to expect a Comparative Literature student to like reading?

[NadineBaggott]

On Weakest Link last evening there was a young girl doing a degree course in comparative literature.

Anne: so you like reading?
Girl: no, not really
Anne: so how does that work?
Girl: I use the internet.

That's a seductive argument for languages.
But of course I'd bet money this guy is over 21 ?
So the language track he was put on at school at least 10, and maybe 20-30 years ago woulsn't have had Chinese. If it had, it would have done the set of dialects used in Taiwan which was then the leader in low cost midscale electronics. (we've wandered into an area I know well here). HK had some of the assembly work, but we both know that English is the business language there.
At the point language choices were made for him a lot of people thought E.Europe was going to be very big. They were wrong (yes I was one). Trying sourcing motherboards using Russian, see how far you get.

Also Vietnam and various other SE Asian countries are getting into this stuff. Chinese won't help you much in Vietnam or indeed in India.

That's the core of the problem. Any single legacy language buys you only a few extra % of the people you might do business with. Russian would probably be good for me, but would extend my business only a couple of %.
For that scale of effort I could leanr far more useful things.
Also let's just put the big lie of "languages lead to high paying jobs" argument into the grave it deserves.
Go look at whatever source of high paying jobs you favour. Do any require languages ?
Nest time you meet a Porsce owner, ask in French how much it cost. Be prepared for a blank state at even this trivial use of the most commonly taught languagre in our schools.

I wouldn't like to speak to any one in a Porsche, but I do email dd's French teacher in my most elegant Franglais.

You have a most utilitarian attitude to education, DC, I must say. Is there no other use for education than to get one a well paid job?

Having been brought up working class poor, and seeing the number of kids who are shamefully let down by middle class love of "non-utilitarian" education.
Lying to kids that languages are good for them is a god example of this. Around Stratford the kids get told they'll get jobs in the Olympics. A pretty standard lie for those promoting their pet subjects.
The Olympics is couple of months, years away, and the jobs for locals will be selling tickets and cleaning the stadium. Most won't even quialify for the "good" jobs like security guards.
I'nm rigidly utiliatarian for education. But unlike those who push languages, to me "utility" is what is good for the kikds, not "society", and certainly the vast , wildly unsuccessful horde of language teachers.
That's not an anti-arts bias. Drama did far more for my life than biology, and I'm up for anything that helps kids think better, or exposes them to different ways of seeing things. Learning 5,000 words off by heart is not mind expanding, and since almost no kids ever read any foreign language book othetr than the "Jean Paul is hungry. The cat is black, textbooks, they are not bebefitting from any cultural diversity.

DC - quite agree that most so called language grads. in this country have a useless ability to actually communicate in the language that they have studied 3 - 4 years.

I knew an Oxford grad. who did Japanese, but didn't speak a word of it until she went to Japan for a couple of years. I actually think it is pointless to learn ANY language unless you are willing to travel to the country whose native language you are learning and study its culture. This is not always feasible for the poor, so it may remain a middle class thing which is a damned shame.

I don't think it is a waste of time for any kid to learn a language if their parents support them to learn it within the context of the native country. I think you are unfortunatley generalising and stereotyping kids again. Not all kids are raised the way you describe.

ps - my husband is a senior engineer and speaks 3 languages fluently. You don't have to be technically minded and reject the so-called arty farty aspects of life, you CAN do both you know !!

I agree, and think that language teaching in this coutry is so broken that we should just give up.
If we must try and teach kids subjects with extremely low utility, we need to risk annnoying the language teaching mafia.
Non-native English speakers have the huge advantage that so many films, books, comics and songs are in English. If you look at most DVDs they are multi lingual, Priates of the Caribbean II offers Icelandic amongst others.
Thus we need to use this very high quality, low cost resource. Instead of mindlessly chanting verbs whose tenses were made up simply to annoy speakers of modern languages, they try and follow Shrek in other languages.
An afternoon with a PC and some s/w and you can get a scene in English alternated with the same one in the target language.
But ultimately you need immersion, VOIP technology allows you to get an entire class of British kids chatting one to one with foreign ones. Marginal cost around the same as one set of text books, no running costs at all.
But not clear what the language teachers will do, in this scenario, is it ?
We need to teach less French, possibly the least useful language for a British kid to learn.
Given that the majority of language teachers are trained for this, we can assume it won't happen.

