Why Do I Study Languages? Advice Nobody Wants to Hear [Ep. 003]

hey I got a question asking me how did I
end up devoting so much of my time as an adult to the study of languages and this is one of those questions where I would have absolutely nothing to say if I weren't going to be a hundred percent honest with you if I were only give me eighty percent honest this video would be completely vacuous and empty and you know really nothing to be communicated the reality is I grew up in Canada and the Canadian education system every part of it I have had contact with is terrible and you know that's not a tragedy in my life that took place at just one time it's a tragedy I've had to face and deal with again and again and again and what I've had to ask myself in effect every time I've encountered sort of appalling lack of competence in the education system here was to reevaluate from scratch okay Who am I what do I want to do with my life how am I going to be an intellectual how am I going to deal with the problems that really matter to me and ultimately how am I going to pay my rent and earn a living given that the education system is terrible exactly where I need it to be strong competent to meet some minimum standard of adequacy now obviously not if one in life has this experience it's possible you're Canadian and you only wanted to be a dentist and you went to a dental college and worked out great for you and you had no problems like I'm happy for you I know there were people offer examples of the contrary I say I'm happy for them and that said I'm not making any universal claims about what's wrong with Canadian occasion system however many many people have talked to have actually reported similar patterns of institutional failures in many other disciplines across Canada sometimes course from other departments in the same universities I'm familiar with so culturally it is interesting how widespread the problems I encountered are and now I mean just I myself directly dealt with these problems in so many different place but you know the real answer the question of why language became such a focus for me was he choose just one example I had a lot of experience in a department of political science and in that department of political science I was really horrified to find that what was going on was very similar to what I'd see not just in the Department of Philosophy but in a department of theater you know related acting in you know creative fields what was going on was that students are being evaluated on their ability to flatter the professor and what I mean by flattery is a little bit complex here it's not just showing up and telling the professor that he's handsome and smart but you know the educational content of the course was really crowded out was really reduced or even eliminated by you know a game being played of you know repeating back to the professor what he said and why it's important and agreeing with the biases ego trips and fascinations of the faculty at the University and now that that wouldn't be such a problem if you were in a program where people were doing that but they were also gaining competency in the the core discipline being taught like you know if there's flattery going on but people are also really learning there's Senate matter that's one thing but when that's the only thing going on if people are exiting these courses without you know basic familiarity with what's being taught you know that's that's worse and that that was I mean you know university of toronto overall I really was shocked that I had to face up the fact that although my high school education had been terrible abysmally low quality high school education I went to university it was supposedly the best university in canada and the quality was even worse in every way including you know who the instructors were and what kind of education they had you know the high school teachers at least had some education how to teach and the people I was dealing with the university did not in many many ways they did not know what they were doing and they didn't want to know they didn't care it wasn't there their interest or concern um now look why did languages emerge as the solution to this puzzle well what are you going to do if you're in a situation where everything around you is basically you're going to look for the one aspect that is evaluated in an objective way instead of in a subjective way the one aspect of politics for example that is not just based on agreeing with the professor's politics and the one thing that opens up a door to doing original research that doesn't depend on you flattering with the professor or happening to have the same opinion as the professor on politics or what have you the one aspect that is not a game and language and the capacity to do original translations original analysis already emerged there tamiya as he took years and you know nobody taught me any of this stuff it was just seeing the failures and the dead ends and the you know depressing reality of what was going on in Canadian higher education and it seemed to me that language was you know the one aspect here that was something tangible useful real and we're at the end of the day even if the professor hates me even the professor disagrees me politically you know left-wing versus right wing or whatever the split is who knows ultimately sit down and write an exam and either your answers are right or they're wrong and the types of games I'd seen being played around me and political science and philosophy and numerous other departments would not be played anymore so that's really the crucial first step the second one is as I mentioned this channel a lot of my own interests revolt around at the end of my time at University the first time back starting in nineteen ninety-seven am at the end of that time I was interested in first nations which is our word here in Canada for indigenous people so called American Indians and I was interested in Buddhism