Languages And Autumn

Learning A Language

Filters of all kind are used on the internet nowadays to discover who you are and what you may want and I've definitely been identified as an English ex-pat. One consequence is that I'm constantly being made offers to place my private pension abroad (already done) and to learn languages. As it happens I already speak reasonable French but some of the offers make me laugh. This man learned a language in a week, I'm told, and this other man speaks 11 languages; learn his secrets! It's of interest to me because friend Steve and I are about to restart our English conversation classes here in Mollans.

Fortunately I know enough (more than enough) not to pursue any of these offers. Having studied French to university level, taught in French for a year at a French secondary school and now lived full-time in France for 10 years, I find I am still learning the language. And I don't think I'm a particularly unintelligent student. So how do these apparent geniuses manage it?

The answer, of course, is that they don't; they can't possibly do so. What is possible after a week? Being able to say hello, goodbye, the weather is fine, my name is…..not much more. Which poses the question: what does being able to speak a language really mean?

If we are talking about anywhere near perfection then the majority of native speakers of the language would fail so we can rule that one out. Given the last few decades of teaching, we can also rule out understanding and use of grammar. Spelling? The most obvious howlers abound on the internet and even in supposedly reputable journals. So what are we left with?

I think it is the ability to communicate, with a reasonable degree of subtlety, what we think, want, or mean to say for most, but by no means all, practical purposes. That much, given considerable immertion in the language, should be achievable within a year, maybe a bit less. But……...the problem with communication is that it is necessarily two-way; you may be able to communicate to someone else but can you understand what comes back? Here we're into accents, dialects, idioms and Heaven knows what else. Learning that in a week? Learning that for eleven languages? I simply don't believe it is possible. I think it probably takes best part of a lifetime for even one language.

Autumn

Autumn is definitely here now. The very hot and dry summer weather continued until a week ago but a couple of storms have put paid to it and at the moment we have much more comfortable temperatures and skies varyng between overcast and sunny. The change shows in the shops and markets and in activities around the village. Much of the fruit I love has now disappeared. The last strawberries went about a month ago and apricots have followed them. There are still peaches, nectarines and melons to be found though and figs have made an appearance; I'm making the most of them until they disappear too, probably around the end of the month. Around the village grape harvesters and trailers are everywhere as the grapes are stripped from the vines for what should be a bumper year, given the amount of sunshine we have had. The next stage will be several varieties of mushrooms in the shops and invitations to wineries to celebrate the new vintages. Autumn here can be great as the village gets back to normal after the hordes of summer visitors, welcome as they are, return from whence they came. So there is still much to enjoy.

Education, Don't Knows And Burkinis

Conundrums And The Truth

Everybody at some time or another wants to know the truth, the trouble being that nobody really knows it. Everybody also forms judgements, probably several times every day, and most want these judgements to be reasonably well informed. And, of course, these two are closely connected. So how can we best go about them?

When my mind wanders into conundrums like these and the weather is as warm, as it is now, I commonly take to my balcony late in the evening with a glass of calvados to hand, contemplate the darkening scenery across the river and think. The balcony is actually a no-go area at the moment due to a colony of hornets feeding on the grapes above but evening contemplation and calvados remain.

We live in an age when information has never been more immediate or in such plentiful supply and yet, perhaps, never so useless. The printed press, the internet, TV and radio deluge us with information 24 hours per day but always, it seems, either with a strong political bias or bland acceptance of what participants are saying in their own interest. At root is the apparently wilful failure to distinguish between what is actually said and done and comment on it. We need our dubito as never before.

The only answer I can see to this problem is to teach people to think, really think deeply, for themselves. Unfortunately, educational systems quite generally seem hell-bent on the opposite. I have just viewed a French cartoon of a teacher with a diary almost filled with holidays and days of strike. Teachers in France, as those in the UK that I know, are all pissed off. It takes determined mismanagement to piss off people dedicated to doing what they are supposed to be doing. An advert for teachers in the UK that has been running in the on TV says “work with the most creative and innovative people around: children”. True. What it doesn't say is “turn them into box ticking robots” or “and learn to become a first-class administrative clerk”. But that would be far nearer the truth. Education has become a political football that never gets near its true goal.

“Don't Knows” Win At Last

Before any election anywhere in the democratic world there are always polls suggesting how people will vote, with always a percentage of “don't knows”. The “don't knows” never win an election but seem to have won the UK EU referendum. It's probably a worldwide first. The UK population voted, apparently, for Brexit means Brexit, but nobody knows what that means. The government that has inherited this mandate has been asked if that means a trade deal with the EU and it has said that it doesn't know. It has been asked what curbs this might mean on immigration and it has said that it doesn't know. It has been asked what this means for the rights of EU citizens in the UK or in the EU and it has said that it doesn't know. Asked if it knows today's date it might just know but that is about as far as it goes. So the “don't knows” who won are now being governed by the government which doesn't know. There's a kind of logic to that but, to be frank, even Alice in Wonderland made more sense to me than that.

