Learning languages: how did this become such a major part of my lIfe?
21 July 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
hey guys we got the cactus in the shot
but not the poster posters off there oh oh oh it can just barely see the poster in case you think the cactus and the poster should be on camera for each and every deer recording this well live streaming filmed in front of a live studio audience about our CEO Broadcasting Corporation I got a email from an old friend somebody who knew me when I was a teenager and you know different questions came up and of course this conversation I was asked simply or not so simply how is it that languages the study of languages has become such a huge thing in my life given that I was not interested in these things at all when I was a child nor when I was a teenager good question and it's a question not that many people could ask me and you know I could answer this in a number of different ways the most efficient way for me to answer it is actually to talk about the importance of evaluation in university education in Canada now evaluation ultimately means what kind of grade you get what you get a or a B or C and how they decide the difference between an A or a B or C but it shapes math education in a much more profound way evaluation relates to what job skills you're actually learning if any what real-world skills you're learning and being tested on a university evaluation shapes the way the lectures are given the way the assignments are handed out and collected and so on you know are you being graded on how well you can write an essay are you being graded on how well you can repeat back to the professor the professor's own opinions as stated in class are you being graded on how well you can take notes on things data to verbal in class and then later reproduce those same ideas on a final exam I don't mean this overly cynically I really mean this in broad open it away however my experience is university education in Canada was incredibly incredibly negative and I found myself in a situation in every department I looked at whether it was politics anthropology history a whole bunch of different disciplines in the humanities I found myself the situation where all of these departments one the one hand not not providing me with any possible career path no actual job skills no useful training but they were also grading me almost entirely on my ability to flatter people on my ability to flatter the professor on my ability to repeat back opinion the professor wanted here primarily the opinions given in class or pointed out in the textbook and assigned readings what have you and a lot of I mean you know something I figured out soon figured out relatively early in my university education but bitterly I had to be reminded of again and again I had one kind of crushing experience after another I remember once you know University one of these world big classes so you'd write essays or exams they wouldn't even be graded by the professor they'd be graded by some teaching assessment and I remember I wrote one on the politics of Canada's possible separation from Quebec so the political possibility that Quebec would whatsoever this Canon I wrote this quite intelligent little essay this is you know this is an in-class you know exam so you're not citing sources but you're writing an essay with a footnote so to speak I made a series of points about how the way Quebec perceives the United States and how they imagine their own foreign policy if they became an independent country because as soon as the separate from Canada then they need to sign a free trade agreement the United States suddenly they were independent you know alliances so to speak the relationship with the United States but we're living in the shadow of the United States much more directly as soon as they get out from under the shadow of Canada so I wrote about it as a sort of three-way as a diplomatic triangle if you like this is slightly original thought and the person creating yes they said look this is really very intelligent but it's not repeating back the points that were in the textbook or the lectures so I can't give you a neck as I wasn't the question you know the question was something like you know explain Quebec shifting can explain the ambivalent and shifting perspective of Quebecers on the possibility of independence during these few decades and I did that but symbol during these decades what really changed not the way the québécois perceive English being Canadians but how they perceived Americans because American form so was intelligent si but that's only one example but that really does get to the crux of the matter I was in courses and I got to say this about political sciences discipline I think it's true of several other disciplines but political science is an example of the discipline where if you are not keeping it all the way real if you are not being 110 percent honest then it's worthless then it's garbage you know you can't really have the discipline of political science political science is discipline without this one you can't you can't ask those questions unless you're really open to hearing more than one answer you can't ask those kinds of questions engage with those discussions in the classroom and the lectures and the assigned readings what you need to do in political science requires a very very high level of scrutiny self-discipline self-awareness self-criticism honesty honesty of Avoyelles because otherwise it's just propaganda right otherwise it's it's the study of propaganda and many many times I have pointed out that my professors were wrong sometimes in class sometimes after class I was in front of discussion many many times the point of my professors were factually wrong although important issues you know in history where I was able to present you know come back the next class the statistics and say look you claimed this last class here's the out here of the actual numbers whatever it is and it's not easy on the ego of the other professors so that discipline