Welcome ~ 300,000,000 ESL students !

The techie magazine WIRED http://www.wired.com/ is a stretch above me but I peek at it from time to time when I visit my local library. Here’s what caught my eye the other day:

“How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand” June 2008 by Michael Erard

It caught my eye because one of the subjects of the Clermont Blog is global education and international teaching. Any of you who work in the field know about the shifting sands of change ~ and to mix analogies ~ the tidal wave of new schools opening in China and the Middle East. We could truly be on the verge of international education’s golden era (drum roll, please).

However, the numbers are staggering. Now apparently the great masses of Chinese wish/need to learn English. From the article:

“Thanks to globalization, the Allied victories in World War II, and American leadership in science and technology, English has become so successful across the world that it's escaping the boundaries of what we think it should be. In part, this is because there are fewer of us: by 2020, native speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language.

Already, most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca. In China, this sort of free-form adoption of English is helped along by a shortage of native English-speaking teachers, who are hard to keep happy in rural areas for long stretches of time. An estimated 300 million Chinese — roughly equivalent to the total US population — read and write English. Given the number of people involved, Chinglish, as we shall call it is destined to take on a life of its own." Chinglish.

Yikes!

So, let’s help our new friends learn or improve their English. Here are some calculations.

300,000,000 learners of English =
2,000 students per mega-school =
150,000 schools =
25 students per class =
80 teachers per school =

80 teachers X 150,000 schools =

12,000,000 English/ESL teachers!

Now there is a recruitment challenge! Easy to find? Why that’d be a piece of cake.

The Whiffle Ball War

The New York Times and other media have reported on the nasty whiffle ball affair in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Apparently a group of boys decided to fix up a vacant lot in order to spend their summer days playing whiffle ball. They cleared away rubble and undergrowth, leveled the ground and threw up a small wall to resemble the “green monster” in Boston’s Fenway Park. The new field drew kids from around town who wanted to play this simple game. All great fun until the neighbors, police and lawyers got involved to put a stop to it. Liability concerns, you know, and the other plagues of modern American life.

For the uninitiated whiffle ball is baseball lite. Very lite. The ball itself is plastic and perforated on one side so it is easy to curve a pitch. It’s a great game for backyards or anywhere with a bit of space. You don’t even need a full team or other regalia such as cleats or expensive mitts.

The story struck a cord in me (and apparently many others) as the game congers up the golden days of childhood ~ just before the onslaught of hormones, girlfriends and other distractions.

Our neighborhood games were played on the lawn next to my parent’s home. The old house was located on a narrow, woodsy New England street where only a few cars would pass now and then. It was a quiet place in summer.

The house itself served as the left field wall. Right handed batters always hit the ball off the clapboard negating the need for a 3rd baseman. A quick pitcher could handle the carom. In whiffle ball, players shift around depending on the lot size and the skill of the batter. If you wanted talk to your friend or finish a root beer ~ well go ahead. There's no coach to give orders.

The problem at my house was the awkward right field. My Dad’s extensive vegetable garden was the boundary line and you didn’t chase foul balls for fear of crushing tender carrot tops or breaking the delicate tomato plants. However, balls hit deeper were “in play” as the worst you could do was to run over the wild rhubarb plants that were sturdy and not so easy to damage. Anyway, the only one in town who used rhubarb was my Auntie Viola who made sour, tart-tasting pies each autumn. I didn’t mind ruining a few in the interest of a good play.

We never needed a catcher. You always swung on the first pitch and if you missed, the little white ball would bounce off the big pine tree or get caught up in the thick forsythia bush. Mother-nature was as much of the game as any one player.

The highlight of summer was to smack a good curve deep into center field beyond the reach of whoever was out that way. Unless you knew exactly how to do it ~ firing the tricky whiffle ball from the outfield straight back to the plate was an art unto itself. A routine baseball double was a whiffle ball home run.

I feel sorry for the kids in Greenwich.

Mind the Gap ~ Year

School-leavers around the world have just about sorted out their plans for the autumn.

In North America, college and university acceptances were mailed home to students some time ago. In Europe, many students this month are awaiting the results of the national university entrance exams which will determine their future (drum roll, please).

Other students are opting out. Not dropping out in the old sense ~ but choosing a gap year instead. Call it what you will [“year off", "deferred year," "bridging year," "travel year," "time off," or "time out") ~ the Gap Year, the most popular term, provides breathing room for young people to mature, relax, indulge, reflect, travel or even study in a setting different from the formal classroom.

I wonder if my life would have been any different if I had thought about taking a break when I was 18?

Later this month, I’ll call in an expert to fill in the GAPS about the GAP YEAR idea.

Glorious June, Sporting July, Olympian August

The Euro 2008 football competition has come and gone and what an event! Even if I missed predicting the championship finalists (Turkey vs. the Netherlands) most of the matches were either tantalizingly close or stunning upsets. In the end, the worthy Spaniards took the honors ~ relishing their first national title since 1964.

Like good wine ~ major league baseball ~ is fermenting into a vintage season. As we enter July, two Chicago teams are in first place in their respective leagues. The Cubbies last won the World Series 100 years ago in 1908. Is 2008 their year? Two unlikely Florida teams are at or near the top. Two Los Angeles teams are at or near the top. The perennial New York powers (Mets and Yankees) are languishing. What a mix.

Baseball’s All-Star Game will be played on July 15 at Yankee Stadium ~ specifically chosen as this will be the final season for the storied stadium before the Yanks move into new premises next year.

YIKES! That’s the same week as the British Open ~ or simply The Open as the British like to say. The tournament this summer is at Royal Birkdale

Speaking of golf ~ for the lesser mortals ~ but no less enthusiastic in their sporting fervor ~ word circulated the other day that my old mentor Dr. Gail Schoppert (“the pouch”) won the 14th Foreign Administrators and Retirees Tournament of Sport ~ famously known as FARTS in the world of international education. This year’s event was held at the Country Club of New Hampshire. Gail, a young 73 ~ is obviously still on top of his game.

What a month! And August is the Olympics. What a summer!