Burkinis Again

The French government has got its knickers in a twist over Burkinis. The ban imposed in some municipalities has been overruled by a high court. It turns out that this garb was designed by an Australian to actually liberate muslim women rather than confine them, in line witn France's well-known liberty, equality and fraternity principles. However, amusing comparisons with wet suits, diving gear and other comparable clothing aside, it does apparently conflict with France's principle of not allowing open public display of religious affiliation. But…….nuns and priests in traditional clothing, on view just about everywhere in France?

As ever this looks to be a case of France having strict principles and rules that get overlooked when they prove inconvenient. This, in reality, is the real principle in France: something is always true except when it isn't. I have a limited acquaintance with political animals but those I have known have a clear understanding of “no go” areas. They know that anything to do with human relationships is something that government is bad at and a potential minefield: don't go there, prevaricate. Clothing is something similar. I remember the dictatorship that briefly took over Greece in the 1960s banned mini-skirts only to be confronted with the fact that they were part of the uniform of the national guard. But that was a case of generals rather than politicians making the ruling. Politicians should know better than to get involved in such matters. It seems that French politicians have fallen for this sucker punch and they really should know better.

Brexit And Burkinis

Brexit

The Huffingon Post, a rare example of a reasonable and responsible press publication in the UK, even if online only, recently published an article on the best response to Brexit for the UK. As a criterion it took the words of Jeremy Bentham, an 18^th century philosopher and social reformer who said that the best distinction between what was morally right and wrong was the test of what brought the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. It applied this test to Brexit and measured known voter preferences and found, essentially, that a “hard” Brexit (absolute control of borders and no trade agreement with EU) would please only a minority of the population, a “soft” Brexit (minor control of borders and an EU trade agreement) would please virtually no one and that the status quo, no Brexit, would please all but a small majority and would make of PM Theresa May the most popular PM in decades. So what is the UK going to do? Probably the first of these, according to PM Theresa May herself. So, economic suicide, political suicide (and don't ask about the morality); a death wish or what?

As a footnote, Jeremy Bentham advocated (in the 18^th century) individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce and decriminalisation of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty and the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known in recent years as an early advocate of animal rights.

Burkinis Etc

There has been a recent brouhaha in the press in France over the fact that various notable holiday resorts alomg the Mediterranean riviera and Corsica have banned on beaches the so-called burkini, a garb that covers most of the body.  Personally I don't care what, if anything, people wear when on beaches but, being male, am all in favour of attractive exposure of female form. But that is incidental and purely a personal preference. The French justification for the ban has been overt public display of religious affiliation, which is against French law, and thereby justified. But, the argument rages, is it anti-Islamic? It turns out that the Burkini is also banned, in public swimming pools, in no less an anti-Islamic(?) state as Morocco, for hygienic reasons, and bikinis are specifically allowed. I think that if you want to argue on what is anti- this or that religion you can argue forever and will probably never arrive at any point on which most people agree. If that is the death of political correctness, I'm all in favour.

On a humourous note I caught some footage on the Internet of purported coverage of the Olympics on strict Islamic TV channels. I've no idea whether the images were in fact taken from some nations official TV channels or not but the results were hilarious. Since sight of most of the female form is banned, womens' races consisted of black blobs with hands and feet flaying rushing in a line; and how anyone made sense of the gymnastics I'm at a loss to know. How can one black blob be seen as more precise, elegant or artistic than another identical black blob? It was hilarious viewing if true but I have a strong suspicion that any channel operating under such constraints would simply not broadcast these events at all. That in turn raises an interesting point: if these events are not broadcast in some countries, does this mean that for citizens of those countries such events don't exist? What happens if one of the country's participants wins a medal….? Alice in Wonderland territory.

As a further footnote, an Islamic extremist in the UK has now been convicted of inciting terrorism, with the incriminating evidence accumulating over many years. The Islamic hierarchy in the UK has reacted to this by saying they have been arguing for this conviction for a decade. So why did it take so long for the UK authorities to act? Political correctness again.

Tests And Racism

Test Results

I was reminded of something I did when teaching at Summerhill by a post by friend Roy Terry on Facebook. Roy's post was a warning against testing children too early. He was quite right, I thought, but with reservations. The problem I see is not so much in the tests themselves, provided there aren't too many of them, but in the treatment of the results.

