sudanglo:
Incidentally, on a question of evidence; whilst the value of learning Esperanto for later studies of another language seems to have been supported by several studies, as far as I am aware there have been no experimental studies on whether learning Esperanto improves a pupil's use of his own language - heightens his awareness of sentences which are ambiguous or may be misinterpreted, for example.

I find this idea not totally implausible and such evidence would be wonderful ammunition in arguing for Esperanto in the schools.

I think one can find evidence that learning any L2 facilitates learning L3. I believe, based only on personal experience and anecdote, that learning L2 does increase one's understanding of L1. Whether it improves his use of L1 is another matter. Much depends upon motivation. Many people are highly resistant to any change in their L1 usage.

I know that many people, myself included, report that they didn't really understand the parts of speech very well until they studied a foreign language.

When you study any L2, the thing you absolutely must learn is the difference between meanings and words. As long as you remain stuck at the level of trying to express yourself by translating words instead of meanings, you make little progress. A big part of this is recognizing the difference between literal and figurative usage in one's own language. This is why, once this stage is passed, one has a better idea of how to approach learning L3, L4, etc.

I've found that some people have extreme difficulty doing this. They use figures of speech, cliches, etc, and never see them as such, and are therefore constantly trying to use literal translations of things like "My back is killing me today".

As far as this sort of thing is concerned, I think a case can be made that Esperanto has an advantage over other L2 choices. That is, as a target language, Esperanto is rather less idiomatic than most other languages, so the learner doesn't have to deal with translating a meaning from some figurative English (or whatever) expression into some equally figurative French (or whatever) expression. Also, Esperanto's word-making resources give the learner some flexibility in how to render the meaning in the target language.

Good points Todd.

Now, in the absence of hard experimental evidence all we need is to marshal all the plausible arguments for teaching Esperanto for its educational value into one handy A4 flyer, and start spreading the message.

I doubt that plausible arguments in an A4 flyer would convince anyone.

Public policy isn't made based on facts. It's based on politics. We'd be better off with a rich lobbying organization and no facts whatsoever supporting us, than to have all of the facts in the world written on an A4 flyer.

erinja:I doubt that plausible arguments in an A4 flyer would convince anyone.

Public policy isn't made based on facts. It's based on politics. We'd be better off with a rich lobbying organization and no facts whatsoever supporting us, than to have all of the facts in the world written on an A4 flyer.

So true. I wonder how many of us here have actually made the pitch to schools or school boards. I know I have. I chose an independent school, progressive in spirit, where I had some friends in key positions. Having those friends is what enabled me to be able to present my idea at all.

The curriculum committee, a mix of teachers and parents, listened politely, asked some polite questions, and politely dismissed the whole thing. I had all my "stuff" with me: PIV, serious-looking scholarly books, periodicals. I had some recorded music, but of course didn't get to play it.

I later attempted to repeat the pitch at a public school, as a proposed optional enrichment program. The principal checked with school district headquarters and I was not given permission to give my presentation.

Any other educational war stories out there?

On a related note, is anyone watching this weeks "Jeopardy" exhibition (playing in the US)? Two of the pasts best players are up against IBM's "Watson", a computer.

If you've watched Jeopardy, you know that it's answers[1] are full of wordplay, double-meanings, and require lots of generalized knowledge. Exactly the sort of stuff that we're talking about with "time flies and fruit flies".

Watson is presented with the same answers that the other players are, and it is entirely up to it to understand what is being stated, and come up with the appropriate question (and ring in in time to give that question, as well).

In yesterdays show, Watson did amazingly well. At first it was just running the board, but by the end of the game one of the players had managed to match Watson's score. The answers given seemed like standard Jeopardy answers, and not geared towards giving Watson an edge (although I'm not sure what answers like that would look like, or why those answers would be easier for Watson than for the other two players).

