Philosophy
The one curricular requirement that my advisees complain about most vocally (in English) is the language requirement. The argument in favor of it is that to be a full person today, you must be a citizen of the world and that means being able to speak a language other than English. Language is pregnant with culture and you cannot really understand the worldview but through the mother tongue. Additionally, it is the only way that you really understand how much of your own assumptions are not objective reality, but based upon cultural baggage you inherited. In a country that occupies a singular place in the world and is geographically quite isolated linguistically, it is our responsibility to broaden ourselves and reach out.
The argument on the other side is that a couple semester of grudgingly conjugating the irregular verbs "to be" and "to have" don't get you anywhere near the fluency that would generate the condition for cultural enlightenment. It is time that could be better spent on concerns of personal interest for students. Language study is hard and takes a lot of time and practice, time and effort that could be redirected.
Is mandatory language study valuable?
- Noah Webster: Founding Father Of Political Correctness
The phrase "political correctness" may have been coined within the last few decades, but the concepts behind it and the initial attempts to put them in action may be found in the earliest years of our country. Noah Webster is best remembered for...
- Bullshit Or Not: Wittgenstein Edition
There's an old sketch film called Amazon Women on the Moon and one of the bits is a parody of the old Leonard Nimoy show, "In Search Of..." called, "Bullshit or Not?" with the tagline "Bullshit or not? You decide." It's a line I like so much that...
- Language, Dvds, And The End Of The World
A couple more good ones today. Maura asks, "Is it possible to ever become absolutely fluent in another language or, otherwise stated, can we ever really leave the world we were born into and fully rejoin another?"As Maura correctly points out, there are...
- Spanish, Ebonics, And Bushisms: English As Whose National Language?
So we've got another case of conservatives trying to crack down on that creeping menace...the Spanish language. Public libraries in suburban Atlanta will no longer acquire adult fiction in Spanish because immigrants reading John Grisham is a threat...
- "will There Be A Single Global Language?" Poll
Will there be a single global language? No...1 Yes...4 In a way we now have a "global language"...computer language. But, what I was referring to was a spoken language. It will be many decades before it would happen. I suppose that English is the dominate...
Philosophy
Is Mandatory Language Study Valuable?
The one curricular requirement that my advisees complain about most vocally (in English) is the language requirement. The argument in favor of it is that to be a full person today, you must be a citizen of the world and that means being able to speak a language other than English. Language is pregnant with culture and you cannot really understand the worldview but through the mother tongue. Additionally, it is the only way that you really understand how much of your own assumptions are not objective reality, but based upon cultural baggage you inherited. In a country that occupies a singular place in the world and is geographically quite isolated linguistically, it is our responsibility to broaden ourselves and reach out.
The argument on the other side is that a couple semester of grudgingly conjugating the irregular verbs "to be" and "to have" don't get you anywhere near the fluency that would generate the condition for cultural enlightenment. It is time that could be better spent on concerns of personal interest for students. Language study is hard and takes a lot of time and practice, time and effort that could be redirected.
Is mandatory language study valuable?
- Noah Webster: Founding Father Of Political Correctness
The phrase "political correctness" may have been coined within the last few decades, but the concepts behind it and the initial attempts to put them in action may be found in the earliest years of our country. Noah Webster is best remembered for...
- Bullshit Or Not: Wittgenstein Edition
There's an old sketch film called Amazon Women on the Moon and one of the bits is a parody of the old Leonard Nimoy show, "In Search Of..." called, "Bullshit or Not?" with the tagline "Bullshit or not? You decide." It's a line I like so much that...
- Language, Dvds, And The End Of The World
A couple more good ones today. Maura asks, "Is it possible to ever become absolutely fluent in another language or, otherwise stated, can we ever really leave the world we were born into and fully rejoin another?"As Maura correctly points out, there are...
- Spanish, Ebonics, And Bushisms: English As Whose National Language?
So we've got another case of conservatives trying to crack down on that creeping menace...the Spanish language. Public libraries in suburban Atlanta will no longer acquire adult fiction in Spanish because immigrants reading John Grisham is a threat...
- "will There Be A Single Global Language?" Poll
Will there be a single global language? No...1 Yes...4 In a way we now have a "global language"...computer language. But, what I was referring to was a spoken language. It will be many decades before it would happen. I suppose that English is the dominate...