At Summerhill, wanting to know how much of what I had been teaching the kids had actually been understood, I told them I would give them a test. Consternation all round! We don't have tests at Summerhill, I was told. So I explained why I wanted to give them a test and said they needn't take it if they didn't want to. In the event, all the classs did take it and I corrected their papers and returned them. More consternation! I hadn't given them any scores and they wanted to know who had come first, last, etc. I said I didn't know and wasn't interested; I'd found out what I wanted to know, which was what they had understood and what they hadn't. They hadn't wanted to take the test because they had been afraid of being ranked low but, having taken the test, wanted to know how they were ranked. The test taught me that kids had learned to expect test results to rank them and, possibly, show they had succeeded or failed. But I see no reason why that should be so. In the general education system it is so only because the authorities want league tables and tick boxes which, in my view, have very little to do with education (or anything at all come to that, except tick boxes and meaningless numbers).

Racism In The UK

Post Brexit there has been a measurable and worrying increase in the UK of race-related hate crimes. That disturbs me and tends to confirm my suspicion that the referendum result was basically decided by at best xenophobia and at worst outright racism. Many Leave voters have said that it was not immigration but taking back control that was the key issue for them; but taking back control of what? Theresa May seems clear that the message was to take back control of the borders; and what does that mean? It means keeping out foreigners.

Most of the popular press in the UK which campaigned for a Leave vote is now engaged in what I can only describe as incitement to race hatred. Positive stories on immigrants are simply not reported and any negative stories, however singular, are given headlines with implications that such stories are widespread. This has an exact analogy with Germany in the 1930s and the rise of Hitler and I think any decent lawyer could make a good case for a complaint to IPSO, the Press Complaints body, for inciting race hatred. There are laws in the UK against that so why has no complaint (to my knowledge) been made? There's no prima facie case, the popular press is too clever for that, but I can't see how the cumulative body of evidence could lead to any other conclusion. Maybe it's a question of who has the will and the courage.

As an ironic footnote, recent figures show that the UK has more emigrants in Europe than any other European country. In other words, the UK has more immigrants in other European countries than other European countries have elsewhere. So who exactly is against immigration?

Muslims, The Press And Summer

Muslims And The Press

I have been struck by a couple of recent newspaper articles, or perhaps rather the absence of them. In London recently there was a demonstration by thousands of muslims against the violence of Daesh. However, you could easily have missed that fact if you weren't there. It wasn't reported in most of the UK press; anyone who reads the Mail, Express, Star, or Sun remember reading about it? Here in France a large number of muslims have attended a Catholic service at the church in Normany where the Catholic priest was murdered, to show sympathy and solidarity with the congregation. Any chance of that being reported in the Mail, Express, Star or Sun, as the murder of the priest of course was?

In my youth I remember being shocked when no lesser a paper than The Times (a reputable newspaper at the time, incidentally) was hauled before the Press Council, the UK body then responsible for press ethics, and found guilty of distorting the truth by not reporting a signifcant event: the Sharpeville massacre somehow escaped its attention. In fact, I believe that that was only the second time that The Times had been found guilty by the Press Council, the earlier time being for the same offence and, I think, something to do with Hitler; it might have been Crystal Night that was somehow overlooked. I note this only to make the point that omission, failure to report an event, can be as much a distortion as misrepresenting whatever has happened. However, I believe the Press Council had jurisdiction over newspapers only, not comics and I'm not sure about the current body or whether it is able to distinguish between the two.

Summer Rolls On

We've had a few days of storms and some rain but the excessive heat is still with us; 38 degrees in the shade this afternoon. So I've been watering frantically to keep plants alive. The formal village festivities are already over for this year and its grandchildren time for the older residents. I seem to have acquired a pet masonry wasp, the type with a thin thorax and bulges at both ends. It has been buzzing around my head as I sit at my PC for a couple of weeks now and goes into the book shelf beside me, presumably building the little masonry pots in which it stores an egg and a paralysed spider. It must go out at night because every morning when I open the door onto the balcony it comes buzzing in to continue its work. The end result is rather gruesome. When the egg hatches the grub eats the spider, turns into a wasp, breaks the pot and flies off. But that's nature. When I go to my books I'll try not to disturb the pots until they are empty.

Power Depresses Me

Power Depresses Me

There is a saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I've always taken that as true (as a tendency) but never thought much more about it. However I feel that the full truth of that saying is now coming home to roost and that feeling depresses me. I feel that the world is becoming polarised, with only the extreme right and extreme left having any audible voices, and a yawning strange silence in between.

In the UK there can be little doubt that the Brexit vote has delighted right-wing extremists and increased their power to influence affairs. In the UK also there is the case of Sir Philip Green who has undoubtedly made himself rich at the expense of both the people who worked for his enterprise and the pension-fund dependents. Legal steps may reclaim some money for the latter but there is no doubt who will be the richer and undefended poorer as a result. It is an example of capitalism red in tooth and claw; and out of control.

