctuation, and they need to use words effectively, otherwise communication will be laboured or miscarry altogether; but these are not conventional gap-fill exercises where the pupil is expected to read the teacher’s mind. It is essential that we do not teach children or adults to be people-pleasers, craving the approval of Authority and thinking they have reached safety when they win it. The aim is to help people in the complex but rewarding task of transferring ideas and images from their mind to another mind. That requires us to think something of our own, and then put it into words that are suitable to what we want to say, and suitable to our audience.
All Clay’s classroom textbooks were designed to minimise ‘teacher talking time’. “No, your master is not answering any questions” he told the class in Think and Speak — “this is your work, just as this is your lesson.” Nonetheless, I have added suggested vocabulary and example solutions. If you need any further help, please get in touch with me: see Email Support.
Please note that although the exercises in this section are inspired by Clay’s books, they are not those books themselves.