pupils and students

Sonst musst Du wohl die "grades" nennen ...
... oder die Schulform : highschool and college students ... oder so ...

in den USA sind alle 'students', 'pupils' sagt man nicht.

Wie lautet denn der Satz? *seufz*

Tante G. kennt ein paar Stellen, in denen sie so genannt werden, darunter die altehrwürdige NYTimes :
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=...

"pupils" sagt man schon in den USA für "Schüler".

Auch: schoolkids

Manchmal auch: students

"students" sagt man für "Studenten" oder "college kids/students" / "university students".

high school and college students
etc.

Not 'pupils,' that's seldom used nowadays in AE except in a few contexts, and it makes no sense to use it with 'and students,' that would be redundant.

no me bré, ich rede aus Erfahrung ;)

Siehe auch: AE for 'pupil'

http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140--693...

"Family FUNdamentals Pre K-3 Learning Activities"

"For students, summer is a time for fun and play. It is also the time when children’s learning slides. Research (Brace, 2002a) shows that during the summer students forget many of the reading and math skills learned during the school year. This "summer slide" requires schools and teachers to spend valuable time during the next school year helping students "re-learn" lost skills, and it greatly reduces the time available to master new skills and subjects."

Disagree with #4, agree with #5. Students is the typical AE term for learners from about age 4 on up. See the quote from the Michigan Department of Education site, which doesn't even use "pupil" for variation.

The scores on the latest federal math and reading tests, administered this year to pupils in the fourth and eighth grades nationwide, showed only minor changes. In math, the average fourth-grade score was 241 on a scale of 500, up from 240 in 2009, when the last federal math and reading results were released.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/education/u...
(oops, same link as no me bre)

A school nurse can help younger pupils with regular insulin injections.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/07/healt...
(see caption)

I think it would be misleading to suggest that the term "pupils" is seldom used nowadays in the USA. Not in my experience. ;-)

There's no context in the OP, by the way.

There's no context in the OP, by the way. - as noted by Gibson in #2.

In my experience as an educator, no one refers to high schoolers as "pupils"; they are "students".

Did anyone bother to actually read the NY Times article?
-"Student": some form of the word appears in the article 5 times
-"Pupil": some form of the word appears in the article 1 time
With a 5:1 ratio in the article adduced to prove the use of "pupil", I think it's clear which word is more common (student).

The LA Times article uses the word "pupils" in a caption but "students" in the main article. Space is at a premium in newspaper articles, so I can think of two compelling reasons to use the rarer word in the caption:
1. Considerations of space ("students" is a longer word and therefore takes up more space)
2. Variety

Both articles deal with primarily elementary school students (with one mention of 8th grade - i.e. middle school). That accords with my experience: "pupil" is considerably rarer than "student" and even then used solely for lower grades. "Pupil" is never used for high school students.

Disclaimer: This is my experience with West Coast AE.

I support hm -- us's comments about the redundancy of "pupils and students" if - as seems likely without further context - the discussion is about high school and college students. "High school and college students" is by far the more common (indeed the sole) collocation I have heard at the high school where I work, among my colleagues at other schools, and at all of the professional education conventions, workshops and conferences I have attended. The use of "pupils" would stand out because of its rarity in these contexts.

Cryme, I would genuinely be interested in knowing what US context (i.e. your experience) contains "pupil" as common, especially for high school.

Agreed. both are students.

@hm-us , just for some clarification, "school" can mean college also. (Both a 5-year old and a 21-year old can be asked, "Where do you go to school?")


If you want to be specific while talking about both groups of students, you could say "k-12 and college students." But there are many variations on this.

Robert, for all we know, Anna just wants to know if there is an alternative for "Schüler" besides "students", and there is, in my humble opinion. "pupils" is not uncommon to me. Nothing more, nothing less. Anna can research further, with the information given here. In certain contexts, one would distinguish. ;-)

Should "pupil" be so uncommon, then maybe it needs to be marked so on Leo?:
Siehe Wörterbuch: schueler

Stay away from #4, #8 and #11 if you want to use standard AE.

