Todd,

Thank you very much for your thorough, insider's- view answer.

I think it would take an extremely courageous school administrator to introduce Esperanto in any kind of official way.

Esperanto sounds very "too good to be true." If I were school administrator and unaware of Esperanto, I doubt I would sign on. What do you mean, this language is much easier than other ones and will allow students to communicate with people all over the world in 1/5 the time (or whatever) needed for another language? I am suspicious by nature and I doubt I would believe that. I would perhaps go to the trouble to look it up on the internet just to see how crazy these "Esperanto" people are, but it would be out of personal curiosity and not out of a desire to actually introduce Esperanto.

It also goes to the old publicity problem, "If this thing is so good, when why I haven't I heard of it before?"

It's hard to get past that. If this Esperanto culture thing is so great, why haven't I ever heard of it?

erinja:I think it would take an extremely courageous school administrator to introduce Esperanto in any kind of official way.

Joe Conroy, author of Beginner's Esperanto, is a Philadelphia school teacher. He teaches French and Spanish. I've never met him, but I've had telephone conversations with him about this sort of thing. He's the true insider: a career language teacher, and quite gifted, by all accounts I've heard. His credentials are far better than mine. If there were a way to do this in Philadelphia, I think he would have done it years ago.

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.

Well I'm anyone and I can't see it as obvious that it would have the opposite effect. How so?

Does a heightened abiity to see how when you write some given sentence in English that it could be interpreted two ways count for nothing educationally?

I would have thought that the ability to express yourself clearly was pretty important for acceptance at a top university.

Is it unimportant to have an awareness of parts of speech and grammatical categories?

Is it of no value to be aware that the way the world is divided up by English is not the only way that it can be perceived?

The study of Esperanto could conceivably help with all these aspects of education, more efficiently than the study of say French or German, because less time is wasted on rote learning of irregularity and unproductive historical baggage of such languages.

Anyway isn't there an opposition between educated and civilised on the one hand and parochial, provincial, narrow-minded and bigoted on the other hand?

We Esperantists should not be meekly lying down and letting ourselves be steamrollered by ignorant prejudice.

I see no cogent argument for Esperanto not to be fully educationally respectable.

sudanglo:

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.

Well I'm anyone and I can't see it as obvious that it would have the opposite effect. How so?

I said "could", not "would".

To see this, you must first see that the current perception of Esperanto in the world is that it is crankish. The admissions panels at prestigious universities are not noted for their admiration of weirdness. If you doubt this, have a conversation with someone in admissions at Oxford and ask whether it would be advantageous for your child to attend a school that teaches Esperanto.

Does a heightened abiity to see how when you write some given sentence in English that it could be interpreted two ways count for nothing educationally?

Of course it does, but that heightened insight is supported by studying any L2. If Esperanto has an edge in this department, as I've conjectured, you'd need a mountain of empirical data to show it. Otherwise, the crankishness and cultural poverty of Esperanto will more than outweigh this alleged advantage.

I would have thought that the ability to express yourself clearly was pretty important for acceptance at a top university.

Is it unimportant to have an awareness of parts of speech and grammatical categories?

Is it of no value to be aware that the way the world is divided up by English is not the only way that it can be perceived?

Sure, these are all great points, but they do not support Esperanto uniquely or even preferentially.

The study of Esperanto could conceivably help with all these aspects of education, more efficiently than the study of say French or German, because less time is wasted on rote learning of irregularity and unproductive historical baggage of such languages.

The "historical baggage" (i.e., culture) is a large part of what the world finds valuable about language study.

Irregularity is one of the things pupils need to learn to cope with. One could argue that Esperanto will give them unrealistic expectations for other languages. They will need, for example, to unlearn the facility with which words can be coined in Esperanto, a skill that won't help them in other languages.

We Esperantists should not be meekly lying down and letting ourselves be steamrollered by ignorant prejudice.

It's not ignorant to notice that Esperanto's own original ambition, still supported by many, is to make the learning of other foreign languages unnecessary. You can't make Finvenkismo go away. It's in Esperanto's blood, as you've pointed out yourself. This ambition will not be seen as admirable in those elite universities, I promise you that. --Not even in the not-so-elite ones.

T0dd:Esperanto's own original ambition .. is to make the learning of other foreign languages unnecessary .. This ambition will not be seen as admirable in those elite universities, I promise you that. --Not even in the not-so-elite ones.

This made me think about the role of universities, at least elite ones. The essential business of universities is the discovery and diffusion of knowledge. It might therefore appear at first glance that, insofar as Esperanto does aim to save people the labour involved in learning a second national language, it acts against the aim of universities.

But this is to forget two facts. First, a minority of people do try to master other languages and cultures for their own interest, and the most able and enthusiastic of these are the people who become academics. In this connexion, Esperanto is an indicator of general ability.

Secondly, elite universities aim to train the nation's leaders. For leaders, ideals are important, and Esperanto culture certainly includes idealism.

So, to turn to the question: "How will studying Esperanto prepare my child for Harvard?" one answer may be "It is true that Esperanto is not intended for an elite. It is meant to serve all humanity. On the other hand, it is an indicator of ability, and also may encourage idealism, which is important for potential leaders. Both of these may be seen as relevant to elite universities."

In short, to use Esperanto or any other new language, you must first open your eyes to what you're doing in English.

Your words Todd lifted from another thread.

So the issue is, would the study of Esperanto promote this skill more readily than learning a national language.

Now some hard experimental evidence would be nice, but it is pretty obvious that a lot of the time spent learning a national language is used up in acquiring mastery of grammatical features like gender, irregular conjugation, irregular plurals, irregular spelling etc that have litte to do with precision of expression - features which Zamehof rightly did not import into Esperanto.

