My wife has just pointed me to a clip of the BMX Freestyle event at the Olympics wondering if our five-year old grandson, experiencing his first Olympics and in the early stages of riding his bike, might think it looks like a fun thing to try.
Children of all ages and backgrounds will be inspired by what they see; many will go on to take up a new sport, and some will no doubt excel in time and get to compete in some future games.
That has been made a little easier by an innovation on the Olympic Games website, and it’s an innovation colleges should learn from.
When I chaired the board of my local college, I was always invited to our annual celebration of achievement, where we recognised our students’ good work.
It clearly meant a great deal to them. Many would never have been recognised for anything they’d done before, and most brought family members to share their success. I particularly remember one young woman who thanked her mum for flying all the way from her home in Ghana to be there.
So I was embarrassed when, all too often, the staff member announcing names stumbled over the pronunciation. I’m talking about a college in London, so we had students whose heritage spanned the globe and whose names were often challenging to pronounce, even for our multicultural staff.
Those staff were conscientious, good people, but we were letting our students down at what should have been a big moment for them.
I’ve experienced it myself. I was introduced at a huge event in Oregon once as “our most travelled guest this evening, Mr Ay-ane Mackinnon”.
I laughed. I’m used to it and I’ve had plenty success in my life, so it washes over me. But my own experience has made me more sensitive to the fact that names are so often said wrong. Typically, of course, they are the names that originate outside the historic mainstream of British society.
Faced with the same problem, US presidential candidate Kamala Harris found a rather elegant solution. She posted a video on social media of children having a crack, and teaching them and viewers the right way to say her first name.
The fact that many accept as normal that their name gets mangled is no excuse
But for many college students the experience is very different; the fact that many would just accept as normal that their name gets mangled is no excuse. We should get it right.
After all, had their teachers, tutors and support staff not done this over the past two years, it’s unlikely they’d want to celebrate anything with us. As college leaders, we share that responsibility – not just in times of triumph but in their challenging moments too.
When I first raised the question, colleagues were sympathetic but worried. “How can we be sure to get their names right, Iain?”
“Ask the students”, I said. “They’ll know how to pronounce their own names.”
And that’s exactly what the Paris Olympic authorities have done, asking each athlete to pronounce their own names and including the recording on their profile page.
Take Farida Abaroge, for example. She’s a 1500m runner with the Refugee Olympic Team, originally from Ethiopia and now living in France. “Farida” looks pretty straightforward to pronounce – though she puts more emphasis on the final syllable than a Brit would typically do. And “Abaroge”? Where does the stress go? Click the button by her name and you get the authoritative answer.
From her profile, it looks unlikely that Farida will appear on the rostrum this time round. (She came 62nd in the world cross country championships in Belgrade earlier this year.). So commentators probably won’t have to worry about pronouncing her name. But it’s simple respect, isn’t it?
I hope Farida stood just a little taller knowing that someone had troubled to ask her to record her own name for the website so people would get it right.
I hope our students stood just a little taller at our achievement celebration knowing that the announcer had taken the trouble to get their name right.
And I know it can only make it easier for every five-year-old watching to imagine their name one day being celebrated – whether their success is in BMX or BTECs.
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