Suit yourself. I find cryme's contributions to offer negative value added as to AE on a regular basis.

(I raise my hat isn't AE)

AnnaUK, maybe you, along with cryme, should share with the rest of us your language backgrounds, so we can better judge how to respond to your queries and posts. For example, I cannot for the best of me determine cryme's language background. Maybe some sort of immigrant who has lived in the US for a brief period? How about you? What is your connection to the UK?

Cryme, "pupil" is an alternative to "student" only for the lower grades. Simply to state that there is an alternative does not sufficiently help anyone. It is like asking - with fewer alternatives, of course - if there is another term for a herd of animals. Of course there are many terms for groups of animals: flock, parliament, murder, mischief, pride, bevy, etc. To withhold the additional information that each of those is intended for a particular kind of animal is itself misleading. Same with "pupil".

I repeat my earlier assertion. At the high school level the best term is "student"; "pupil" is not used at the high school level. There is, however, one other alternative: "high schooler".

Again, my experience is with high school, high school teachers and the public school community on the West Coast. I'm still interested in knowing where "pupil" is not uncommon. Is it the East Coast? Are you in elementary education? There are sometimes regional differences in AE, and as I pointed out, "pupil" does occur in contexts related to elementary schools, just not as frequently as "student".

Edit: Jurist, apparently cryme and Anna UK are native speakers of none of the languages listed since both profiles have "nein" next to all of them.

@cryme #11: 'pupil' is used in BE, so it should be in LEO, but you're right, maybe it should be marked 'chiefly BE'.

AnnaUK is almost certainly German. I've already asked her to maybe change her nick as it sends the wrong signal, but than again, nobody would seriously think she's an Engish native speaker, so it doesn't really matter.

In my day and age, you were a "pupil" from first to sixth grade, and a "student" when you entered junior high (graduated in 1973:-)). I'm an "Air Force brat" and attended schools in Alaska, Missouri, North/South Carolina and California - they were all consistent in distiguishing between pupils and students.

Anna's original question was pretty much answered in #1. But #2 makes an inaccurate assertion, which led to this discussion.

Interestingly, #4's clarification could have been sufficient.

#5, however, revives the confusion, and #8 again contributes useful clarification.

Then two or three native speakers of US English--one of whom is a practicing teacher--clearly establish that pupil is used much less commonly today, and then only for grade-school children.

What one chooses to reveal of oneself here is a private matter. It may be interesting, but says little or nothing about competence. We find out very soon how good each of us is by the quality of the comments we make here. That's all that's needed.

Sorry, Bob C., but #4 is quite misleading for people who come to LEO for assistance on how to translate Schüler into AE. cryme suggests that both pupil and schoolkid are more common than student for children under 18 (cryme says student is used "manchmal" for them) and that student is used for college or university students. That is misleading, as student is the normal, though not the sole, term for children and young people in the educational system.

The standard term in current American English is student, for all ages, as Robert--US and hm--us stated. Even in the case of younger students (see #15 and #17), pupil is not the term most commonly used today, as the Michigan Department of Education site linked to in #7 shows.

If anyone has evidence that pupil is common for elementary or high school students in a region of the US, then I'd be interested in seeing it. Robert--US lives in California, hm--us is in Texas and I am a practicing teacher in Michigan, and for all of us student is the normal, unmarked term.

Pupil is not unknown in AE and searching the internet will certainly find hits for it, such as this for a high school in New York http://www.hewlett-woodmere.net/1483206614829... This school has an office that offers "Pupil Personnel Services".

The Michigan Department of education refers to "high school pupils" in the "Pupil Accounting Manual" http://www.michigan.gov/documents/5H-ReducedS...

The State of California apparently has a High School Pupil Success Act http://www.forumfyi.org/content/districtcommu...

