Nursery/Reception and Pupil/Student {lowered from: University / College / School]

[Joel S. Berson]

At 1/22/2010 06:26 AM, Damien Hall wrote:
>One or two replies to what people said yesterday:
>
>... I believe it's true that in law here children
>have to be educated from the beginning of the term after their fourth
>birthday (certainly, you enter the system at age 4). Common names for the
>first two years of schooling seem to be 'Nursery (class)' (you may of
>course not do a whole year of that if you are born late in the school year)
>and then 'Reception'

I'm disappointed that it's not "Lower Nursery" and "Upper Nursery".

>- There's also a BrE split in usage for the person in education before 18
>and after it. Where the dividing-line is is fuzzy but, essentially, the
>only unambiguous meaning of 'student' is someone in education over 18. For
>people under 18 (people 'at school' in the BrE sense), 'pupil' can be used.
>Schools may choose to refer to the older children there (say from 11 on up)
>as 'students', in order to show them respect by using a less juvenile term,
>but it would sound strange (to me at least) to refer to anyone under 11 as
>a 'student'. Those are always 'pupils'.

In other words, schoolchildren under 18 are insufficiently formed to
learn on their own (student: 1. A person who is engaged in or
addicted to study), but have to be directed by others (pupil: 2. a. A
person who is being taught by another).  But some schools have
lowered the age of respect to 11.  :-)

Joel

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