itself is especially sensitive but I know what's other people in other other parts demands people who have were in English literature or French literature or anthropology or history or what-have-you and they had a lot of the same experiences where they at some point or another at the crushing realization what I'm being evaluated on here is one totally subjective two totally counterproductive for me as a student it isn't teaching me job skills it isn't training me to be good at something it's not even training me to be good at writing essays it's not training me to be good at delivering lectures myself or doing original research see original research that for me was another turning point was when I really understood what is original research and then the role of translation the role of learning languages in original research that was another turning point that came pretty late in my university education but basically university education Canada was so terrible and I couldn't do any of the things I wanted to do and the whole system evaluation the content of what I was being taught was garbage the way it was being evaluated ascribes and the way it was being evaluated influenced all the other elements of the experience you know of what the discipline is of what the Diploma means and so on this is a disaster you know and what I figured out was languages are not like that if I write an exam for learning Chinese or learning ancient Greek or learning poly or Sanskrit or Creon a jib way or Cambodian I saw the discipline of learning languages as the one element of university education that was not entirely corrupted by post-modernism or just corrupted by the laziness and self-indulgence of who professors are and how they want to make money and what academia had become a Canada I should throw in a caveat here real quick I didn't work in the Department of astronomy or agriculture or architecture all themselves the letter A I also didn't work in zoology I mean I had nothing to do with there are all kinds of other disciplines including other pure sciences and math you know where what I've just said may not be true at all maybe the department of theoretical mathematics is just wonderful University oh no I have nothing to do with that I'm only talking about the department's I had experience with but I did have experience of the great many departments including of course also religious studies everything I've just warned you about political science it can be even worse in religious studies you know this question of are you actually doing original research are you actually learning something useful for you as a student for you in your career path or are you just coming to a classroom where your point is to figure out the bizarre and quite possibly eccentric beliefs of your professor and then repeat back to that professor what they want to hear which may not be what you believe but inky's what is going to teach you what do you learn from that after after four years and tens of thousands of dollars what action do you learn from that process in religious studies and believe me that can be even worse in Buddhism than it is in Christianity or Judaism I have experience I have a lot of experience linked to to Buddhist studies and of course now he stations etc so look came to a point where I thought I'm interested in an educator a form of Education where the evaluation is based on objective criteria when you sit down to write that exam whether it is increase or Cambodian either your answer is right or it's wrong and the question is not how much can you flatter the professor or how much do you happen to agree with the the professor's put a few etcetera etcetera I don't want to know about that so within you know the various kind of missions I had in life that this kind of mandated or ethical interests add whether you talk about the humanitarian impulse I have one do humanitarian work the political impulses I have or indeed the interests that drew me towards study of Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy or philosophy in general European philosophy but is cloth sitter or the drew me towards First Nations their politics their languages in every case I want to be on the horrid linguistic side of that field of study I did not want to be writing exams or having disputes to the professors that were based on their personal religious convictions and give you I want to be able to establish my own authority in the field by doing original research original research that could be evaluated and valued could be recognized as being original and important because of its basis in language its basis in fieldwork its basis in politics history facts facts facts access at all objective facts were these no but the objective facts in the study of history and politics or the objective facts in language and original research new translations etc etc that was where one to beat will clog answer on that I knew that with the PhD and he delivered a paper at a conference there only four people in the audience of this conference it was very common she delivers this paper is basically one professor of tera vaada Buddhism there I know who the professor is and I think he's an idiot but anyway that's also a problem with academia you get you get one bad one bad egg or one bad [ __ ] in a position of power and they hold on to it for decades and the field can't move forward until they retire retire or drop dead of them anyway so he gives his presentation which was about the meaning of a particular word in Pali he was arguing that this word really does not mean meditation I agree with him with a particular world word and he was giving examples where the meaning of the word was totally unrelated to meditation including where the meaning of the word was a list of things in a summary so this is a purely linguistic argument as to the etymology and the usage and he's quoting passages and you know he's got the overhead projector and he's showing these examples where this word has some other meanings that would maybe challenge you know at the