Ah you see I lecture degree students in geography/tourism and most of them have an appalling knowledge of where countries are on a basic level i.e. one student thought Portugal was the capital of Spain. So no I'm not suprised!

monkey - it reminds me of something a woman
was asked on tv the other day (an American woman on some game show) -

"What is the capital of Iraq" ? Answer: "Afghanistan"

Understandable and excusable if only BAGHDAD wasn't on the news all day with 1000's of her fellow countrymen roaming around it !!!!

DC - French is one of the most useful languages in the world and worth learning just for the quality of its literature alone, although I doubt you agree with that

I am learning Italian, totally useless in terms of "utility", only Italians, some Swiss and some Ethiopians speak it, but it is BEAUTIFUL and I love Italy !

EEk, I should learn to read the whole thread before making a flippant remark

Hadn't realised it had turned into an intellectual discussion!

I have taught a student at A level Biology who actually thought the sun was alive.

I'm not joking, and neither, gawd help her, was the girl.

I have had students want to do A level Biology who had no aptitude for the subject or even any interest in it, at all. And then they moan that it is hard and that I make them work.

Tough shit.

monkey - lol - yes READ the thread it is very intellectual, don't make silly remarks out of place

So MP, did she think the sun has a smiley face, arms and legs and wears dark shades sometimes ?

I think ds does, but that's because he is 2.8

LMAO @ MB

Martianbishop I think you ought to know that when I learnt about human reproduction in Yr 7, our biology teacher told me that "childbirth doesn't hurt, oh no it's a natural function".

She had a different opinion after her own first child was born when I was in the 6th form.

Some teachers speak with forked tongue!

Yellowrose, I accept the quality of French literature, but my point, made more than once is that almost no kids get to a level where they could read it.
I'm being careful about "useful" in this context, being either a useful exercise for the mind or having value in the job market.
Chanting verbs I contend, is of no more value than memorising the periodic table, or the GDP of every mamber state of the UN.
There is no shortage of French speakers. The French economy is such that senior French politcians have referred to London as a French city since it's 300,000 french citizens makes it larger than many metropolitan French cities.
Also what little utility it enjoys is fatally undermined by the way it is far and away the most taught language in our schools. That means there is gross oversupply, a vicious circle of lots of French teachers causing more French to be taught.
Any rational educational policy would be more diverse.
Also depending upon whose numbers you believe, France has anywhere from the best to the 4th best education system on the planet.
Britain is well in the bottom end of the league tables. That means if you are trying to commonucate with a French person, his English will be vastly better than your French.

True what you say about lots of French speakers around. If dh didn't speak it like a native, I doubt we would be as bothered to teach it to ds.

Yes, our ed. system is sadly behind, esp. when it comes to maths/sciences. Actually I am very keen to focus ds on the more techincal subjects at school, not because I want to force him into technical jobs (FIL DOES -- because he is an engineer and so are all his 3 kids so thinks that his grandson has to be one as well !!) but because maths. was so poorly taught, even in my private school.

Languages are useful and make life more interesting, but I agree that they don't have to take priority over everything else.

Maths badly taught EVEN at your private school, YR, begs the assumption that teaching is usually better in the private sector. That is not necessarily true. Classes may be smaller, pupils' behaviour may be better (because they can exclude any pupil they don't want)but in many cases (not all) teaching is worse.

Why we are a nation of maths phobics is an interesting question and not one I can answer.

DC - what makes you think that languages are taught in the chanting of verbs routine of several decades ago?

Also, I take your point about the preciousness of academics and educationalists telling working class kids not to be utilitarian about education. Education prepares a person for work and for life, but getting the balance right is a matter of debate. Samuel Pepys was highly educated for his time, mostly in the classics and had to learn his times tables by himself at age 29 when he realised he needed to know them for his civil servant type job. But I would add that Adolph Hitler was undereducated, and when asked if he would like to learn a foreign language after he came to power in 1933, his reaction was "what would I want to do that for?"

Elastic - It really wasn't taught well or in an interesting, stimulating way in any of my private schools. Shame really as I would have been more keen on it if it had been. It takes a lot of talent as a teacher I think to make maths interesting. That is why I think kids need lots of help with it, unless of course they show some natural, inherent talent. Some kids are just naturally brilliant at maths.

