Teaching - a blessing in desguise?

For years, the teaching profession has been a prestigious and valued occupation. Teachers were regarded as role models both by children and their parents. Their authority was undisputedand the role they played in society was an indispensable and noble one. However in recent times, teachers´virtuosity has been reduces to a mere assistencialist position.

In asociety ruled by purchasing power, teachers, whose salaries are extremely low, are not considered respectable professionals. On the contrary, the choice of a teaching carreer is now regarded as an unwise one. Furthermore, due to this lack of prestige neither parents nor studentssee teachers ar role models any longer. Parents thenselves being professionals expect their children to choose hhigh earning courses of study eventhough they might overlook their own vocations. The media, in turn, has also become a source of "role models", filled as it is now with uneducated, though incredibly rich sports people or notorious female celebs.

As a result of these detrimental factors, behaviour problems in classrooms did not take long to appear. Naughty and noisy children are a must in today´s schools.
On top of it all, teachers have been deprived of their right to impose discipline . Instead, they are expected to passively acceptbeing mistreated and abused by seven year old kids. What is more, in several occations, teachers who have tried to use a disciplinatory measure have been taken to court , or even worse, have been dismissed from their workplaces.

In conclusion, in spite of all the current negative aspects of teaching there are still young people who go for it. It seems to me that the task of providing children with guidance is both invaluable and rewarding. No matter the drawbacks currently faced by the teaching field, working on your chosen profession is undoubtly a blessing.

Tough Enough

When I had to think of a topic for a cartoon, I wanted it to represent me and how I feel: This is my cartoon
In this cartoon I try to represent something that sooner or later we are all confronted with: that is independence.
As this is our last year at college, I wanted to portray the fears and insecurities that we all feel now that we are about to step into adult life.
Once we get our degree, the first thing we need to do is to get a job. Even though most of us already work, supporting ourselves is by far a differet thing. Luckily for English teachers job opportunities abound. We might be offered jobs in private institutes, schools, even our houses can be places of work. However working conditions vary, and there are many people out there who might want to benefit from both our capacities and inexperience. I have to confess that the name "tough enough" came up rather naturally. I quite often find myself saying that.

As regards the experience of being a cartooninst, I really enjoyed. The idea came up almost immediately, the dialogues though, were more difficult. I guess that it is because we are always so concerned about our writings, finding synonyms or fancy words that when it comes to simple language we just have to think twice as much!

The linguistic Original Sin

As David Crystal put it in an article in 1966 "...the findamental role language plays in the practical understanding , expresion , presentation and furtherance of any set of religious beliefs..."

How fundamental is this role?
If we think about a language as a science that can be studied, you´ll undoubtedly think about linguistics. For the past 150 years, the main interest of this science was the study of language in relation to its context, organization and its external functon(i.e. the connection to reality). As is decribed by Crystal: "Language must be studied in its corect social perspective as the most flexible and potentially subtle form of communication"
For him, the uniqueness of human communication and the power of discourse are particular important when it comes to the analysis of speech.

There are other principles though, for instance that all language implies intellibility. An intelligible message is one clear enough to be understood. There are simple strategies to make your discourse more or less intelligible, the use of simple or complex lexis is one of them. Secondly, The influence of context. It´s usually said thet there are as many interpretations as people who read the message. And this statement is true since backgroud knowledge,the ideas and preconceptions in their minds are different.

Having said this, you might be wondering: what all this has to do with religion?
Well, let me tell you that the discrepancies in intelligibility are most often trivial in everyday speaking but when more presicion is needed and personal and emotional associations arise, as in the case of religion, these connotations can "prove fatal to constructive discussion" (David Crystal).


(to be continued)

Great language lesson last moday. I loved the topic of oriental culture and realizing the may be more than one way to view things. I kept wondering...and reading. I found out that Since 1995 in China there is a five-day education system.It used to be six day. That teachers and Students were very much in favour but parents weren´t since the were worried about their chilcren being "behind" in their education...