On the superficial level, the matter is quite simple. Foreign languages allow us to communicate with other people. This has significant impact on trade, diplomacy, war, humanitarianism, technology, and a host of other areas.
And that, really, should be enough.
But there is a deeper level still. When we learn a foreign language (or if we really want to be radical and subversive, several foreign languages) we open up our minds to new experiences, new conceptions, and new vistas of understanding. Learning a foreign language is not merely a matter of learning what sounds to make and in what order to make them so that we can say exactly what we would say in our own tongue. No: when we learn to speak a foreign language, we actually learn to say new things, things that could not even be conceived of through the prism/prison of our native tongue, things that widen our perspective and expand our horizons.
I will illustrate with a simple example. I have known French people who find it funny that we say sometimes that it is "raining cats and dogs," and admittedly, it is a somewhat amusing image, unless you are a person for the ethical treatment of animals, in which case it is horrifying. The French equivalent is "it is raining cords." I distinctly remember a rainy day in New Jersey when I looked out the neo-gothic windows and suddenly, to my astonishment, actually SAW cords of rain pouring down upon the verdant lawn below. It was through language, through specific French words and images unknown and inaccessible to me before, that I was suddenly able to see something that had always been there, but that I had lacked the linguistic-- and hence mental-- capacity or imagination to discern, plain though it was.
Of course, whether you see cords or various domestic animals coming down out of the sky is hardly the point, and I can't say my life is much richer for having seen "cords" of water descending from the heavens. The point is that new vocabularies and grammars give us access to realities never before envisioned. This is why we must not be the prisoners of one language only, for we would thus be limited in the scope and breadth of our imaginations as well as in our capacity to encounter and navigate the new. At the heart of a meaningful education lies the ability to engage with newness, to navigate ably new experiences. Our world is constantly changing and the ability to adapt our minds and ourselves to novel situations and conditions is vital. When we learn foreign languages, we realize that we can no longer simply place our new experiences in ready-made, preconceived mental categories by which we organize the world; we learn that we must create new boxes into which to fit the inevitable newness of the experiential worlds we are constantly discovering, and that some boxes must be significantly altered or even done away with altogether if we are to negotiate newness with any clarity or discernment. This is how learning foreign languages gives us a second chance at life; it tells us that there is a different way, that not everything must be as we have always assumed or taken for granted. It opens us up to new ways of thinking, challenging the very structures underlying our thoughts and our understanding of the world. It dares us to reconsider our organizing principles and even calls us to repentance, reminding us that other, newly discovered worlds of thought are lurking out there, and that sometimes the old thought patterns and world conceptions simply will not do, or at least that these could stand some enrichment.
So yes, while our performance on the cocktail circuit may seem enhanced by occasional references to foreign speech, while our friends may marvel at the linguistic variety of our bookshelves, and while women may swoon at the sound of the exotic idiom, these are mere distractions from the main or central purpose of foreign language study.
Foreign languages, with the possibility for new and varied experience that they bring, are, in fact, at the very heart of what it means to be human.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Mitt Romney and Me
People tend to vote for people like themselves, and in a representative democracy, I suppose that's ok, since we are supposed to elect people who represent us. And while Mitt Romney and I actually have very little in common, I believe that there will never again in my lifetime be a presidential candidate with whom I have more in common than the Mittster.
Sure, I am not a millionaire, and I have neither the hair nor the handsomeness that he has. I have not his Cadillacs nor his Mustang (I never will, if not by force, then at least by choice). I have not his apparent health, nor the lakeside mansion in New Hampshire, nor the beachfront property in California. I have not his business acumen, nor do I share his view that (cringe) corporations are people. I have not his penchant for building fences to keep Mexicans out. I do not blame faculty lounges for the ills of America (there aren't any... lounges, that is). My father was not a cabinet member, governor, or self-made millionaire. I did not go to Harvard and share a class with George W. Bush. The ambassador to France was not a family friend when I was growing up, and Richard Nixon did not come to my ring ceremony. My wife does not ride horses, and her father was not the mayor. I do not care for cars. I was never an AP, and I never had a near-death experience resulting from a drunken priest's reckless driving.
And yet...
like Mitt...
I, too, met my wife when I was 18 and she was just shy of 16 (the odds! the coincidence!). I, too, am a lifelong Mormon, with a convert AND French-major wife (quelle coincidence!) and come from a family of four children. I, too, have a parent who was born outside the United States. I, too, was a missionary in France, and came home and got some Ivy League degrees. I, too, am a Republican with some left-leaning flavor. I, too, have sung my whole life and like to sing. I, too, have a wife who makes granola the staple of our breakfasts. When you consider the statistical (un)likelihood of finding all of these uncanny compatibilities between a major presidential candidate and yourself, how can you not consider seriously voting for such a person? I mean, this is exactly the guy I would want to represent me in the White House, the person I would most like to share a (root) beer with, right?
Too bad I like Huntsman better.
Sure, I am not a millionaire, and I have neither the hair nor the handsomeness that he has. I have not his Cadillacs nor his Mustang (I never will, if not by force, then at least by choice). I have not his apparent health, nor the lakeside mansion in New Hampshire, nor the beachfront property in California. I have not his business acumen, nor do I share his view that (cringe) corporations are people. I have not his penchant for building fences to keep Mexicans out. I do not blame faculty lounges for the ills of America (there aren't any... lounges, that is). My father was not a cabinet member, governor, or self-made millionaire. I did not go to Harvard and share a class with George W. Bush. The ambassador to France was not a family friend when I was growing up, and Richard Nixon did not come to my ring ceremony. My wife does not ride horses, and her father was not the mayor. I do not care for cars. I was never an AP, and I never had a near-death experience resulting from a drunken priest's reckless driving.