In some countries that I have travelled to, Germany, Austria, France (and heard about like Japan) maths is taught at a much higher level at a much younger age and their school age children are WAY ahead of ours.

Ultimately learning a language requires a huge amount of things that have no internal logic, even "regular" verbs ain't that regular.
There is no way to work out the word for "yellow", you must know it.
All subjects of course require facts, but languages require far more before you can do anything useful.

Ah, yes, internal logic, but life would be so bloody boring, miserable and predictable if every thing had logic and reason, wouldn't it ?

Yes, it would be dull.
But chaos is equally dull. Disconnect the aerial of your TV and you will see fuzz that is neither logical nor reasonable.

Ok, dc, let's call it a day, you don't like languages, due to the fuzz and uncertainty, but I quite like fuzz ! Sorry, don't see the comparison with watching untuned tv

Ok, I don't like irregular verbs either, but I do like learning a language, because it does the opposite of fuzzy tv, it opens my eyes to a new world and culture, so rather than walking around like a blind, deaf, dumb tourist in Italy I can actually begin to understand what the Italians are saying !

Forget the source of this, but it is amusing

----------

REUTERS - A large and otherwise well respected university has
become the first UK institution of higher education to be implicated in a
cash-for-degrees scandal which is expected to rock campuses
across the country, representatives from the Audit Commission reported today.

"We have strong evidence that this university granted academic degrees
to students in exchange for hefty payments, often totalling
thousands of pounds," Deputy Director General James Comey said.
"In the process, thousands of graduates have emerged with degrees, but
few or no skills applicable to everyday life. And many are as unprepared
to enter the job market as they were when they first registered. This
is not seen as an isolated case, and investigations are under way at
17 other universities."

According to documents collected as a part of the ongoing
investigation, some undergraduates allegedly attended lectures
fewer than four times a week. During these lectures, students were
asked to do little more than listen.

Comey said that, while it seems apparent that the universities under investigation
were conducting a monetary transaction, millions of degree-buyers believed that they had not
bought, but "earned" their degrees.

"The university is very careful to circumscribe the financial element
of the transaction," Comey said. "The employees who conduct
lectures are made to seem above the world of commerce. Students don't
give their payments to the lecturers, nor to the departments from which
they purchase their degrees. Rather, cheques are mailed to the
'Director of Student Services Department', this 'Director' being
someone we have been unable to identify or contact."

Besides attending lectures, students read materials relating to their
lectures, write the occasional essay and participate in testing,
Comey said. Although the content of many courses was often
thought-provoking, what alarmed investigators was the subject
matter's "intractably abstract nature."

"A course in Chaucer can be a fascinating examination of medieval
mores and the evolution of the English language," Comey said.
"Such knowledge, however, has little application in larger society.
Students can graduate with degrees in creative writing, Latin, women's
studies and history, yet still not know how to fix a sink, sew on a button or
even properly feed themselves. Virtually the only opportunity
graduates have to apply their arcane knowledge takes place during
discussions over coffee with their peers, or attempts to impress
members of the opposite sex at parties."

In addition to their tuition payments, students pay hundreds of
pounds in ancillary fees. "Students are invoiced for registration fees,
housing fees, and lab fees," Comey said. "And the university has all
sorts of tricks to draw the money out, such as denying students
access to library materials or refusing them copies of their transcripts."

Many students find that the only way to get a return on their
investment is to continue their studies at the postgraduate level,
resulting in even more money for the university. "Some
postgraduate-degree-earners have been known to find work in their
fields, but many end up teaching in the very schools that issue
these degrees of questionable value," Comey said. "In this way, the fraud
sustains itself."

Comey said the public has a right to be concerned. "Since so
many students purchase their degrees using government-backed student
loans, taxpayers are supporting this," Comey said. "Also, because many
employers require these degrees, even if irrelevant to the actual
work, the business sector has to own up to some collusion in the
matter."

One alleged victim of the cash-for-degrees scandal is one 23 year
old Michael X who purchased an art history degree from the university,
making his first payment in January 2001. Trumbull currently works
on the reception of a Holiday Inn in the north of England.

"Not once has a customer asked me about the innovations of
Edouard Manet, or whether politics and aesthetics make good bedfellows,"
Michael said. "They're much more likely to ask me to bring them a
plunger or give them a wake-up call."

Michael, who owes more than £12,000 in student loans, added that
he must use a calculator to perform even simple calculations.

**