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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 nostyle on Tuesday August 11 2020, @03:01PM
The reform of spelling of English in America has actually been tried, most notably around 1906 with the "Simplified Spelling Board" spearheaded by Andrew Carnegie and endorsed by executive order of president Teddy Roosevelt (who used that spelling system for the remainder of his life). The effort did not succeed, although many government communications employed that system during Roosevelt's tenure.
Such undertakings fail to notice that there is a
perfectly / ˈpər-fik(t)-lē /
wonderful / ˈwən-dər-fəl /
system / ˈsi-stəm /
for denoting, phonetically, English words, which is nearly universally understood, and instantly accessible to web-enabled folk via online dictionaries.
So why don't we simply use that wonderful system? I suppose it is because some folk like me develop an odd affection for the warts in the spelling of English. (exa: I thought I brought enough dough to get through to tomorrow.) One gets used to it and learns to appreciate it.
And no matter how pure a language system you start with, there will always be those wish to introduce gotchas so as to distinguish the erudite from the plebeian - kind of like the co-worker who touches a file named "-rf *" into one of your working directories.