ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for the day Thursday, September 2nd, 2010.

Save Foreign Language Departments!

“22 staff in Modern Languages at Swansea University are threatened with compulsory redundancy. A proposed restructuring announced by the University on August 6, with no prior consultation, would delete 40 academic jobs in all, in 9 departments, over the next three years. 95 people have been told that their jobs are at risk. Of the 40 redundancies, 11.8 are planned in Modern Languages, with effect from summer 2011. The department has 22 lecturing staff. Just 10 will remain. Its the swiftest, most savage cut proposed. Its also very bad news for education in Wales.”

This is an excerpt from the news of a horrible trend now sweeping through Universities around the world where departments of foreign languages are taking the brunt of a global economic instability. Swansea University in Wales is only one. We don’t know how many more will follow if this horrible experiment goes through, and we’re calling all lovers of language and the academia to take a stand and make noise about this, and write letters of protest to protect the jobs of these professors and the whole idea of foreign language literacy at large. Foreign Language departments are not useless, nor are they just decorative appendages of art faculties. They contribute to knowledge, the economy, and understanding across nations. Please lend your voice. Send a strongly worded letter to the Vice Chancellor at Swansea. It will go a long way in influencing their decision.

Read more about this unfortunate case and how you can help at Clarissa’s blog.

Save Foreign Language Departments! was published on September 2nd, 2010, with the tags , , , under the News category. There are currently 3 comments on this article so far.

The Text Part of Growing

The evolution from picture books to text-only materials was gradual, but memorable. There seemed to have been an unwritten disdain for picture books that manifested after each birthday, each disposed oversized pyjamas and each replaced tooth. It wasn’t self-wrought however, but acquired, either from older peers with fancier stories of intimate relations with the written word resulting in inspiring encounters, or jealousy of even fancier ones with fantastic tales of their reading prowess. Something gave, however, for sure, little by little, and the young reader emerged, ready to take on the reading world without accompanying images.

The most memorable of such recollection could be the singular, but eventually impossible task of reading the first chapter of The Tiger by the Tail during a bus ride from home to school. It didn’t matter to him in the least that he couldn’t make any sense of it yet, never having even applied himself to more than just a few words on each page he flipped. It matter though that people saw him with a book that was bigger than a storybook, had no pictures in it, and moved from page to page as if passing through the patient and critical eyes of an avid reader. “Hey, nice book. How’re you finding it?” Someone would ask sometimes during the day, and he would respond: “Oh, very nice. Chase is such an exquisite writer”, and move on before the probing went far beyond the familiar. Oh the days.

The blog, now splattered with colours and images, flesh and blood, of ordinary and extraordinary people of various places, beliefs and convictions, could only remind of such trivialties; of days when colour meant ordinariness, and a lack of sophistication needed for the rites of adulthood. Now only a smile remains, and a longing for such a not so distant past of innocence and silliness.

Welcome September, and the year of birth.

The Text Part of Growing was published on September 2nd, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , , under the Fun, Literature, Soliloquy category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.