Skimming through the hits for "high school pupil", however, I see that most of them are from outside the US (Scotland, Wales, South Africa).

Using "pupil" for "high school student" strikes me as unusual, though. I can't imagine a parent saying "Susan is a pupil at Hewlett High School and will graduate next year." or a teacher at my school saying "I have 32 pupils in my Algebra 1 class."

Undergrad(uate)s sagt Ihr im AE gar nicht, oder?

We do say "undergraduates/undergrads" but that term refers to students (university/college) who are studying towards a bachelor's degree.

if my math(s) is correct.

@20 - Sure, we say it. If one wanted a list of all types of students we have, there are

k-12 students
elementary students (some people say "primary school"..not sure if they'd say "primary school students")
middle school students (middle school is again a relative/maybe regional term, some people say "junior high")
high school students (seems pretty standard)

There's also
Primary education (~k-8)
secondary education (9-12 grades)

--not sure if I'd ever say "secondary education students" to refer to "high school students"

then there's
college students (or, just slightly less common, "university students") , which can be broken down into:
undergraduate students
graduate students
post-graduate students

And then, I don't think people make a distinction between associates and bachelor students--both, I think, are undergraduate students (or "undergrads"--but I don't use that term so often).

I would never say "pupil." Unless I'm talking about my eye.

but that's me being flippant (if that's the correct term). Seriously a big thank you to all contributors here - the useage of "student" really is something that has interested me for years, and I can see that you have pretty impressive brains. respect!

We do say "undergraduates/undergrads" but that term refers to students (university/college) who are studying towards a bachelor's degree.

Genau, und das (und nichts anderes, zumindest nichts "darunter") sind auf Deutsch "Studenten" (nach denen der OP u. a. fragte) - zumindest, seit die Bachelor-Studiengänge einführt wurden.

Re cryme: isn't s/he from Wisconsin? Does that explain his/her posts on "pupil"?

Lady, in Deutschland gibt es doch auch Masterstudenten, also Studenten in einem Master-Studiengang.
Und immer öfter hört man auch von Promotionsstudiengängen, bei denen Doktoranden eingeschriebene Studenten sind und Vorlesungen hören müssen.

Nick, was sind denn post-graduate students?
Das kannte ich bisher nur als BE für Doktoranden. An meiner US-Uni ( in CA) sind wir alle graduate students, egal, ob Master oder Ph:D. angestrebt wird.

Dodolina, "postgraduate" ist man im BE, sobald man einen ersten Uni-Abschluss hat, also mindestens einen BA, oder, wo es den nicht gibt, einen Master - es ist also synonym mit AE "graduate student".

not sure where he/she is from, but rumour has it that he/she has a kinky afro and DOES like Mondays.




Disclaimer: this is intended as a humorous aside.

Lady, das kannte ich so, aber eben nur als BE.
Deswegen hat es mich gewundert, dass Nick (US) diesen Begriff auch als AE erwähnt hat.

Da an den englischsprachigen Unis jeweils so viele Menschen von der anderen Seite des Teichs studieren, wundert mich gar nicht, dass sich die Begriffe teilweise auch vermischen. Hier wird auch von den "graduates" gesprochen.

re #22 : for sure !
:-)

If anyone has evidence that pupil is common for elementary or high school students in a region of the US, then I'd be interested in seeing it.

I have no such evidence.

I live on the East Coast. Here we say "student" for kids of all ages. Even preschoolers are called students. If you go to school, you are a student.

Well, my "evidence" is most obviously dated :-) Did that all change when they did away with junior/senior high school, and introduced middle school? The things you miss out on when living in Germany for decades :-)

Yupp! those expressions are slowly getting mixed up. I even know Americans aho use the expression OTT ("that is just so OTT") and others who have never heard of it.

@27 Dodolina,

Yeah, you're apparently right. "Post-graduate (or postgraduate)" is apparently British. I only wrote it there because it was something I had heard, and I sort of imagined it meant a "student-for-life" that already had a Ph.D. and was going for another. :)

But that's wrong, according to wikipedia. In America, we only have undergraduate and graduate.