Yes, in order to do this they need a room full of servers and a 15 terabyte data store. So your iPhone won't be exhibiting the same sort of behavior for a while. FOR A WHILE.

Back in the 50's, digital storage costs ran about $1 per byte. Which means right now I have about two and a half trillion dollars (in 1950's terms) worth of storage equipment sitting on my desk here. Nothing from the 1950's could have even compared to my four year old desktop computer, which is at least equal to the military supercomputers that would have run World War III back in the 70's (assuming the Cold War had heated up).

Things that take roomfuls of equipment nowadays will be in handheld devices in the not-that-distant future. Machine translation from one language to another, done as well as a professional translator would do today, taking idioms and cultural differences into account, is not impossible - it's likely.

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[1] For those who haven't seen it, the gameboard provides answers. The players have to figure out what the question is[2].

[2] Which I've always thought of as kind of a contrived gimmick, since most answers end up being formulaic - "Who is John Smith?" as the question matching any answer that vaguely relates to John Smith, and so on.

Supplying the answer and asking what is the question is a useful tecnique in language instruction.

For example:

1. 37 degrees centigrade.
2. 25,000 miles
3. Coffee and a croissant.
4. 2.4 children

Donu la demandojn en Esperanto.

Riot, on the progress of technology I absolutely agree.

Erinaja ideas and perceptions have powerful influences - including on decision makers.

All the while that Esperanto is perceived as a competitor to English in the lingua franca stakes, it is likely to be dismissed. So Esperanto's popular image is important.

In the first instance, the value of having a neat package of arguments for the educational value of Esperanto would be to change the way Esperantists themselves talk about Esperanto, weaning them off the usual narrative of Esperanto as the international language.

The consequence of having wide-spread teaching of Esperanto in the schools is however Finvenkista.

T0dd: I wonder how many of us here have actually made the pitch to schools or school boards. I know I have. I chose an independent school, progressive in spirit, where I had some friends in key positions. Having those friends is what enabled me to be able to present my idea at all.

The curriculum committee, a mix of teachers and parents, listened politely, asked some polite questions, and politely dismissed the whole thing.

Todd, may I ask you why they dismissed it?

And since you have an inside view on the school system, why do you think other schools dismiss it?

Thank you.

Watson, by the way, cleaned the other players clocks. Their three-day match finished tonight, and there was no contest.

AnFu:

T0dd:
The curriculum committee, a mix of teachers and parents, listened politely, asked some polite questions, and politely dismissed the whole thing.

Todd, may I ask you why they dismissed it?

And since you have an inside view on the school system, why do you think other schools dismiss it?

Thank you.

"How will this help our kids get into Harvard?"

I'm exaggerating, but when people spend their own money to send their kids to an independent school, they expect better results than what they would get in an ordinary public school. And for most, "better results" is closely linked to acceptance into good universities later on.

The fact is, there is no case to be made that studying Esperanto will help kids get accepted to top universities, and anyone can see that it could have the opposite effect. Independent schools, in virtue of being independent, are not plugged into the same school district standards as public schools, so they are reluctant to take risks with their academic image. Esperanto is without question risky that way.

As for the public schools, I of course got no explanation, but it's not hard to figure out. Esperanto is a threat to the language instruction teachers already in the system, who are already well aware of the thin budgetary ice that they're on.

Moreover, when we argue that Esperanto has its own culture--which is quite true--it's not the kind of culture that matters to the few people who don't want to see language instruction disappear from the schools. As interesting and enjoyable as Esperanto literature is, the defenders of languages in the schools are thinking in terms of Ovid, Aurelius, Doestoevsky, Voltaire, Goethe, Mann, Dante, Cervantes et al.

Granted, only a tiny minority of pupils will ever get to the level where they can read these authors. But a year spent studying Esperanto is a year not spent studying some other language. In an educational environment that is already strained by erosion of interest in things cultural, and massive decline in basic skills, Esperanto looks a bit too far afield to be taken seriously.