Dont insist on English Patricia Ryan

I know what you’re thinking you think

I’ve lost my way and somebody is going

to come on the stage in a minute and

guide me gently back to my feet

I get that all the time in Dubai here on

holiday are you dear come to visit the

children how long are you staying

well actually I hope for a while longer

yet I have been living and teaching in

the Gulf for over 30 years and in that

time I have seen a lot of changes

now that statistic is quite shocking and

I want to talk to you today about

language loss and the globalization of

English I want to tell you about my

friend who was teaching English to

adults in Abu Dhabi and one fine day she

decided to take them into the garden to

teach them some nature vocabulary but it

was she who ended up learning all the

Arabic words for the local plants as

well as their uses medicine new uses

cosmetics cooking herbal how did those

students get all that knowledge of

course from their grandparents and even

their great-grandparents it’s not it’s

not necessary to tell you how important

it is to be able to communicate across

generations but sadly today languages

are dying at an unprecedented rate a

language dies every 14 days now at the

same time English is the undisputed

global language could there be a

connection well I don’t know but I do

know that I’ve seen a lot of changes

when I first came out to the Gulf

I came to Kuwait in the days when it was

still a hardship post actually not that

long ago that is a little bit too early

but nevertheless I was recruited by the

British Council along with about 25

other teachers and we were the first

non-muslims to teach in the state

schools there in Kuwait we were brought

to teach English because the government

wanted to modernize the country and to

empower the citizens through

education and of course the UK benefited

from some of that lovely oil wealth okay

now this is the major change that I’ve

seen how teaching English has morphed

from being a mutually beneficial

practice to becoming a massive

international business that it is today

no longer just the foreign language on

the school curriculum and no longer the

sole domain of mother England it has

become a bandwagon for every

english-speaking nation on earth and why

not after all the best education

according to the latest World University

Rankings is to be found in the

universities of the UK and the US so

everybody wants to have an English

education naturally but if you’re not a

native speaker you have to pass a test

now can it be right to reject the

student on linguistic ability alone

perhaps you have a computer scientist

who’s a genius would he need the same

language as a lawyer for example well I

don’t think so we English teachers

reject them all the time we put a stop

sign and we stop them in their tracks

they can’t pursue their dream any longer

till they get English now let me put it

this way if I met a monolingual Dutch

speaker who had the cure for cancer

would I stop him from entering my

British University I don’t think so but

indeed that is exactly what we do we

English teachers are the gatekeepers and

you have to satisfy us first that your

English is good enough now it can be

dangerous to give too much power

to a narrow segment of society maybe the

barrier would be to universal okay but I

hear you say what about the research

it’s all in English

so the books are in English the the

journals are done in or in English but

that is a self-fulfilling prophecy it

feeds the English requirement and so it

goes on I ask you what happened to

translation if you think about the

Islamic Golden Age there was lots of

generation then they translated from

Latin and Greek into Arabic into Persian

and then it was translated on into the

Germanic languages of Europe and the

Romance languages and so light shone

upon the dark ages of Europe now don’t

get me wrong

I am NOT against teaching English all

Ewing’s teach each other I love it that

we have a global language we need one

today more than ever but I am against

using it as a barrier do we really want

to end up with six hundred languages and

the main one being English or Chinese we

need more than that where do we draw the

line

this system equates intelligence there’s

a knowledge of English which is quite

arbitrary

and I want to remind you that the the

Giants upon whose shoulders today’s

intelligentsia stand did not have to

have English they didn’t know how to

pass an English test case in point

Einstein he by the way

was considered remedial at school

because he was in fact dyslexic but

fortunately for the world he did not

have to pass an English test because

they didn’t start until 1964 with TOEFL

the American Test of English now it’s

exploded

there are lots not to test of English

and millions and millions of students do

take these tests every year now you

might think you and me those fees aren’t

fad they’re okay but they are

prohibitive to so many millions of poor

people so immediately we’re rejecting

them brings to mind a headline I saw

recently education the Great Divide now

I get it I understand why people would

want to focus on English they want to

give their children the best chance in

life and to do that they need a Western

education because of course the best

jobs go to people out of the Western

universities that I put on earlier it’s

a circular thing okay let me tell you a

story about two scientists two english

scientists they were doing an experiment

to do with genetics and the four limbs

and the hind limbs of animals but they

couldn’t get their results they wanted

they really didn’t know what to do until

Along Came a German scientist who

realized that they were using two words

for falling and hind limb

whereas genetics does not differentiate

and neither does German so bingo problem

solved if you can’t think the thought

you are stuck but if another language

can think that thought then by

cooperating we can achieve and learn so

much more

my daughter came to England from Kuwait

she had studied science and mathematics

in Arabic at an Arabic medium school she

had to translate it into English at her

Bremer school and she was the best in

the class of the subjects which tells us

that when students come to us from

abroad we may not be giving them enough

credit for what they know and they know

it in their own language when a language

dies we don’t know what we lose with

that language this is I don’t know if

you saw it on CNN recently they gave the

Heroes award to a young Kenyan shepherd

boy who couldn’t study at night in his

village like all the village children

because the kerosene lamp it had smoke

and it damaged his eyes and anyway there

was never enough kerosene because what

does a dollar a day buy for you so he

invented a cost-free solar lamp and now

the children in his village get the same

grades at school as the children who

have electricity at home and when

when he received to the board he said

these lovely words the children can lead

Africa from what it is today

a dark continent to a light continent a

simple idea but it could have such

far-reaching consequences people who

have no light whether it’s physical or

metaphorical cannot pass our exams and

we can never know what they know that

does not keep them and ourselves in the

dark let us celebrate diversity mind

your language use it to spread great

ideas

thank you very much

to France