Subject: regarding American system failure
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Tue 25 Jan 2000 - 05:24:32 MET
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 14:24:32 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: regarding American system failure
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A comment on a side: American system cannot fail if only because of its
power to buy. Thus rather than often taking pride in things accomplished
(which are many by all means) one still needs to critically assess what
failure means, what knowledge is, how is it created and how come that it
took several Europeans to put America at the front in the war-technology
race? WHy not Afganistan?
When one watches Film awards, or music awards, one gets the impression
that had it not been for teh American culture, people would be bored out
of their brains. I have not read the book on the manufactured crisis, but
what should I be proud of when, in the field of my concern: i.e. second
language teaching, all I see around is so called practitioners struggling
on a daily basis and the leading edge academics engaged in the battle
whether learners should be taught 3rd person singular in the 4 week or 4
year! We can fight here but studies still show that most people take
professions which they learnt not at school but somehow at home! That
means that the world turns around in balance: the children of blue collar
workers stay blue collar workers and the children of white collar workers,
well, they somehow appear a "university material"...
Somewhere I read, btw, that culturally sensitive teaching is about
appropriating methodology to one's background! Well, we will have programs
for culturally advantaged and culturally disadvantaged. By all means, some
countries can afford it. But the final question is: what will the
consequence be of such a segregation policy? TEH crisis is not
manufactured, if some do not see it this is because of the frog-effect
(from a movie): put a from on hot mud, it will jump. Put te frog on cold
mud and slowely heat it up, it will cook brown.
Ania Lian
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