Tuesday, July 20, 2021
Macron and Lagarde are exceptions
France Trapped in the Past
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/france-trapped-in-the-past-d96c709362b6
For
fifty years now, France has followed the erring EU on how to teach foreign
languages and the result is frighteningly abominable. It all spins on one
person who managed to impose the notional-functional pedagogy of MAK Halliday
devised for migrant populations in extreme urgency, and he implemented it onto
school children who only have one urgency in their life: watch TV or play with
their cellphone or smartphone. They don't even try to get a detour around their
parents' blocking porno sites. They are too lazy, as Eddy Constantine would
say, and not adventurous enough to try and do this. In their daily solitude
self-imposed onto themselves by their "telephones" they live in a
dreamland in a dream landscape in a dream nowhere, EREWHON as a certain Butler
would say.
It
is high time we rethink the teaching of foreign languages in Europe for most
people if not everyone to be able to cope with their neighbors or their guests,
their European neighbors or the migrating visitors from all around the world.
Europe is by far one or two generations late and France is one more generation
later than everyone else. They love French so much they would rather die than
order their lunch outside France in any other language than French, even if it
is couscous or pizza, not to mention paella and sauerkraut. Glück auf my
friends and Prozit!
2021, Medium.com
