Quotation - Dogs In Heaven

"If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they went."

Will Rogers

Education 15 - Modern Language Future Study

Donald Trump’s aggressive isolationism is likely to have chaotic effects on modern languages departments in the US.  It is tempting to presume that student numbers will fall, but the Trump era is just as likely to draw undergraduate students into the study of foreign languages and cultures.  Either way, U.S. modern language departments in 2017 are in stronger health than popular media narratives would have you believe.  

It is often insinuated that modern languages are a drag on the solvency and adaptability of the public university.  But this is simply not true.  At some U.S. institutions, modern languages programmes may rank in the top 20 per cent of revenue-generating units campus-wide.  Nationwide, there was a 6.7 per cent dip in foreign languages enrolment between 2009 and 2013  – a decline that outstripped the overall fall in student numbers in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.  Yet ambitious recruitment efforts at first-year student orientation events and large general education “feeder” courses have enabled us to buck the trend and continue to coax upwards enrolment of majors in French, German, Russian, Italian, Chinese and Japanese.  And this is without the large private-sector subventions often required in other disciplines.

Those disciplines across campus – medicine, business, manufacturing, agriculture – may address language and culture instrumentally, as a necessary component of “getting to yes” or “closing the deal”, but they rarely have space in their curricula to enquire about the complexity of multilingualism and translation in any sustained fashion.  Modern languages curricula by some, in contrast, offer courses grounded in the lived complexity of societal multilingualism.  They apply linguistic, cultural, historical and literary approaches to questions relevant to engineering, business or even arid lands management.  A course on “German culture, science and technology”, for instance, shows how the specific traditions housed in the German language offer a meaningfully different set of operational principles and assumptions about things such as “security”, “risk”, “progress”, “growth” and “the economy”.  Students come away with a much stronger sense of how non-governmental organizations can better acknowledge the belief systems of their beneficiaries in their home languages;  how physicians and nurses can engage in nuanced conversations with seriously ill people that truly relieve suffering;  and how focus-group-tested political rhetoric is often designed to hide structural inequalities in society.

These 'outside-the-box' modern languages curricula are often best suited for dual-degree courses, and most professors urge undergraduates to concentrate on a language alongside another major.  But instead of just training them in how to “get ahead”, recent modern languages programmes show students how to notice when powerful interests are aiming to manipulate them with coercive language, imagery and marketing, and how to transform that moment of noticing into resources for creativity, justice and collaboration.

The major challenge of the next 10 years will be continuing to build this critically engaged, applied and outward-facing momentum in modern languages curricula.  Threats continue to hack away at our resources, and the Trump-occupied White House has removed all multilingual content from its website, reminding us that English-only is a powerfully resurgent delusion.

©️Times Higher Education
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There is much to discuss, I think.

Two Words

Recently, on a whim, after discovering the old keys to my attic, I clambered up the creaky steps, struggled with the rusty lock, forced open the door, and waited for my eyes to becomes used to the gloomy interior.  It was eerily quiet, but the huge number of cobwebs told me that I was not alone … the spiders were hiding, no doubt.  I opened a travel trunk, causing a cloud of dust.  Inside, I discovered many academic books that had seen better days.  Opening the top one I discovered …. 

Actually, none of this is true - I simply found a cardboard box at the bottom of my wardrobe.  But there was a collection of books there, and the following tale was tucked inside one of them.  I know that you will enjoy it. 

Two Words

“To what, Oh master, do you attribute your success as a technical editor?” asked the young scribe.

“Two words:” replied the crusty old curmudgeon, “Right Decisions!”

“But how does one learn to make right decisions?” pressed the disciple.

“Experience!” replied the learned logosopher, deleting a descriptive passage as he spoke.

“And how does one gain experience?” demanded the querant, restlessly clicking his mouse buttons.

“Two words:” said the embattled editor, “Wrong Decisions!”

An Uncertain Future

As I sit here, bathed in the brilliant sunshine pouring into my room (seemingly, a very unusual occurrence this month) heightened by the glare from a snow-covered landscape, I read about the day’s news … and think about the loneliness of our wondrous planet and its uncertain future.

When the calendar indicated a new year, the habitual tradition of resolutions entered my head and it occurred to me that a New Year’s Resolution had become no more important than the Daily Horoscope.  But I had already made a decision regarding this Blog to avoid, what appeared to be, unpopular political comment.  Unpopular, it seems, because of the misunderstanding of my deliberate use of controversy to create exciting discussion.  Oh dear!

Nevertheless, there is so much to discuss about people who affect our lives.  For example, Presidents Putin and Xi, Prime Ministers May, Trudeau and Netanyahu, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to name a few and, of course or should I say not least, President Trump.  All brought together under the banner of Islamism, an ancient religion attempting to force its fundamental beliefs into the global milieu. 

But, even though I believe it very important to be aware of matters that, although seemingly matters that may not affect us personally, certainly matters that will affect our children.

Now, what have you got to say?

Quotation - Life