So in practice it is a common experience for pupils to spend years studying a national foreign language in school and never get to the point where they need to think hard about what a English sentence means in order to express themselves in the L2, let alone reaching the point where they can really appreciate the literature of L2.

This process begins very quickly in the study of Esperanto.

On the wider issue of attitudes to Esperanto, one can't help thinking immediately that attitudes change over time, and can also be changed by judicious argument.

Think of the many areas of modern life where attitudes are different now to what they were only 20 years ago, because of well argued campaigns.

Returning to the original theme of the thread; when pocket translators are ubiquitous it is going to be even more difficult to argue the case for L2 learning in schools, and the fact that so much less time needs to be devoted in the curriculum to achieve the educational benefits of L2 learning in the case of Esperanto might just be appreciated.

sudanglo:

In short, to use Esperanto or any other new language, you must first open your eyes to what you're doing in English.

Your words Todd lifted from another thread.

Beautiful, aren't they?

So the issue is, would the study of Esperanto promote this skill more readily than learning a national language.

Now some hard experimental evidence would be nice, but it is pretty obvious that a lot of the time spent learning a national language is used up in acquiring mastery of grammatical features like gender, irregular conjugation, irregular plurals, irregular spelling etc that have litte to do with precision of expression - features which Zamehof rightly did not import into Esperanto.

The sharpening of one's native language skills is widely recognized as a side-benefit of studying a foreign language. This argument makes it the primary benefit. Even supposing that we convince school bureaucrats of this, the other arguments don't go away. The actual foreign language teachers will stridently insist that the main reasons for studying foreign languages are (a) practical communication, and (b) cultural enrichment. In the case of Latin and classical Greek, of course, it's all (b), which is why they've always been unpopular choices, and are gone from many school curricula now.

Esperanto is weak in (a) and (b), so a big part of the case for it will be convincing school administrators and faculty that (c) sharpening one's native language skills, outweighs (a) and (b) in importance. That's the challenge, and simply making a case for (c) won't do it.

On the wider issue of attitudes to Esperanto, one can't help thinking immediately that attitudes change over time, and can also be changed by judicious argument.

I actually think that mere presence is far more powerful than judicious arguments, even though my day job is all about arguments. That is, I believe that the perception of Esperanto will change when there it has enough of a presence to allow the wider public to see Esperanto for what it is, rather than what it was.

sudanglo:Think of the many areas of modern life where attitudes are different now to what they were only 20 years ago, because of well argued campaigns.

I'm just a cynic but I feel that most people aren't swayed at all by arguments. People are emotional. When the argument supports something they disagree with, they think that the argument is poorly reasoned. If the argument supports something they agree with, they think the reasoning is excellent.

Look at something like interracial marriage, which was once considered unacceptable. Today, the culturally unacceptable thing is to be against it. The arguments in favor of it haven't changed since the very beginning, and it isn't true that someone suddenly got much better at arguing for it than previously. The change was in society, not in the arguments. And I think that people only came to believe in those arguments because they were first convinced emotionally. They were convinced by meeting interracial couples and learning that these couples are just regular nice people. When you know someone personally, when you know them well, it's emotionally hard to summon up all of the arguments why that nice couple down the street, who invite new neighbors over to tea, who shovel the snow from old people's driveways, and whose children are delightful and well-behaved, should not be permitted to be married.

Bringing this back to Esperanto, I think it's so easy to dismiss all of the arguments in favor of Esperanto as being poorly reasoned. Or simply to ignore them, as most people do. What changes opinions is emotional engagement and seeing things for yourself. That nice guy in the office whose wife is from a foreign country, and they speak Esperanto together. That interesting book that you heard about, which is an Esperanto translation from the original Swahili. Your neighbor who gets houseguests from all kinds of interesting countries. Your friend who travels abroad and brings back stories of Esperanto speakers she stays with. Your cousin who is in a community Esperanto club, who always seems to know interesting things about the world, and who participates in lots of fun club events.

These are the kinds of things that change minds, not well-reasoned arguments. The arguments only look obvious and well-reasoned in retrospect. The main problem is to find a way to get Esperanto into the culture, so that it looks not only normal, but interesting, fun, and worthwhile.

erinja:

sudanglo:Think of the many areas of modern life where attitudes are different now to what they were only 20 years ago, because of well argued campaigns.

I'm just a cynic but I feel that most people aren't swayed at all by arguments. People are emotional. When the argument supports something they disagree with, they think that the argument is poorly reasoned. If the argument supports something they agree with, they think the reasoning is excellent.

...

These are the kinds of things that change minds, not well-reasoned arguments. The arguments only look obvious and well-reasoned in retrospect. The main problem is to find a way to get Esperanto into the culture, so that it looks not only normal, but interesting, fun, and worthwhile.

In my opinion one field which meets that requirements is "contemporary music". And I don't understand why there doesn't excist any Esperanto foundation which give grants to talented Esperanto musicans. In my opinion, music (in detail crowd-singing, dancing) enables E-o beginners very fast to participate inside the E-o community. What i.e. E-o theatre can not achieve that strong way. And yes, it's crazy and funny singing lyrics someones doesn't understand. Okay, I found it funny. (Which needs some trust that the lyrics doesn't contain ugly lyrics of course). And songs made by talented musicans can spread a message "which often is represented by a language" very well. (In my opinion every music tries to show a message including attitude to life/ in German: "Lebensgefühl" etc. ) I.e. Sunday, bloody Sunday or Zombie. Even if at this songs the music tunes sometimes paints over the songs lyrics tragedy (means the non-native speakers audience are smiling about a very serious topic) they're best proper spreading medium for the language lyrics itselves. And yes, in my opinion music was/is a very strong multiplicator of the English language.