end of his presentation it's not like there's a huge audience applauding there are four people there or something and the senior professor sitting there says oh that's a very interesting presentation but that's impossible and the guy just said that it was his religious conviction that this word had this one meeting so any new linguistic research the facts of the case were were irrelevant to his fate and believe me you can go through peer review it's like that - and so on and so forth so look the strength of languages in a language based approach to research whether it's philosophy or politics or religion or history or we want to say when I was getting involved with the Korean the a jib I'm white in case you hadn't noticed I or you can say I'm Jewish if you don't count Jewish people as white matter of perspective I have absolutely no link by blood or heritage your upbringing to the Korean me jibley I just had the misfortune to be born in Canada and thus some part of the you know legacy of British the British Empire colonialism that destroyed their civilizations languages how am I going to make a positive contribution in that field in that struggle it's not going to be because I'm charming you're not going to charm your way into those communities and for me it's not going to be because I sing and dance some people it is some people get involved the arts within First Nations community you're a great you know literally you're a great singer and you do live gigs you can do concert tours in First Nations these in remote you know reservations and what have you you can you can charm you way in you can get involved by being an entertainer but being a musician or a dancer some of that sure or by being a patron of the Arts you're maybe or someone who buys First Nations sculpture art someone who sets up concerts and traditional dance competition sure there are there are people get involved all those ways and there are people get involved cuz they're oil executives right for me a way to have something that's objectively evaluated on objective criteria as I say we're the evaluation for me as a student I can prove that I'm a scholar or that I'm a good student or whatever that assign contribute where it's verifiable the only way I saw to do that was to the language and frankly that's the same thing I'd say about the Cambodians I says people all the time with Cambodians or lotions so these days you look I wasn't born here I have no connection in this place I have no right to do humanitarian work here so how you can get your foot in the door it's not going to because I'm charming you I always reminded people were doing humanitarian work like in Laos Cambodia Thailand I said look never forget these people didn't invite you here that's very very important to remember I mean unless they did invite you if you're actually on a curry reservation does the Korean bar you there you're allowed us because a lot of people value that that's different but most of us show up uninvited and for me the fact that like when I sat in Laos Laos Cambodia even here in Yunnan I had handwriting in the local image net excellent handwriting and lotion I also have handwriting in the ancient scriptural language in Pali if you were blown away by that and right away that opened doors for me oh wow you had the level of commitment to really study our language to really study reading and writing our language Wow now you're welcome we're inviting you in we want to talk to you and literally it would change the political discourse even if we're talking about sensitive political issues suddenly people feel they can trust you they see you've got a level of commitment engagement to them their language their culture their history and in my case it was both ancient history and modern history was doing the ancient language would be like if you're in some part of Europe and you're showing you both know ancient Greek and modern Greek or and moderate ancient Latin and modern Romanian I was both doing poly and in the modern languages of Laos Cambodia Thailand etc so that's something that's object real that shows my value as a scholar much much realer than having a PhD frankly and that open doors and establishes my place politically my opportunity to learn positive and you know I work for a relatively short time on Korea in a jib way but I saw that happen too when I sat down with First Nations people and I could show them either my handwriting reduced in speeches talk to them and show them you know the little bit I could speak Cree nahin Leland completely changes the way they perceive me although they do that man they perceive me as a white man that perceived me as an outsider which is quite right I'm not pretending to be an insider but I'm an outsider who can demonstrate that level of engagement commitment etc I'm already a white man has proven to them I really care about you and your history and your politics I really care about hearing your voice I'm not just here to preach to you whether that's preaching political solutions preaching politics or in the Buddhist context preaching Buddhism I'm really here to listen to you and I care so much about your perspective that I've put in the hard work you're lame so yeah politically that's crucial great so this is a short story long at this point but yeah if the quality of education in Canada were better I would have never gotten on that path it was really because of the appallingly poor quality of education at the University of Toronto in every department I was ever in also a number of other universities in Canada that have been involved with appallingly low I felt that left me no better alternative no other alternative I could see aside from going to language education and trying to make languages you know the platform for my political engagement my philosophical engagement my humanitarian engagement the world and I was hoping it could also be a platform for my career it's utterly failed at that so you can see by other videos still today it's a wide open question of how it is in this life I'm ever going to own a living how it is in this life I'm never going to earn them with it get me up
