Connections

Palabra del día

Materials for sufficiently refreshing my Spanish by September.

Every day I receive by email a Spanish word of the day from about.com/Spanish.  I have been keeping all the words in a small notebook that I read through a couple of times per week.  Now I have extra motivation:  In a little less than a month my husband and I will be going to Spain to visit friends in Barcelona and La Seu D'Urgell in Catalonia.  I have pulled out my 501 Verbs, my book on Idioms and various others to refresh my vocabulary as none of our three friends speak English, only Spanish, Catalan and some French.  My husband understands a lot of Spanish but doesn't speak much.  I can make my way around and communicate well but there are definitely some glitches in my fluency.  Actually it is almost easier to just leave English behind and operate in Spanish because it is more difficult to switch from Spanish to English and back again.  However, that would involve leaving my husband behind and I'm definitely not going to do that.

All this reminded me of why I decided to begin to study Spanish at the age of 53:  I wanted to be bilingual--and I wanted to learn a language I could actually use.  I studied German (mostly reading and translation--very little conversation)  at my University in the 60s and 20 years went by before I ever heard a word in German.  Except for being able to distinguish entrances from exits and to say good morning and good night, today I have no residual knowledge of the German language.

Recently there has been much emotional debate about immigration and problems that obviously need addressing with sane and humane discussion in search of solutions.  One Denver newspaper reporter did an in-depth study of the entire issue which was printed as a series.  Since it involved complex issues relevant to both English and Spanish speakers in our area, the Editors decided to publish the articles in both languages.

For the next week the paper was filled with Letters to the Editor full of vitriolic diatribes against printing it in a language other than English. The hubbub has calmed somewhat but is about to rear its ugly head again as the November election nears.  On the Colorado ballot there will be a citizen's initiative to change the state constitution to prohibit bilingual education in Denver's Public Schools.  In my opinion, our state--and for that matter the world--could use more bilingualism. not less. I feel that with each new language one studies comes new cultural understanding. One of the reasons I love our country is for its diversity, so I have no patience for people who consider it unpatriotic to fund bilingual education in our schools. 

I am pretty fluent in writing, reading and speaking Spanish--am working on listening and training my ear to accents--and have been told that I have good ability with languages. Still, I can promise you that if I were asked to sign a legal document, a medical release, any binding statement or financial agreement, I'd definitely want to read it in my first language--and even then might ask for a lawyer to review it.

I will never understand why some people are so paranoid about people speaking another language with their family and friends. I do believe people living in our country should make an effort to learn English as a second language but I also know how long it took me to be fluent. Mastering a language, especially as an adult, is not easy. I have been studying for 12 years once or twice a week for 2 hours and I still can't follow the dialogue on Spanish language TV.  The actors speak entirely too fast for me.

Back to the task at hand:  I can hardly wait to visit Barcelona, Costa Brava, Bilbao and the Basque Country, see more of the wonderful 1000-year-old villages sprinkled around Northern Spain--and hopefully speak with some of the people we meet.

Meaning of "educated"

In Sunday's Denver Post I read this article which I have been pondering every day since.  As a long-ago high school teacher I was appalled that education, in the schools where I taught, consisted primarily of rote memory of facts and regurgitation of those facts on written exams.. There was rarely a thought of soliciting opinions about those facts, of imagining circumstances under which things might have occurred differently--with different results.

As my children went through school,  more emphasis on a broader viewpoint, multiple options and understanding concepts replaced the search for the "one-and-only correct answer."  Critical thinking and problem solving became the goal to be attained.  Logic, psychology and the scientific method were taught in high schools, though not required. 

Critical thinking has become a rare commodity in public discourse.  To think critically, in my opinion, is to be able to follow a logical sequence of thought and recognize the difference between reasoning toward a conclusion supported by observation or evidence and choosing a conclusion then seeking justification for that outcome. In recent years, critical inquiry in search of solutions for problems has been replaced by "euphemisms," "talking points" and "spin"

One of the main influences on my attitude toward critical thinking came from the whimsically named CSICOP (Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal).  In the mid-1980's we drove to Boulder to hear Steven Jay Gould speak.  He was not only the guest speaker but a founding member of CSICOP.  Over the years we have attended several of their conferences.  The main purpose of the organization is to re-enforce the idea that if scientific claims are made, then the examination of that claim must be through the scientific method with controlled studies, collection and analysis of data and submission of all results to peer review.  Thus if a claim is made that wearing a green crystal around your neck will cure your gall bladder, then it must be submitted to a scientific inquiry to determine if there is evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship.

It was not until my university studies that I was introduced to sciences and it completely changed my world view.  In my opinion, an "educated" person should have a basic knowledge of science and it saddens me that the US is lagging behind most other developed nations in cultivating knowledge of science and mathematics.  I don't think everyone should become a research scientist or physicist but I do think that if more people understood "natural" causes, there would be less dependence on "supernatural" solutions.