Spanish Americans should not be deprived of English

Incoming email from Mark Alexander:

Thought you might be interested in this brief essay pointing out that withholding English from immigrants is racist.

I am. It's a good piece, too. The gist of it is that if English is not your first language, it is still your ticket to full and free membership of the big wide world out there, and that ethnic leaders, in this case Hispanic leaders in the USA, don't want their flock to learn English, because that way they would cease to be their flock.

I love the cat picture, but do not understand it.

Paying children to stay on at school

Tonight and tomorrow I want to attempt (although I promise nothing) some slightly more substantial blog writing, maybe for here, maybe for elsewhere. So I just want to fling up something here to enable me to forget here for the day.

And the education news story from recent days that I have found most interesting just now has been this one:

The Government is set to give a £100 bonus to thousands of teenagers throughout the UK for continuing in education.

Under a scheme rewarding teenagers for carrying on in education after completing their GCSEs, children who have managed to maintain good attendance records over the past few months are to get a bonus £100 on top of their means-tested Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA).

That programme has seen students receive up to £30 per week since September, and of the 270,000 children across England who have taken advantage of the scheme, around three-quarters have good enough attendance figures to qualify for the bonus award.

The UK has one of the worst continuance rates for 16-year-olds in the industrialised world, but the Government's EMA scheme is designed to combat that by encouraging more teenagers from economically deprived backgrounds to further their education.

It is understood that the total cost of the bonus system will reach around £20 million, prompting criticisms from the Liberal Democrats that the payments are "excessive".

As educational outrages go, this one doesn't strike me as especially outrageous. Indeed, as a preparation for working life it seems to me rather better than demanding attendance in exchange for nothing.

Because it is a new and untried method of spending public money, this scheme has attracted lots of criticism, but honestly, many of the educational spending initiatives I read about tend to be far more wasteful. Presumably, any month now, all kinds of stories will start emerging about kids showing up for their money, but otherwise doing bugger all, but I'm guessing quite a few will genuinely benefit from the arrangement, quite aside from the money.

I of course hope that once the principle of paying children to do school work is accepted, this might lead to wider acceptance of the idea of children being paid to do work work. But alas, this scheme is more likely to be viewed as yet another way to entice children away from work work, to rescue them from it. Heaven forbid that children should ever do anything truly useful. That would never do, would it?

How about a compromise? Children (especially boys) leave school at 13, when they think it's stupid, and get paid to do work work. Then, they get paid to go back to school, when, at more like 17, they start to see the point of it. Just thinking aloud.

The education of the Aviator

Today they announced that The Aviator has been nominated for eleven Oscars.


For some time now I've been meaning to do another of those celebrity educations postings, and today I got to wondering what kind of education Howard Hughes had?


I found an answer, albeit a brief one, here:


Education: Hughes attended private school in Boston, where he was better at golf than classwork. He was attending Thacher School in California when his mother died. In California, Hughes spent time with his uncle, Rupert, who inspired his later interest in filmmaking. Hughes never graduated from high school. Nonetheless, his father arranged for him to sit in on classes at Cal Tech by donating money to the school. Afterward, Howard returned to Houston and enrolled at Rice Institute (now Rice University). Howard, Sr. died suddenly a few weeks after his son turned eighteen. Young Howard inherited much of the family estate and dropped out of Rice.
I love that bit about his dad arranging for him to attend Cal Tech by donating money. Go capitalism!

Educate a woman and educate a family

The only thing I know about Rudy Manikan, and the only reference to him that I can find on the Internet, is that he was the guy (and I'm only guessing he was a guy) who said this:

If you educate a man you educate a person, but if you educate a woman, you educate a family.

At the top of google it said: Did you mean Ruby Manikan?, and after that, only the first two links are about Rudy Manikan. All the rest of them seem to be about Rudy Someone and Someone Manikan both getting involved in the same thing, list, whatever. I found the quote in a quote book, not on the Internet at all.

But if Rudy Manikan is right, and I suspect he may well be, then maybe all the stories like this are not such terrible news after all.

By the way, a little more googling, and it turns out that someone called Lucha Corpi said something very similar also. I don't know which of these two people came first or said it first, or whether the second one got to independently or stole it without realising, or what.

My Outlook on Education of Foreign Languages

In March, I posted here about the five assignments that I was to finish long before this day. It is another matter that I have not yet finished all of them.

But as you can see that there is one assignment (the last one) - ES-344 that is on TEACHING OF ENGLISH. In a vast and diverse country like India where more than 375 languages are spoken and the culture is so diverse - there must be a common language for office works and the British gifted English.

However, I realized that the theories of teaching English do not only imply on a single language but they are most common and useful for all other languages.

Many people believe that teaching foreign languages to students across the world can be challenging for teachers, and I definitely agree. The cultural sensitivity, the contrasts in basic understandings about gender rights, the way of thinking and values are specific to each continent, and even for each nationality. For that reason teachers, who tutor international students should be extra tolerant, understanding and patient in the learning process. The best case would be if the teacher is bilingual and masters the mother language of the student. However, this is not the most common situation in courses with international students, especially if the class consists of people from several different nationalities. The good communication between you, as a tutor and the students is the key to the success of the course. The teacher should find ways to get into the students’ shoes and try using their logic when understanding the grammar, the vocabulary and the pronunciation which will give him/her ideas as to which exercises and methods will be the most effective. There are several things I recommend you to do to prepare yourself to be a better teacher to international students.

