Who makes the rules? Who chooses the rulers? Can citizens peacefully replace ineffective, unpopular leaders?
Yes, we can!
In the United States of America, voters enjoyed their opportunity to hire and fire their President. People voted, machines counted the votes, and millions of people around the nation smiled, laughed, and felt hopeful again. Senator Obama, as so often, captured the power and beauty of the peaceful transfer of power in his eloquent speech Tuesday.
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. “
Barack Hussein Obama (1961- ), President-elect of the United States
What a patriotic quotation celebrating freedom! Cara Fulton, at www.maestrousa.com and ESL maven, suggests adding Obama’s quote to the list of great quotes and next edition of Compelling Conversations. Cara, who helps students develop the full spectrum of English language skills, sees the power of Obama’s election as a celebration of America. Reka, another friend and ESL teacher is addingexcerpts from Obama’s speech to her oral skills course for international students. (Note: Reka watch the two times – back to back – on election night.) Americans, across the country, felt united in a shared moment of hope and pride.Our system, the democratic system, still works! Voting counts.
We are coming back – to our ideals, our citizens, and our best traditions! The United States, the first nation explicitly created on enlightenment ideals, will become an inspiring 21st century nation.
This surprising election seems like a very teachable moment. Immigrants and international students can rest assured that they made the right decision to come to the United States. English language learners around the world should feel the enlarged possibilities that come with our strange tongue. European sceptics and Arab critics should candidly reassess their prejudices about Americans and the American government. After all, Obama – the son of an international African student and an adventurous Midwestern scholar – has just won the Presidency of the United States. Where else could that happen?
ESL teachers, especially in the United States, can and should celebrate this democratic tradition in our classrooms. Immigrants, refugees, and international students – in the United States and other western democratic countries – often understand the power of democracy on a deeper level than many jaded Americans. The passion of students for good government, justice, and voting will lead to an engaging discussions. Let’s give students a chance to speak up in our classes, and marvel at the election of Obama.
Sometimes living in Los Angeles feels fantastic. Beauty – in many forms – pervades. You look around, and you smile. The sun shines, the scene looks great, and many languages fill the day.
I visited the Huntington Gardens, a beautiful oasis near California Institute of Technology, yesterday to catch a large photography exhibit documenting 150 years of Los Angeles history. Inevitably, I fell in love with the city again – and gained a new appreciation for how cars, film, oil, and immigration have created this global city of dreams and demons. The show, “This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in LA Photographs”, starred evocative photographs by numerous great photographers and attracted a fine crowd.
While moving through the city or going to tourist sites, I often ask myself a simple question. “How many languages did you hear today?” It’s a way to nudge me to pay more attention to sounds, along with the sights, around me. It also reminds me that I’ve traveled quite some distant from Crawfordsville, Indiana where I went to college or even Indianapolis, Indiana where I mostly grew up. This simpe question is also a lively conversation starter in cosmopolitian areas.
Los Angeles is both a great American city and an international magnet for artists, seekers, immigrants, and students. Yesterday I heard Russian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian, German, Hebrew – and lots of English. Many other languages were also spoken, but I didn’t have the pleasure of hearing them. Art, photography, gardens, and culture brought all these people to share a common experience in multiple tongues.
“As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to see the future,” wrote Alison Lurie, an American novelist. Her words still ring true. And living here provides still more possibilities!
ESL students, international visitors, and many American citizens often express shock, dismay, and outrage over television programs. How can the news show people struggling on a rooftop, a criminal cursing the police, or a comedian mocking a vice-presidential candidate – or the sitting United States president? What about those pseudo-pornographic junk shows and awful words that children should never hear? Or that crazy commentator stirring up trouble with lies and hateful generalizations?
Free speech does not mean polite, wise, or smart speech – even on television and the radio. Gossip, pseudo-news, and sensationalism also sells. While television is regulated, cable shows remain a free speech zone. Is this smart? Yes!
“The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a great deal of rubbish.”
Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U.S. Supreme Court Justice
“Own only what you can always carry with you; know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Russian writer and Nobel Prize winner
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, an exceptional writer of rare courage, died today. English teachers, lovers of literature, and people of conscience will find his long obituary in the International Herald Tribune worth reading. Solzhenitsyn, like so many other intellectual and artistic figures, found refuge in the United States when he was exiled from his homeland for his writings. ESL, especially EL/Civics students, will also find his biography of considerable interest.
While far too many western leftists preferred to close their eyes to the nature and brutality of the Soviet slave labor system, Solzhenitsyn wrote novels that detailed the misery and repression created by the communists. His writings also made it impossible for even the most naïve leftist intellectuals to deny Stalin’s gulags – and how millions looked away. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, but the Soviet authorities naturally prevented him from accepting his award. He spent 20 years in prison camps for his writings.
Do you have English language students from Russia? Do you know immigrants and refugees who spent their youth under the Soviet system? How did living under a communist dictatorship distort human relationships? Solzhenitsyn’s writings, once censored, may help you better understand some of the historical and cultural factors that have influenced your students and their worldviews.
Personally, I found working with Russian refugees and immigrants a very eye-opening experience. The more you learn about the old Soviet system, the more you appreciate the American tradition of individual rights and political freedom. Solzhenitsyn wrote in his 1967 novel, The Cancer Ward, about the consequences of silent conformity with Stalin’s crimes. “Suddenly all the professors and engineers turned out to be saboteurs — and they believed it? … Or all of Lenin’s old guard were vile renegades — and they believed it? Suddenly all their friends and acquaintances were enemies of the people — and they believed it?” Everyone, as in Nazi Germany, knew and didn’t want to know.
