The two extra years
By Isagani Cruz, The Philippine Star

Now that it is certain that two years will be added to the basic education cycle, it is time to think about what those years will look like.

I propose a simple, quick, and doable solution to the problem of formulating a curriculum for the extra two years. My modest proposal, which will involve the least disruption in the status quo, can be done in four easy steps. The first three steps can be done in one day. The last step will take two years.

First, the new DepEd Secretary should issue a Department Order renaming every level as a “Grade.” This means that we will do away with the words “First Year” and so on and replace them with “Grade 7” or “Seventh Grade” and so on. The change of names is important to avoid the awkward “Fifth Year” and “Sixth Year” (which can be expected to be renamed popularly anyway as “Junior Year” and “Senior Year”) and to justify the word “K-12.”

Second, DepEd has to add to the mandate of the Bureau of Secondary Education (BSE), which now supervises only Grades 7 to 10. The new DepEd Secretary should issue a Department Order giving BSE the supervision of Grades 7 to 12.

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Semantic minefields
By Clark Hoyt, The New York Times

If the Obama administration takes out a radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, would it be a “targeted killing” or an “assassination?” Was the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina a “natural disaster” or a “man-made” one? Should new construction authorized by Israel in East Jerusalem be called Jewish “housing” or “settlements”?

Times journalists juggle such questions daily as they try to present the news in clear and evenhanded language. Depending on their choices, advocacy groups or individuals of one political persuasion or another accuse them of being inaccurate, retreating into euphemism or taking sides. In the war of words, there is sometimes no safe middle ground.

Stuart Gardiner of San Francisco was incensed last month after The Times reported that the administration had authorized the “targeted killing” of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who it believed was plotting attacks on the United States. Gardiner said the paper had resorted to “a euphemism for assassination,” reducing the decision to kill a person without due process to a term implying “something almost sanitary about the act, bureaucratic and bloodless.”

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Report looks at role of poverty, parents in student success
By Valerie Strauss, Washington Post

If you doubt that poverty plays a role in student achievement, look at these statistics cited in a report released Tuesday by the Casey Foundation: 85 percent of low-income students who attend high-poverty schools and who took the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test don’t read proficiently by the time they reach fourth grade.

But the problem is not just in high-poverty schools: 83 percent of children from low-income families in any school can’t read proficiently by the time they get to fourth grade.

The report’s new look at how poorly millions of American children read is sobering, if not revelatory. We’ve known for a long time that poverty is connected to achievement in school.

Some school reformers like to say that poverty is used as an excuse for the failure of students to progress, but actually, poverty is a condition that most certainly affects the learning dynamic, and any effort to pretend that it isn’t is akin to ignoring the elephant in the room.

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Upfronts: How do you say “McDreamy” in Spanish?
By Stuart Elliott, The New York Times

“A Corazon Abierto,” or “An Open Heart,” a Telemundo revamp of “Grey’s Anatomy” for Hispanic viewers, will take place at a hospital in San Antonio rather than the original’s setting of Seattle.

The Spanish language broadcast network Telemundo is not waiting until the 2010-11 season starts in September to offer its viewers something new. Beginning on Monday, Telemundo will be all telenovelas in prime time, replacing a game show that has been running from 7 to 8 p.m. with a Spanish-language version of the ABC series “Grey’s Anatomy.”

The “Grey’s Anatomy” revamp for Hispanic viewers will be titled “A Corazon Abierto,” or “An Open Heart,” and take place at a hospital in San Antonio rather than the original’s setting of Seattle.

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The English language and freedom
By Paul Johnson, Forbes Magazine

While playing a tiny part in Britain’s recent election, I noted one aspect of it with concern: Some of the people to whom we’d given the right to vote spoke little or no English. As the electoral arguments, especially the televised debates between the party leaders, were conducted entirely in English, how could these voters know what they were voting for?

It’s my view that Britain and the U.S. do not do enough to promote the spread of English, which thereby decelerates or even reverses the spread of democratic freedom. There’s little doubt, for instance, that the hostility of the Muslim world toward the West is promoted by the failure of Muslim countries to develop democratic institutions, which, in turn, has been brought about by a resistance to the spread of English. Even among educated Muslims few have read the writings of British philosophers John Locke and Edmund Burke, not to mention those of America's Founding Fathers, which has lead directly to a lack of understanding of what the West is about.

This problem will intensify as China moves massively and confidently onto the world scene. Very few mainland Chinese speak English, nor do they have any conception of the liberal tradition that the language enshrines.

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Speak Korean, the language of love
By Teke Wiggin, GlobalPost

SEOUL—Language exchanges here are a tried and true way to learn Korean. But some young male expats are saying that’s not all they use them for.

“I’d say most people use it for dating, the Koreans and the foreigners definitely,” said Andrew Kim, a Korean-American English teacher in Seoul. “Most of the friends I know have all dated a girl from [a language exchange website]. I’d say pretty much 100 percent. I never met a guy who said I want to meet this girl just to learn Korean.”
For those with a predilection for the local women, Kim says language exchanges are the perfect way to play the field and meet “open-minded” females.

“I’m no Casanova, but I’ve had several one-night-stands from [language exchanges],” he said.

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Why US geeks are like our politicians
By Madhavan, Hindustan Times
 
I find a lot in common between Indian politicians and Silicon Valley’s software icons. While the former play politics with their mother tongue and culture, the latter play politics with software languages and developer culture. Pretty much the same, I tell you.

Last week, things came to a new head when Adobe Systems, better known for its PDF software, lashed out at Steve Jobs-led Apple Computers in a full-page newspaper ad that effectively criticized Apple for not allowing Adobe's Flash format to be supported on its iPod music video players, the iPhone and the late computer, iPad.

Now, Apple is a bit like the Maharashtra government, which said last week that its ministers must not speak in English to overseas dignitaries, even if they are fluent in English. But why?

Jobs recently explained that Flash is not safe and secure, consumes too much power, and above all, is not an open standard.

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