- Browse some information about the culture and the social practices in the native countries of your students. This will help you to have a better picture and idea of what their world is like and how they communicate with each other. Students will appreciate your interest in their traditions and will be eager to show you interesting sides to their cultures. As a teacher you can support them in expressing themselves in the language you are teaching.

- Translation tools always help. Dictionaries, online translation instruments, tables and all kinds of materials in different languages are especially helpful for teachers and for students. Imagine you are teaching English to a class with students from Spain, but you don’t speak Spanish. The learning process will be much easier and smoother if you use tools for fast and precise Spanish translation. Dictionaries are a very good instrument, but not all of them are up-dated with the new words in certain languages. Therefore, my advice is for you and your students to take an advantage of the newest tools on the internet for translations.

- Be up-to-date with the newest teaching techniques and be flexible in using them. Students are different and you will be a better teacher if you have an individual approach for each person. It is especially valuable when teaching students from different walks of life.

Teaching to a multicultural class is an experience of lifetime. It will broaden your horizons and develop your skills and qualities as a teacher and as a person.

Where to Learn Good English?

There is no doubt that if you think of where the best place to learn English is, London tops the list as the most appropriate destinations. It is obvious why. The city is the capital of Great Britain, the birthplace of the English language and the country where people speak the purest English. London is a fabulous place to visit and study in. Reasonably, thousands of people from all over the world and all ages choose to improve their proficiency with English courses in London and live and study in the thriving environment of the city. Thousands of teachers also choose London to improve their careers and gain a valuable experience by working in one of the most magnificent world capitals. It is a fact that studying and teaching in London has countless benefits. The city is home of some of the most modern schools, universities and study centers where students learn with the newest methods and programs in language education. In London everyone will find something interesting to visit or experience, which is a natural motivator for each student to interact around the city and practice their English while exploring London. The native speaking ambience is a benefit for the language courses and eases the work of the teacher. But together with the advantages of London, it also raises some challenges to teachers in the learning process. One of the difficulties for teachers is to keep the students focus on the studying. London is full of entertainment opportunities and things to do and experience, which will possibly distract students from the learning process. To avoid this side effect, make sure you include curious facts of the current reality of London and different role play games that resemble real situations in your lessons. Another motivational technique especially effective is to use interactive facilities for your lessons and make the learning visual and more understandable. Films and videos that you can discuss later will provoke students to express their opinion and share ideas in English. Make the learning process fun and enjoyable and you will outrun your expectations. Be creative and use your sense of humor, it will make the atmosphere friendlier and both yourself and the students will feel better for it. English courses in London will enrich students’ proficiency, but they will also give them a better understanding and knowledge of English traditions and London’s reality. You can capture the students not only with the English language, but with the most interesting places and highlights in the city, by holding some of the lessons outside the classroom. It will encourage them to speak English freely and will help them explore London like never before.

My list of the 50 most significant modern and contemporary political ideologies.

Students and teachers may find it especially valuable (it worked well in a class I guest-taught in the Peace and Conflict Studies Department at UC-Berkeley in April 2010).

Along with each ideology below, I’ve suggested two readings. Most are by co-creators or advocates of the ideology at issue, and nearly all were written in our 21st century. All are freely available on the Web -- just click on the blue titles below.

Needless to say, no reading is – or can be – perfectly representative of a political ideology, which is typically the construction of a myriad of scholars and activists and is anyway never finally set in stone; hopefully, each reading here will prompt you to dig deeper in the literature.

Example of what is there (sans links).

PREFACE

A. Why Ideology?: Slavoj Zizek, “20 Years of Collapse,” New York Times, 9 Nov. 2009

B. Human Nature, I (quasi-tragic vision): Steven Pinker interviewed by John Brockman, “A Biological Understanding of Human Nature,” Edge Foundation website, 9 Sept. 2002

C. Human Nature, II (blue-sky vision): Dacher Keltner, pp. ix-xii & 3-15 in Keltner, Born to Be Good, 2009

INTRODUCTION

A. Understanding Ideology: Manfred Steger, “Introduction: Political Ideologies and Social Imaginaries,” pp. 1-5 in Steger, The Rise of the Global Imaginary, 2008 [after you click on this link, you’ll need to type “Social Imaginaries” into the search box]

B. Creating Ideology, I (bottom-up): Lawrence Goodwyn, “The Alliance Develops a Movement Culture,” pp. 20-35 in Goodwyn, The Populist Moment, 1978

C. Creating Ideology, II (young turks): Todd Gitlin, “‘Name the System,’” pp. 171-88 in Gitlin, The Sixties, rev. 1993 [after you click on this link, you’ll need to type “Name the System” into the search box]

D. Creating Ideology, III (top-down): Cheng Chen, “Post-Communist Russia’s Search for a New Regime Ideology,” conference paper, American Political Science Association, Aug. 2009 [after you click on this link, you’ll need to click on the box marked "One-Click Download" and then on the box marked “Chicago Booth”]