Free speech and free press remain under siege – in the United States, often from self-righteous idealists. Solzhenitsyn’s writings serve as a powerful rebuke to coercive utopians, and illuminate the power of personal choices under the most severe stress. ESL teachers, especially EL/Civics teachers in adult education, need to emphasize the beauty, rarity, and wisdom of the first amendment guaranteeing free speech and a free press.
English language learners might also find Solzhenitsyn’s strong nationalism of interest. He didn’t believe that western democracy worked everywhere, considered many parts of American culture to be corrupt, and advocated rebuilding a distinct Russian society. The tensions between universalism in American Bill of Rights and some versions of multiculturalism can and should be openly discussed in our English classrooms.
I chose Solzhenitsyn’s quote for the dedication page of Compelling Conversations: Questions and Quotations on Timeless Topics to remind myself – and others – to look beyond material possessions. We need to stay awake and remain sane – even if our society begins to sprout social cancers and asking simple questions becomes dangerous. Solzhenitsyn provides a model of courage and resistance to tyranny.
Class bookends, both beginnings and endings, deserve special attention. This truism becomes more important in short term summer English programs where ESL students have traveled thousands of miles to study English.
As so often, I tend to learn by stumbling. Yet, over the years, I’ve developed a rather effective last class ESL lecture around a simple theme: Make Change Your Friend.
The lesson begins with a review of changes in their own lives over the last 10 years, and small personal chit-chats with each student. I tend to focus, just a bit, on the present perfect as they write 5 questions to ask their conversation partner and classmates. Most students are in college, but a few are working professionals a bit older. Studying – and living in – Southern California has usually been a very pleasant experience. Looking back on the last day seems natural. The mood tends to be a bit downbeat as students realize that the month has flown by very quickly. We have shared many laughs together.
By zooming out a bit more, we shift the conversation to changes – social, economic, or cultural – in our native countries over the last 10 years. The students usually provide a wide range of examples. Sometimes we also indicate how we would like our countries and cultures to change.
We soon shift to technological changes – and students share their experiences with different technologies. Of course, technology continues to improve – providing an optimistic twist. Computers are faster, video editing easier, and cell phones better. The evidence for material progress seems overwhelming.
Taking this theme a bit further, I note how the many uses of medical technology. People can live longer, new hearts installed, even limbs restored. From implants to cosmetic surgery, medical devices are changing our experience as humans. Are humans changing too? We live in fantastic times – unlike any previous generation.
I proceed to review themes from previous class readings and discussions from healthy relationships and elections to changes in human reproduction and evolving definitions of marriage. With a nod toward the great science fiction film Blade Runner, I ask “what makes humans human?” Let’s be humane as long as we human, as a Roman stoic philosopher advised.
Finally, quoting former President Clinton, I urge them to embrace change. “Make change your friend,” advised Clinton to worried Americans in 1992 during his campaign. Change continues to accelerate. You can’t stop it. Make it your friend. Find a wave that you want to ride, and catch it. Make change your friend.
Then, students write down three ways they can make change their friend. It’s a positive, look forward conclusion to a short English program. Soon class ends, students snap pictures with digital cameras, and exchange emails.
We make change our friend – even if the change is ending a wonderful, educational vacation. Students say goodbye to their American Language Center friends at UCLA Extension, and bravely face the future. Their English teachers feel satisfied – and bittersweet. It’s been fun.
The journey of life continues. Make change your friend.
A bright college student asked a simple vocabulary question that threw me this week. “What is the opposite of jealous“?
What is the opposite of jealous? Generous? Selfless? Confident? I found myself discussing various possibilities with students adding in situations. The simple vocabulary building exercise (create 25 pairs of opposite adjectives) took a more philosophical turn. We had a lively, if a bit wandering, class discussion. I apologized for my memory lapse, urged them to check a dictionary, and promised to get back to students with a better answer.
In the teacher’s room, a fellow teacher noted “The world jealousy includes the word lousy.” We shared a laugh. That’s a good answer. How did he instantly come up with that? Why couldn’t I do that?
I felt discontent, dissatisfied, and displeased with my weak classroom answers. Perhaps the opposite of “jealous” is content, satisfied, and pleased.
Stress comes naturally when driving in Los Angeles, and my commute back home fit the pattern. Many words popped into my head that captured negative feelings, including jealous. Could I be jealous of bus riders? Really? I started to visualize a bus ride home from UCLA, sitting – no, probably standing up, for 40 minutes next to exhausted strangers. Memories of less pleasant commutes on subway rides in New York from 20 years ago returned. No, I didn’t envy or feel jealous of the bus riders.
I eventually arrived home. Boomer, my dog, barked to announce my arrival and licked my face as I entered the front door. He’s great. “Dogs are our link to paradise,” wrote Milan Kundera. Absolutely.
Gratitude. That’s the opposite of jealousy. Gratitude. Why didn’t I think of that in class? Next time.
“Gratitude is heaven itself.” Who said that? Blake? Yeah, William Blake. The great poet-painter-mystic man. Remember that quote the next time an English student asks, “what is the opposite of jealous?”
Teaching English, especially to bright international college students, helps keep me focused and clear. This week I learned the opposite of jealousy and rediscovered a favorite quotation. Consider me satisfied, content, and grateful.
