Thursday, January 04, 2007

Grand Tour

For Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_tour and comments on the previous post.

My friend Munkee Girl is correct. The Grand Tour is an inherently good thing that should be revived. Yes it should be open to more than the economically elite. Exposure to the arts and culture fosters well rounded and intellectually curious humans. That's good. Certainly better than sitting in front of a Playstation for hours on end.

I also agree with Munkee Girl regarding language. Heading off to a non-threatening vacation (educational though it may be) to a predominantly English-speaking nation doesn't open one's eyes as much as traveling where you might have to make an effort at understanding. It would probably make better citizens and maybe even a better world.

I know that my trips abroad have always been to places where I could get by in English or German. Even on my trip to France I found it easier to use German than bother butchering the French language. My tip to Vietnam will be a challenge on the language front. Despite having a written language that is Latinate in nature (i.e. characters), there's not a lot that I'll gain in trying to decipher words by looking at them. There's no real connection to English (or German). Also...the language is tonal...meaning words with different tones may have different meanings. How fun is that? I don't have enough time before our trip to do a lot of book-learning or class-taking so I run the risk of being a dumb American, and I hate that thought.

Here is a sample of the Vietnamese written language: (See the challenge that awaits!)
Trăm năm trong cõi người ta,
Chữ tài chữ mệnh khéo là ghét nhau.
Trải qua một cuộc bể dâu,
Những điều trông thấy mà đau đớn lòng.
Lạ gì bỉ sắc tư phong,
Trời xanh quen thói má hồng đánh ghen.
Translated:
A hundred years – in this life span on earth
talent and destiny are apt to feud.
Go through an event in which the sea becomes mulberry fields
and watch such things as make you sick at heart.
Is it strange that one who is rich in this is poor in that?
Blue Heaven’s wont to strike rosy cheeks from spite.
Two final things...
1) If your 3-year old can craft a balanced mobile sculpture...it's ART! (and get her an agent...or whoever artists use because that's talent)

2) The Space Invader wall art is cool. Not every room has to be Beatrix Potter, or Harry Potter, or Col. Potter. It's okay to spice it up. Babies and childhood should be fun. When Beckett can talk and tell me how much he hates his room...we'll re-assess.

Oh...Thanks Pete. Miss you guys. The kids will all be within 1-year of each other in age (poor Jack as the baby of the bunch) so I hope we can get them to be friends at an early age. Trips to the park when we (or you) visit.

2 comments:

munkee girl said...

Thanks for backing me up on that. You'd be amazed how many politicians will kvetch about how our lack of language aptitude affects national security and then do something bone-headed like approving study abroad fund for London jaunts.

Another major issue here is the teaching of "critical languages." The feds want to dump zillions of dollars into teaching elementary students Arabic, Farsi, and Chinese. However, if you look at a language learning pyramid, those languages are among the hardest to learn and take exponentially longer to get to a rudimentary fluency. We're arguing that if you let the elementary through middle school set start on languages like French and German (and allow them to pick languages they WANT to study instead of just herding everyone into Spanish--which is often taught by Coach Bubba who spent a weekend in Cancun since they couldn't get another teacher), they will be able to tackle harder languages as second or third languages.

Modern art is the equivalent of pomo. I'm tempted to recreate the experiment of the physicist who debunked the jargon by writing a gobbledygook article that was published by a leading journal because no one could understand it. That's right--I'm saying the Emperor Has No Clothes!!!

munkee girl said...

OOps..."funding" in the first paragraph.

I hope Beckett decides he wants purple unicorns when he gets old enough. ;) Heh heh.