but not the poster posters off there oh oh oh it can just barely see the poster in case you think the cactus and the poster should be on camera for each and every deer recording this well live streaming filmed in front of a live studio audience about our CEO Broadcasting Corporation I got a email from an old friend somebody who knew me when I was a teenager and you know different questions came up and of course this conversation I was asked simply or not so simply how is it that languages the study of languages has become such a huge thing in my life given that I was not interested in these things at all when I was a child nor when I was a teenager good question and it's a question not that many people could ask me and you know I could answer this in a number of different ways the most efficient way for me to answer it is actually to talk about the importance of evaluation in university education in Canada now evaluation ultimately means what kind of grade you get what you get a or a B or C and how they decide the difference between an A or a B or C but it shapes math education in a much more profound way evaluation relates to what job skills you're actually learning if any what real-world skills you're learning and being tested on a university evaluation shapes the way the lectures are given the way the assignments are handed out and collected and so on you know are you being graded on how well you can write an essay are you being graded on how well you can repeat back to the professor the professor's own opinions as stated in class are you being graded on how well you can take notes on things data to verbal in class and then later reproduce those same ideas on a final exam I don't mean this overly cynically I really mean this in broad open it away however my experience is university education in Canada was incredibly incredibly negative and I found myself in a situation in every department I looked at whether it was politics anthropology history a whole bunch of different disciplines in the humanities I found myself the situation where all of these departments one the one hand not not providing me with any possible career path no actual job skills no useful training but they were also grading me almost entirely on my ability to flatter people on my ability to flatter the professor on my ability to repeat back opinion the professor wanted here primarily the opinions given in class or pointed out in the textbook and assigned readings what have you and a lot of I mean you know something I figured out soon figured out relatively early in my university education but bitterly I had to be reminded of again and again I had one kind of crushing experience after another I remember once you know University one of these world big classes so you'd write essays or exams they wouldn't even be graded by the professor they'd be graded by some teaching assessment and I remember I wrote one on the politics of Canada's possible separation from Quebec so the political possibility that Quebec would whatsoever this Canon I wrote this quite intelligent little essay this is you know this is an in-class you know exam so you're not citing sources but you're writing an essay with a footnote so to speak I made a series of points about how the way Quebec perceives the United States and how they imagine their own foreign policy if they became an independent country because as soon as the separate from Canada then they need to sign a free trade agreement the United States suddenly they were independent you know alliances so to speak the relationship with the United States but we're living in the shadow of the United States much more directly as soon as they get out from under the shadow of Canada so I wrote about it as a sort of three-way as a diplomatic triangle if you like this is slightly original thought and the person creating yes they said look this is really very intelligent but it's not repeating back the points that were in the textbook or the lectures so I can't give you a neck as I wasn't the question you know the question was something like you know explain Quebec shifting can explain the ambivalent and shifting perspective of Quebecers on the possibility of independence during these few decades and I did that but symbol during these decades what really changed not the way the québécois perceive English being Canadians but how they perceived Americans because American form so was intelligent si but that's only one example but that really does get to the crux of the matter I was in courses and I got to say this about political sciences discipline I think it's true of several other disciplines but political science is an example of the discipline where if you are not keeping it all the way real if you are not being 110 percent honest then it's worthless then it's garbage you know you can't really have the discipline of political science political science is discipline without this one you can't you can't ask those questions unless you're really open to hearing more than one answer you can't ask those kinds of questions engage with those discussions in the classroom and the lectures and the assigned readings what you need to do in political science requires a very very high level of scrutiny self-discipline self-awareness self-criticism honesty honesty of Avoyelles because otherwise it's just propaganda right otherwise it's it's the study of propaganda and many many times I have pointed out that my professors were wrong sometimes in class sometimes after class I was in front of discussion many many times the point of my professors were factually wrong although important issues you know in history where I was able to present you know come back the next class the statistics and say look you claimed this last class here's the out here of the actual numbers whatever it is and it's not easy on the ego of the other professors so that discipline itself is especially sensitive but I know what's other people in other other parts