and I was interested in poverty poverty post-war destruction post-war post communism etc and I think you may have heard me comment on the channel before that in some ways my interest in first nations is similar to my interest in Cambodia I'm interested in the struggle I'm interested in the reality of who these people really are I'm not interested in a cartoon I'm not interested in a glorified ideal drawn from history 500 years ago I'm not interested in any kind of hippie or New Age nonsense you know the Cambodia I was interested in was the real Cambodia the post-war you know mess of a country that emerged from the ashes of communism and you know tried to build new huts on a basis of you know scorched earth mass graves a country that had you know yes an ancient history of Buddhism but you know a history that I come to an abrupt crossroads in the 20th century with you know the arrival of French colonialism and now unbelievable challenge posed by communism I can remember commenting to uh to people in first nations you know when I was studying First Nations at First Nations University in Canada I remember saying to people you know you know laos and Canada have have a lot in common louses the country in Southeast Asia um you know laws in Canada these were the two parts of the world where the British Empire and the French Empire you know came to their natural limits and met that's true the border between laos and myanmar they used to be British and French soldiers who would sit and play chess there where the Empire's met you know with who are contesting the the furthest limits of British and French territory at the edges of the world and likewise of course the map of Canada was defined by wars between the British and the French control territory so just say post-colonialism post communism poverty these things United seemingly seemingly unrelated interests but my point here is when you've come out of a an education system that is terrible that's lamentably awful and you're looking at any of those fields or all of those fields you have any of those interests are all those interests for me the one aspect that stood out as something real as something of objective value and something where I wasn't going to be evaluated on the basis of how charming the professor thought I was or to what extent I agreed with his opinions politically or otherwise that was language it seemed to me that the challenge of language and translation that was where the stopped and I was hoping that by really basing my engagement with Buddhism on language in the study of the ancient language pally as well as the modern contemporary language that I could base my study on language and politics and that I could deal with Buddhism without getting drawn into all of the BS that but it's of his famous for without in any way being drawn into the quagmire of this sort of new age hippie nonsense and you could say the same it was true way back then when I was first nervous in first nations and it was true much more recently when I went to study you know creative way these languages in Canada for me I mean politically one of the most important struggles is to keep those languages going extinct and again the hope being look if I base my engagement on language then I have a solid footing to deal with all kinds of questions of politics and what have you and the evaluation of me and my work is not going to be based on fawning and flattery and and these types of political considerations I'm now going to tell a seemingly unrelated anecdote that may or may not illustrate this and brought on this over some people I think in life we go through changes where we reevaluate our understanding of what the education system is how it works what is trying to teach us who we are as people and what we want to become and of course what our career aspirations are I had a girlfriend many many years ago who wanted to be a painter want to be a creative artist she had the idea that she would earn a living in art restoration and would then be able to pay her rent and support herself as a painter her perspective on this as she started to look in the details of what type of education she needed more qualifications she needed was that to her dismay everything had to do with chemistry she needed to go back to university and take courses in chemistry she even needed to go back to high school and take the advanced high school classes in chemistry and then go to university and so on and her whole way of speaking about this was to see the chemistry as an unfortunate obstacle to the job and I talked about this with an older experienced guy a guy who had worked in that field for many years work with people in conservation and restoration have you and he said one sense to me that was so simple and I got it he didn't have to say any more on the subject of chemistry he just said to me yes but you see that is the job close quote that was all he said but I immediately got the point and I went back and I did try to share with my girlfriend you know what you're thinking about as an obstacle to the job what you're thinking about as a regret abul drawback to the job that is the job it's not just that it's the core of the job or an important part of the job that is the whole job this job is chemistry and chemistry is this job you she thinks about it as something connected to creative art and her own you know aspirations life but no you know the actual work of being a conservation technician doing art restoration is to sit down and do chemistry every day that is the whole job you know on this channel lately we've addressed people being frustrated with the apparent stupidity and in competence of dietitians people who may have four or five years in university in a long process to become a dietitian but who still apparently don't don't know the basics or wrong about unbelievable things would have you well if you actually know the education system and how it works wherever it is you live it's not useful