I’m listening to Carla Bruni’s L’Amoureuse right now. I had a shock. I thought about what a terrible loss that sometimes kids get turned off to stuff like this in the name of grammar study. This song, French songs, French film, French poetry, French novels are uplifting me and Paul and Diana in a way that we could never describe, just like the German culture lifts Mike and Anne and Spanish lifts Ynes and Bryce and Vicente. And we would like to share that with our kids!
What would happen if we were the ones responsible for closing the doors to this kind of music and language to tons of kids for their whole lives? Is it an exaggeration to call that a major loss? To me, it would be no less.
We can’t turn the kids off to beauty, to the beauty of other cultures that can maybe fill holes in their hearts that were put there because they were American teenagers growing up in a time of unprecedented confusion. We have the potential to give those kids reasons to love something. We just can’t screw this TPRS stuff up.
Maybe people who consider TPRS people freaks can now get a little insight into WHY we are freaks, in the light of the above thinking. Right now L’Amoureuse is over and now I’m listening to Tiken Jah Fakoly’s Un Africain à Paris. Tiken is telling his mom not to worry because he is in Paris. He tells her he is o.k. even if he is not living first class. He tells her not to worry.
I don’t know, y’all, don’t we have a sacred trust to deliver these cultures, this awesome stuff, to our kids? Don’t we at some point have to admit that over the past decades we just haven’t been getting the job done, with 90% of American foreign language students quitting once their requirement has been met?
O.K. now L’Amoureuse is on again. “Even the pebbles are acting important because they know that I am in love.” Teaching languages. It’s more than it seems. It’s kind of a sacred work. It’s gold, Jerry. Gold. Let’s not screw this TPRS stuff up, y’all. We know how to do it. We can and will do it. Life will become thrilling again.