And yet...
like Mitt...
I, too, met my wife when I was 18 and she was just shy of 16 (the odds! the coincidence!). I, too, am a lifelong Mormon, with a convert AND French-major wife (quelle coincidence!) and come from a family of four children. I, too, have a parent who was born outside the United States. I, too, was a missionary in France, and came home and got some Ivy League degrees. I, too, am a Republican with some left-leaning flavor. I, too, have sung my whole life and like to sing. I, too, have a wife who makes granola the staple of our breakfasts. When you consider the statistical (un)likelihood of finding all of these uncanny compatibilities between a major presidential candidate and yourself, how can you not consider seriously voting for such a person? I mean, this is exactly the guy I would want to represent me in the White House, the person I would most like to share a (root) beer with, right?
Too bad I like Huntsman better.
Monday, September 5, 2011
A Beloit College List For Latter-day Saint Missionaries
The annual Beloit College Freshman Attitudes list just came out again last week. This is the list of attributes that incoming college freshmen supposedly share, and we as faculty are supposed to read the list and marvel at how different the attitudes of typical college freshmen are from our own. Usually, the list is at least moderately successful in accomplishing said goal of astonishing college professors, and the older the professor, the more astonishment there is to go around.
This got me thinking: we ought to have a similar list for Mormon missionaries. Technology and remarkable changes in both the church and the world at large have led to remarkable changes in the attitudes of young missionaries who enter the MTC this fall. Most of these changes are reflective of the miraculous growth that the church has seen all across the world in recent years.
What first got me thinking along these lines was a missionary who asked me, while I was on an exchange, whether my father spoke Russian because he served his mission there. What was astonishing to me about his remark has nothing to do with ignorance of recent church history or world events, but rather how important it is to describe to the rising generations the miraculous opening of the nations to the preaching of the restored gospel. Prophecies have been fulfilled in a remarkable way over my lifetime, and the miraculous nature of these needs to be emphasized.
So here is my list, in no particular order:
1) Missionaries have been sending e-mails home for as long as they can remember
2) Church membership has been in the double-digit millions for as long as they can remember, and maybe if they think hard, they can faintly remember a time when native English-speakers actually outnumbered non-English speakers in church membership.
3) Missionaries have always been sent forth to preach the Gospel to the nations of Eastern Europe.
4) Iron what?
5) A temple in Kiev does not seem any more remarkable than a temple in Stockholm, which definitely does not seem all that remarkable.
6) They cannot remember a time when the church did not have a web page.
7) There has always been an MTC, and it has always taught languages in the scores.
8) Missionaries with mandatory bike helmets and cell phones do not seem unusual.
9) mormon.org is a website that, under mission rules, they must spend some time on every week.
10) Of course there are thousands of members of the church in Mongolia; why wouldn't there be?
11) What are Targeteers?
12) Give said the who?
13) Sundays have always meant one single trip to church.
14) A Mormon Senate Majority Leader is not unusual.
15) Two Mormon presidential candidates is not unusual.
16) What's a flannel board?
17) They have always been as the armies of Helaman.
18) Of course missionaries can text people.
19) Smaller temples have existed ever since they can remember.
20) General Conference from the Tabernacle is a faint memory, eclipsed by many more memories of the Conference Center.
There are probably many more that could be added to this list (I think the Beloit list always has a 75 attributes). What are yours?
This got me thinking: we ought to have a similar list for Mormon missionaries. Technology and remarkable changes in both the church and the world at large have led to remarkable changes in the attitudes of young missionaries who enter the MTC this fall. Most of these changes are reflective of the miraculous growth that the church has seen all across the world in recent years.
What first got me thinking along these lines was a missionary who asked me, while I was on an exchange, whether my father spoke Russian because he served his mission there. What was astonishing to me about his remark has nothing to do with ignorance of recent church history or world events, but rather how important it is to describe to the rising generations the miraculous opening of the nations to the preaching of the restored gospel. Prophecies have been fulfilled in a remarkable way over my lifetime, and the miraculous nature of these needs to be emphasized.
So here is my list, in no particular order:
1) Missionaries have been sending e-mails home for as long as they can remember
2) Church membership has been in the double-digit millions for as long as they can remember, and maybe if they think hard, they can faintly remember a time when native English-speakers actually outnumbered non-English speakers in church membership.
3) Missionaries have always been sent forth to preach the Gospel to the nations of Eastern Europe.
4) Iron what?
5) A temple in Kiev does not seem any more remarkable than a temple in Stockholm, which definitely does not seem all that remarkable.
6) They cannot remember a time when the church did not have a web page.
7) There has always been an MTC, and it has always taught languages in the scores.
8) Missionaries with mandatory bike helmets and cell phones do not seem unusual.
9) mormon.org is a website that, under mission rules, they must spend some time on every week.
10) Of course there are thousands of members of the church in Mongolia; why wouldn't there be?
11) What are Targeteers?
12) Give said the who?
13) Sundays have always meant one single trip to church.
14) A Mormon Senate Majority Leader is not unusual.
15) Two Mormon presidential candidates is not unusual.
16) What's a flannel board?
17) They have always been as the armies of Helaman.
18) Of course missionaries can text people.
19) Smaller temples have existed ever since they can remember.
20) General Conference from the Tabernacle is a faint memory, eclipsed by many more memories of the Conference Center.
There are probably many more that could be added to this list (I think the Beloit list always has a 75 attributes). What are yours?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)