to just say this is all rubbish unless you're a multi-millionaire and you can set up your own educational foundation for the vast majority of us that can only be the first step in analysis the first step is to say something's wrong here can I understand what's wrong can I understand to what extent it's problem with me can I understand what extent it's problem with the institution and can I understand what the job is this is supposed to be preparing me for what is the core competence this supposed to lead to and then can I plan my life in a way that compensates for it now Chinese was not the language I wanted to learn not at all Chinese was not my first choice it was my last choice but obviously even the choice of learning Chinese at all reflects on my part that I'd already gone to Southeast Asia had already lived on the banks the Mekong River I'd studied languages with no teacher and no textbook I have made my own textbooks using little bits and pieces of US military training manuals you know for languages like Cambodian or their language materials produced by the US military and leaflets produced from united nations refugee camps I'm not joking I've been through those types of materials for languages like lotion and Cambodian and with the language like pally I made my own materials and people still download them for the internet using this day so with tremendous independence self-reliance creativity hard work and no teacher and nobody to help me I worked on all these other languages but at the end of the day I needed credentials I needed an MA possibly a PhD I needed a career and really the only language I could study in Canadian academia was Chinese and I am a prisoner of my passport I've looked into university programs over the world but this in itself is it's both part of the problem and part of the solution in my case this semester I'm broadening out a little bit stuck but about advice about education and so on this semester i sat down and wrote an essay in one night all the research all the writing in one night and I got ninety five percent and I believe that was the highest grade anyone got in the class on that SSM I had another class where the grade is less impressive as I recalls 88.5 did all the research and all the writing in one night and that was also the highest grade in that class so that that professor is a tough marker nobody else got an A+ I was the only student with an A+ on that assignment that class why did I get such high grades with so little effort in those two classes the reality is it's not my intelligence the intelligence helps the fundamental thing is that I was sitting in the right classroom finding the right institution finding the right professor finding the right class that's like ninety percent of the grade right and there were other classes being taught just down the hallway that I couldn't possibly succeed in or where I'd have to work incredibly hard to get a b-minus because of the nature of what was being taught the nature of who was teaching it or you know the the methodology for for evaluation for the type of participation they expect and so on and you know every semester here I mean this is something nobody taught me and I didn't know back in 1997 you know I am rolling classes and I drop classes the choice of which classes I'm going to attempt to take it could totally determines your success or failure now by that same token so just giving you examples of course I've done incredibly well in by that same token the tragic heartbreaking terrible thing is when you sit down in a class and it's terrible and you know that you should drop it and you know that you must drop it you can't succeed you know that no matter how smart you are no matter how hard-working you are the deck is stacked against you for various reasons for how the course is taught or who's teaching it or what have you and when you know that when it's not a suspicion you look like it's not a theory you know for a fact you cannot succeed in this class again whether to some extent it's who you are to some extent to the institution is certainly matter how it's being taught that is the worst feeling in the world especially when it's the Chinese language course and you just moved from Taiwan to Victoria specifically in order to learn Chinese when the Chinese language class is terrible it's an unredeemable failure and there's nothing you can do to make it work for you but you also can't drop it and you don't know what to do so that's the situation I have just come through now and even though you know I'm old and experienced I suffered terribly from that there's real emotional and intellectual anguish that comes out of being in that situation even though it's a situation of I've been in before so this sense in which I've tried to describe the failure of educational institutions around me shaping my career choices shaping my destiny if you like that's not something that just happened once it's not just that at University of Toronto the philosophy department was garbage in the political science part was garbage and I had to try to figure out a way ahead in life it's sadly it's something I've encountered again and again and again and you know I can't even list I mean the number of the number of departments related to Buddhist studies that were garbage where there was no way to succeed in it so that's a long list and amazingly and now I could also give a long video talking about First Nation studies in Canada you know linguistics link to First Nations and also political science politics is like two presentations so I could speak on quite a few different subjects where I invested a lot of time and effort trying to find a path that would lead me ahead and finding nothing so I think that covers the subject matter of this video and also in some ways brings you up to date with my personal life because so far as I know in the next few months I am moving to China and I'm going to be living in China in order to learn Chinese