Learning A Language Through Insults

     It is not easy to learn another language, especially to the extent of going to another country and emerging oneself among people who speak another language.  David Sedaris wrote Me Talk Pretty One Day after resuming his education by going to school in France.  The writing of this essay is slightly ironic, since Sedaris is known for being a spoken word poet and public speaker.  He "lost his intelligence" when he went to learn another language in another country, since it was difficult to even form a correct sentence.  His teacher was harsh and verbally abusive to her students and mocked them for speaking incorrectly.

     A limited vocabulary often invites controversy due to the fact that words can be misused or have a different meaning under slang.  Sedaris's teacher in France would yell at her students constantly for misusing words, and would yell insults at the students in a language they did not understand.  "Even a Fiuscrzsa Ticiwelmun knows that a typewriter is feminine," was said by the teacher one day.  I believe that the teacher upset the students on purpose.  It is hurtful to be called a name in one's native language, and even worse to be sworn at in a different language since one does not know what the insult truly means.  The teacher had a "better than thou" attitude, which then motivated students to surpass and please her in order to be perfect.  Sedaris was motivated to improve by the teachers harsh and abrasive words.

     Sedaris and his classmates were motivated to understand.  Understanding comes from hardship and difficulties, since being thrown into a situation forces one to adapt.  It does not occur all at once, but understanding, especially a language, comes over time.  It is also possible to understand other things besides facts.  For example, Sedaris began to understand his teachers teaching method.  At the end of this essay, he touches upon the feeling that comes from understanding.  It is a liberating feeling that opens ones mind to learn more.  There is a feeling that there is a whole other world out there to explore, and when one learns another language, insults and all, it really is another world and culture.  By the end of the class Sedaris was able to completely understand his teachers degrading comments fluently, providing him with a sense of pride and confidence, allowing him to speak out to against his teacher.

A Flawed System

     Our American school system has its positive aspects, but there is still much room for change.  It is positive in the sense that it is possible to return to school to receive a further degree, or even try a new topic just for fun.  Despite this, instead of developing to include more areas of study in high school, the education department is cutting different programs.  High schools have forced students into a corner and limit their opportunity to find what they truly want to do in life.  The arts among other things are being cut, and the importance of varsity sports are being stressed.  Students need to know what they want to do with there life in college, but the process of discovering oneself should begin at the high school level.

      In class, we read an article by Leon Botstein titled Let Teenagers Try Adulthood.  I personally did not enjoy Botstein's argument, even though he did raise some good points.  His argument was very weak; he called for a change in the school system where the ages of each level of education dropped, so school would begin at a younger age.  However, he did not state how this change would be enacted or how this would affect the teachers too.  The teachers would need to relearn how to teach a particular age group, and the requirements for each tier of the education system would change.  Simply high school cannot change, since then elementary school, middle school, and college requirements would need to change.  

     In his argument, Botstein claims that students should decide what field they wish to go into when they are 16 rather than 18.  From there, they would go to a specialized school.  This is a problem for two reasons.  Very often, even at the age of 18, students do not know what they wish to do in life and those who do are a special few.  If many students do not know what they wish to do at the age of 18, how would they be expected to know what they wish to do at 16? Many students would also take the easy way out and go into a specialized field that will require little effort, creating a job imbalance.  Even though students have lots of freedom and are experiencing outside of the classroom that they previously hadn't, they are not ready to decide what they wish to do in life at the age of 16.

      The school system is defiantly in need for a change, and I support Botstein in the sense that there should be more opportunities, but his argument was weak and did not take into consideration the consequences for the change.  High school could become more like college, where there is a set required of classes for the first to years, but then after that it would be more personalized to the student.  For example, there would be the required science, but the student would be able to take something that they may want to go into.  An artist could take an anatomy science class to help improve their body proportions and portrait drawings.   This may not work however, since the college level would need to adjust their required classes in order to accept this adjusted form of education.  However, any level of change in the education curriculum would need a chain reaction with the other levels of education as well.