I was talking to Grant tonight and we thought it rather odd that people perhaps don’t fully realize that these are our jobs at stake and that, to that effect, two things are true:
1. WL enrollments increase vastly when comprehensible input is the medium used for instruction. Enrollments go up significantly. Programs are saved from the chopping block. New teachers are hired who have the CI skills necessary to continue the expansion of the new and successful fluency based programs. We have ample evidence of this just in the members of this small group. Robert, what were your numbers, for example?
2. Enrollments decrease when the old ways are used. Only a few kids get to AP and they are usually white females bound for Ivy League schools. Jobs are cut. Sadly, the youngest hires are the first to be axed and the old head-in-sand ostriches are retained to make even more generations of kids feel stupid and lack confidence and finally quit learning a language that, at some point early on, they loved.
So, the question Grant and I had was, “Aren’t people aware of this situation? Aren’t people hip to the fact that they stand to guarantee their own job security when they use comprehensible input methods?”
Seriously, it’s a good point to make, right?