Concrete Poetry

25 years ago I worked for the Department of Education and Science (DES), and with the Scottish Education Department (SED) and the Programme on Educational Building (PEB) at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Most of these acronyms have been updated and relaunched with different initials.

It is easy to reel them off with a sense of irony, but there is real force in these abbreviations when they are allied to significant values. Shorthand is powerful when it is used to convey complex messages – a kind of concrete poetry of policy.

But there can also be an unearned familiarity which convinces us that we know what something means when all we really know is how to abbreviate it.

CfE is not the same as Curriculum for Excellence. SFT is not the same as the Scottish Futures Trust. By saying the words we remind ourselves what they are about.