I'm a Ph.D. student in Michigan, and I go to "Grad School" and am a "graduate student."

OT:
#36: But that's wrong, according to wikipedia. In America, we only have undergraduate and graduate.

There may be potential for a Wrong Entry thread, then, given what LEO currently has: Siehe Wörterbuch: postgraduate

#36: "Post-graduate (or postgraduate)" is apparently British.

I'd only use "postgraduate", FWIW.

@Kinky re #26: opine/cryme has indeed said that he lived for a number of years in Wisconsin. Without wishing to dispute that statement, several of the rest of us who have spent all our lives in the US feel that other factors must also have contributed to his English. Though fluent, it doesn't always come across as native, and his comments, while sometimes partly correct, can also be quirky or, as in this case, misleading.

Back to the topic:

cryme is surely at least right that 'pupil' could use some kind of marking in LEO, and I think Gibson's suggestion of 'chiefly BE' is reasonable.

Canadian usage could be more in between on this point, but in some thread I seem to remember that RES-can also said that 'student' was now the most common there too.

I also don't wish to discount Carly's personal experience hearing 'pupil' used for the youngest students in decades past; I too remember hearing it when I was young. Our point is just that that usage has declined considerably and the word is now relatively seldom encountered, though there are occasional exceptions, including headlines/journalese, as Robert pointed out, and in some cases formal/legal language.

And yes, we do use undergraduate/undergrad (student); it's interchangeable with college student, that is, a student studying for a bachelor's degree. Those terms, like elementary student, high school student, graduate student, piano student, etc., are all subsets of the more general word student, which means anyone studying to learn anything.

I can also support Dodolina's and Nick's observations about undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate, the latter two of which do indeed often seem to mean different things in AE and BE. In AE, a grad student can be either a master's or a doctoral student; a postgraduate/postgrad, however, is typically not a student, but a researcher or academic doing further study after the PhD. There are some lengthy discussions in the archive on that point too, and on corresponding AE/BE differences in the use of graduate.

Now all we need is someone to bookmark all the relevant links and spit them out the next time one of these perennial fraught topics comes up. Wow, a LEO FAQ, has anyone ever suggested that before ... (-;

a postgraduate/postgrad, however, is typically not a student, but a researcher or academic doing further study after the PhD.

Die nennen wir postdocs.

Oops, yes, thank you, that term is used here too and is probably more common.

Since the question came up: a Toronto middle-school teacher says that student is now officially used here for all grades; teachers and the school board no longer use pupil.

Of course, pupil is still understood, and it can be used in reference to grade-school students (as already noted).

No kid I know or knew would ever refer to himself as a pupil unless he was a dork.

My pre-college days were in the 60's and 70's in New Jersey, Colorado and Florida. My college days were in Chicago, and after that in Seattle. Certainly we knew the word pupil, but it was only used by adults, usually those who were authoritarian and/or blue-blood (like at a prep school).

While it is possible that the adults/authoritarians stopped using that term to kids once kids get into middle school/junior high because the children are even more rebellious, I don't remember any clear change once I left elementary school.

"Pupil" like many words that only some Americans know and even fewer use, is something a New England upper class snob might use. (e.g the Bostonian Brahman Major Winchester in M*A*S*H or the Harvard Law Professor played by John Houseman in Paper Chase). It also doesn't surprise me that some university text or official paper uses the word.

My wife works in an international school where "students" and "pupils" are both used.
However, "pupils" will probably be used in the 3rd person only. I mean, I can't imagine a teacher or principal/headmaster calling "Pupils, pupils!" to get their attention. It would rather be "Students!" or "Children!"
BTW, noticed that Google simply replaces "pupils" with "students"?

#43: I can't imagine a teacher or principal/headmaster calling "Pupils, pupils!" to get their attention.

That's certainly true in the UK, too.