demands people who have were in English literature or French literature or anthropology or history or what-have-you and they had a lot of the same experiences where they at some point or another at the crushing realization what I'm being evaluated on here is one totally subjective two totally counterproductive for me as a student it isn't teaching me job skills it isn't training me to be good at something it's not even training me to be good at writing essays it's not training me to be good at delivering lectures myself or doing original research see original research that for me was another turning point was when I really understood what is original research and then the role of translation the role of learning languages in original research that was another turning point that came pretty late in my university education but basically university education Canada was so terrible and I couldn't do any of the things I wanted to do and the whole system evaluation the content of what I was being taught was garbage the way it was being evaluated ascribes and the way it was being evaluated influenced all the other elements of the experience you know of what the discipline is of what the Diploma means and so on this is a disaster you know and what I figured out was languages are not like that if I write an exam for learning Chinese or learning ancient Greek or learning poly or Sanskrit or Creon a jib way or Cambodian I saw the discipline of learning languages as the one element of university education that was not entirely corrupted by post-modernism or just corrupted by the laziness and self-indulgence of who professors are and how they want to make money and what academia had become a Canada I should throw in a caveat here real quick I didn't work in the Department of astronomy or agriculture or architecture all themselves the letter A I also didn't work in zoology I mean I had nothing to do with there are all kinds of other disciplines including other pure sciences and math you know where what I've just said may not be true at all maybe the department of theoretical mathematics is just wonderful University oh no I have nothing to do with that I'm only talking about the department's I had experience with but I did have experience of the great many departments including of course also religious studies everything I've just warned you about political science it can be even worse in religious studies you know this question of are you actually doing original research are you actually learning something useful for you as a student for you in your career path or are you just coming to a classroom where your point is to figure out the bizarre and quite possibly eccentric beliefs of your professor and then repeat back to that professor what they want to hear which may not be what you believe but inky's what is going to teach you what do you learn from that after after four years and tens of thousands of dollars what action do you learn from that process in religious studies and believe me that can be even worse in Buddhism than it is in Christianity or Judaism I have experience I have a lot of experience linked to to Buddhist studies and of course now he stations etc so look came to a point where I thought I'm interested in an educator a form of Education where the evaluation is based on objective criteria when you sit down to write that exam whether it is increase or Cambodian either your answer is right or it's wrong and the question is not how much can you flatter the professor or how much do you happen to agree with the the professor's put a few etcetera etcetera I don't want to know about that so within you know the various kind of missions I had in life that this kind of mandated or ethical interests add whether you talk about the humanitarian impulse I have one do humanitarian work the political impulses I have or indeed the interests that drew me towards study of Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy or philosophy in general European philosophy but is cloth sitter or the drew me towards First Nations their politics their languages in every case I want to be on the horrid linguistic side of that field of study I did not want to be writing exams or having disputes to the professors that were based on their personal religious convictions and give you I want to be able to establish my own authority in the field by doing original research original research that could be evaluated and valued could be recognized as being original and important because of its basis in language its basis in fieldwork its basis in politics history facts facts facts access at all objective facts were these no but the objective facts in the study of history and politics or the objective facts in language and original research new translations etc etc that was where one to beat will clog answer on that I knew that with the PhD and he delivered a paper at a conference there only four people in the audience of this conference it was very common she delivers this paper is basically one professor of tera vaada Buddhism there I know who the professor is and I think he's an idiot but anyway that's also a problem with academia you get you get one bad one bad egg or one bad [ __ ] in a position of power and they hold on to it for decades and the field can't move forward until they retire retire or drop dead of them anyway so he gives his presentation which was about the meaning of a particular word in Pali he was arguing that this word really does not mean meditation I agree with him with a particular world word and he was giving examples where the meaning of the word was totally unrelated to meditation including where the meaning of the word was a list of things in a summary so this is a purely linguistic argument as to the etymology and the usage and he's quoting passages and you know he's got the overhead projector and he's showing these examples where this word has some other meanings that would maybe challenge you know at the end of his presentation it's not like there's a huge audience applauding there are