Margaret Thatcher, in her long tenure as UK Prime Minister, made it socially OK (for everyone) to be rich. I personally have no quarrel with that (although many other quarrels with Thatcher's tenure). Unfortunately, as a side-effect, she seems to have made that a supremely desirable goal, without any clearly inferred corollaries on how riches are acquired. There is an unstated inference that riches should be acquired legally but within a legal system that is clearly inadequate to secure financial justice for those that need it. The overall impression is: get rich by any means that doesn't get caught by the legal system.

In Europe the Brexit vote has also delighted right-wing factions and added to their power. Moreover, apart from the attitude of Angela Merkel, it seems to have produced a reaction that can be summed up as: who cares, we'll carry on regardless. The high priests of the EU show no sign of recognising any need for reform. They, after all, have the power and intend to go on exercising it as they choose, without reference to unrest (and in some cases, indeed, very significant suffering) in EU countries as a result of their actions. The reaction of the EU Commission is analogous to Marie Antoinette's famous “so let them eat cake”, and you know what happened after that.

In the USA we have two unpopular Presidential candidates at least one of whom has shown willingness, indeed eagerness, to throw military might against any nation disapproved of.

The result seems to me to be an almost global polarisation in countries that have had large middle classes (it has long been apparent in Asia) between “haves” and “have nots” that are so far apart as to invite revolution, rioting in the streets, or worse, war, in and between nations who should know better. It's a combustible situation and I don't see any fire-fighters of stature. It's a depressing thought.

Chopsticks

The fact that the Chinese eat with chopsticks is well known. The Chinese, over many centuries, have also proven themselves to be a very inventive people. So why did they never invent forks? This remains for me one of the most challenging mysteries of the evolution of the world. The Chinese do have spoons; if you have ever attempted to eat soup (of which the Chinese have always had plenty) with chopsticks you will understand why. So why not forks? They are only a chopstick with three prongs after all and they greatly facilitate the ubiqitous action of scooping up food from some platter into the mouth. If you've ever seen someone eating rice with chopsticks (platter held close to the mouth, tossing rice in) it's immediately obvious how much easier that would be with a fork or even a spoon. So why do it that way? When I eat Chinese meals I always ask for a fork. I want to enjoy the meal, not go through contortions. I know some of my friends insist on chopsticks, to show their expertise in using them, a bravura show. That's OK but surely the Chinese wouldn't want to put on a bravura show every day of their lives. So why did an inventive people never come up with the simple idea of forks, a concept which many other peoples came up came with apparently quite easily?

Summer Celebrations, Nice and Brexit

Summer Celebrations

The summer celebrations here are in full swing. After the July 14^th knees-up there were the painters in the streets last weekend and and next weekend is the village fete. For me, disappointment with the July 14^th was counterbalanced by a better than usual experience of the painters. What I most appreciate about village celebrations is the carefree atmosphere, children, cats, dogs, old fogies and everyone else enjoying themselves and not afraid to make fools of themselves. That seemed to be absent on Bastille Day. The choice of band was probably wrong and anyway they didn't start playing until nearly 10.00pm; but that didn't entirely explain the total absence of any communal atmosphere. On the Saturday evening I strolled through the market that takes place in the village in July and August and perused the paintings on display. I found them of a much higher quality than in the past, with much less tourist tat on show (paintings of lavender, sunflowers, soulful children or pin-up women) and much more genuine art. The paintings I liked were all abstract but of good quality in terms of both their vision and their execution.

Nice

News of the carnage in Nice on the 14^th didn't arrive until the next day. The village was shocked, obviously, and duly observed the one-minute's silence asked for by President Hollande at midday today, Monday. A crowd of around 150 villagers gathered, appropriately in the 14^th of July Square, to observe the minute's silence but I was disappointed to notice that none of the muslim villagers were there. Those I know would certainly have shared the shock and disgust of the rest of the village but chose not to show their faces. Elsewhere I can imagine muslims fearing violence if they showed up at such a ceremony but that certainly wouldn't be the case here. And I feel, because Islam is currently so closely associated with acts of barbarism, that it is very important for peace-loving muslims to visibly show that they disown such acts. Being a silent majority won't stop islamophobia and may not be enough to stop the world plunging into the rerun of the historical crusades that the militant muslims seem to want. If there is a God who made homo sapiens, it would be beyond ironic if religion was the cause of his ultimate demise. Someone once said that if there is a God then religion is a cruel trick He played on mankind.

Brexit Footnote

Some of my French friends have asked me if the appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary was an example of idiosyncratic British humour. I tell them yes, it's a joke.