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The love of all things English begins at a young age in non-English-speaking countries, promoted by pop culture, Hollywood movies, fast-food brands, sports events and TV shows.
Later, with English skills and international education qualifications from high school, the path is laid to prestigious international universities in the English-speaking world and employment opportunities at home and abroad.
But those opportunities aren't distributed equally across socioeconomic groups. Global education in English is largely reserved for middle-class students.
This is creating a divide between those inside the global English proficiency ecosystem and those relegated to parts of the education system where such opportunities don't exist.
[...] It's unfortunate so many schools view an English-speaking model as the gold standard and overlook their own local or regional wisdoms. We need to remember that encouraging young people to join a privileged English-speaking élite educated in foreign universities is only one of many possible educational options.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday August 11 2020, @03:30PM (6 children)
English is quite flexible and broadly distributed. I rather wish it would adopt the default adjective/adverb positioning from Spanish, etc. though. Ever since learning Spanish I've thought it improves clarity having the core concept expressed first and then described, rather than listing the description and then the concept - "The apple big, round, red fell from the tree..." rather than "The big, round, red apple fell from the tree".
The bigger issue though I think isn't whether English should be studied, but whether English should be the language in which education on unrelated topics takes place. It certainly seems to have an advantage over many, particularly in technical topics, since if has the Germanic word-combining feature (rather watered down, but still there). However, educating in English seems to also tend to involve the English/American _style_ of education, whose design was explicitly based on the German(?) schools whose primary purpose was political indoctrination. As a result it comes with a heaping helping of "This is Truth. Believe it." A.k.a. rigid memorization and regurgitation, rather than how to think on your own. Not that we're anywhere near the the worst in that regard, but I think we benefit greatly from a certain level of American cultural anarchy as a counterpoint, which other cultures that borrow our educational design often lack.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jelizondo on Tuesday August 11 2020, @06:54PM (5 children)
“Del árbol cayó una roja manzana” or “Una roja manzana del árbol cayó” are both proper Spanish, even if the first form would be qualified as poetic. (Don’t ask me, that’s the way the dice rolls.)
As far as my limited experience allows me to say, I think that education systems are quite similar the world over, except perhaps for Montesori schools [wikipedia.org], so I don’t see English or German as the cause of repetition, memorization and regurgitation.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday August 11 2020, @08:12PM (4 children)
The language isn't the cause - it's that the school systems that were created by those who speak those languages were originally designed specifically for indoctrination. Those systems have since been copied by many others as well, because they are very good at turning children into useful cogs in the economy. But there are lots of other options as well, especially if you look at the traditional educational systems where British and American influence hasn't had much impact yet.
But if you're specifically talking about schools teaching in English, then you're _almost_certainly_ talking about schools that are designed for a particular kind of indoctrination.
Basically, English-style schools have spread far beyond those who use the English language - but those which use the English language are almost certainly English-style.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday August 11 2020, @09:01PM
IIRC (from a class way back in college for an elective) this is referred to as "social efficiency curriculum" and was popularized by Durkheim. It's kind of frightening to think about it...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @09:40PM (2 children)
Are there school systems which are NOT designed for indoctrination? I can't think of any, even historically.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:36AM
For starters think... pretty much every "tribal" education system, ever.
The apprenticeship system is another good example.
There's lots of examples of education systems that are not even school systems, much less indoctrination systems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @04:32AM
Pretty much all of them prior to the Prussians observing that they couldn't find good soldiers. As prevalent as that style of education has been, the reality is that school systems using it are a modern invention. Before there you wouldn't have enough students learning the same things to make use of it anyways.