four people there or something and the senior professor sitting there says oh that's a very interesting presentation but that's impossible and the guy just said that it was his religious conviction that this word had this one meeting so any new linguistic research the facts of the case were were irrelevant to his fate and believe me you can go through peer review it's like that - and so on and so forth so look the strength of languages in a language based approach to research whether it's philosophy or politics or religion or history or we want to say when I was getting involved with the Korean the a jib I'm white in case you hadn't noticed I or you can say I'm Jewish if you don't count Jewish people as white matter of perspective I have absolutely no link by blood or heritage your upbringing to the Korean me jibley I just had the misfortune to be born in Canada and thus some part of the you know legacy of British the British Empire colonialism that destroyed their civilizations languages how am I going to make a positive contribution in that field in that struggle it's not going to be because I'm charming you're not going to charm your way into those communities and for me it's not going to be because I sing and dance some people it is some people get involved the arts within First Nations community you're a great you know literally you're a great singer and you do live gigs you can do concert tours in First Nations these in remote you know reservations and what have you you can you can charm you way in you can get involved by being an entertainer but being a musician or a dancer some of that sure or by being a patron of the Arts you're maybe or someone who buys First Nations sculpture art someone who sets up concerts and traditional dance competition sure there are there are people get involved all those ways and there are people get involved cuz they're oil executives right for me a way to have something that's objectively evaluated on objective criteria as I say we're the evaluation for me as a student I can prove that I'm a scholar or that I'm a good student or whatever that assign contribute where it's verifiable the only way I saw to do that was to the language and frankly that's the same thing I'd say about the Cambodians I says people all the time with Cambodians or lotions so these days you look I wasn't born here I have no connection in this place I have no right to do humanitarian work here so how you can get your foot in the door it's not going to because I'm charming you I always reminded people were doing humanitarian work like in Laos Cambodia Thailand I said look never forget these people didn't invite you here that's very very important to remember I mean unless they did invite you if you're actually on a curry reservation does the Korean bar you there you're allowed us because a lot of people value that that's different but most of us show up uninvited and for me the fact that like when I sat in Laos Laos Cambodia even here in Yunnan I had handwriting in the local image net excellent handwriting and lotion I also have handwriting in the ancient scriptural language in Pali if you were blown away by that and right away that opened doors for me oh wow you had the level of commitment to really study our language to really study reading and writing our language Wow now you're welcome we're inviting you in we want to talk to you and literally it would change the political discourse even if we're talking about sensitive political issues suddenly people feel they can trust you they see you've got a level of commitment engagement to them their language their culture their history and in my case it was both ancient history and modern history was doing the ancient language would be like if you're in some part of Europe and you're showing you both know ancient Greek and modern Greek or and moderate ancient Latin and modern Romanian I was both doing poly and in the modern languages of Laos Cambodia Thailand etc so that's something that's object real that shows my value as a scholar much much realer than having a PhD frankly and that open doors and establishes my place politically my opportunity to learn positive and you know I work for a relatively short time on Korea in a jib way but I saw that happen too when I sat down with First Nations people and I could show them either my handwriting reduced in speeches talk to them and show them you know the little bit I could speak Cree nahin Leland completely changes the way they perceive me although they do that man they perceive me as a white man that perceived me as an outsider which is quite right I'm not pretending to be an insider but I'm an outsider who can demonstrate that level of engagement commitment etc I'm already a white man has proven to them I really care about you and your history and your politics I really care about hearing your voice I'm not just here to preach to you whether that's preaching political solutions preaching politics or in the Buddhist context preaching Buddhism I'm really here to listen to you and I care so much about your perspective that I've put in the hard work you're lame so yeah politically that's crucial great so this is a short story long at this point but yeah if the quality of education in Canada were better I would have never gotten on that path it was really because of the appallingly poor quality of education at the University of Toronto in every department I was ever in also a number of other universities in Canada that have been involved with appallingly low I felt that left me no better alternative no other alternative I could see aside from going to language education and trying to make languages you know the platform for my political engagement my philosophical engagement my humanitarian engagement the world and I was hoping it could also be a platform for my career it's utterly failed at that so you can see by other videos still today it's a wide open question of how it is in this life I'm ever going to own a living how it is in this life I'm never going to earn them with it get me up