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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 quietus on Tuesday August 11 2020, @06:01PM
Not quite. Go visit Mycenae (best in winter time) and the little museum documenting the site, and you'll see a map showing the trade relations of the Myceanean empire at 1,400 BC or thereabouts. They had trade relations with the North Sea coast, and knew about what is now the UK (tin mines, if I remember correctly: important in the production of bronze). Their finest swords were imported from there.
A bit more recently, Celtic tribes (i.e. Belgian tribes) started to use coins as payment around 300BC. These coins were initially copies of Greek coins with which they were payed as mercenaries.