Liberal vs Conservative--Is that the only way? Y'know, it's late at night and I've already had too many beers. So I'll keep it short and maybe expand on the ideas in a later post.

I'm a conservative. You know--small government, low taxes, individual freedoms and responsibility, family values. But recently I've been listening, via podcasts, to a lot of Air America Radio. Recent titles include The Randi Rhodes Show, The Al Franken Show, and Morning Sedition. In the five years and some months since GW Bush took over the presidency of the US I have lost respect for him and his policies continually with every passing month.

I can't prove it, so you'll have to take my word for it, but I anticipated (from the comfort of my quarterback armchair) a lot of what has happened since 9/11. Bush's over-reaction of taking America to war, the spiraling insurgency in Iraq, the decreasing security of Americans around the globe as a result, the takeover of Islamic religious fundamentalists in Iraq (not yet complete, but likely), and the egregious infringements on personal liberty and privacy within the US that have followed. In fact, I even foresaw the abuse and atrocities commited by a few US military people, telling a relative in the US it was only a matter of time. I was not alone. Others in the media, left, right and center, were calling for caution.

Bush's downgrading of FEMA, installing of unqualified cronies into important political positions, and consistent distortion of the truth to further his own agenda have led me to believe that the time has come for him to be sidelined by Congress, either through impeachment, or an ongoing blockade of his policies. Surely, his gross incompetence has now become apparent to anyone not blinded by rose-colored partisan glasses.

What strikes me now is the opportunity provided by Bush's incompetence for both the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress and throughout the nation to seek common ground. There is so much that we can agree on, starting with putting an end to GW's self-destructive policies at home and abroad. If we were busy and united in promoting the causes which we share, we'd have little time to fight over the other things.

No one that I know, liberal or conservative, wants the government dictating religious observances or dogma. Surely that could be a starting point for a search for common ground. No one I know thinks that assault weapons, rocket launchers and mortars should be available for purchase at Wal-Mart. Common ground. And few people I talk to think that abortion is a wonderful means of contraception, the more the better. Common ground. Everyone wants only the taxes that are absolutely necessary, and then that money wisely used. Everyone wants good schools. Everyone wants a secure homeland, a stable economy, a comfortable home and a decent job with health and retirement benefits.

So much common ground!!! We may disagree on the means to achieve these goals, but surely we have a basis for calm, rational discussion. And compromise.

Many of the facts of GW's leadership lead both conservatives and liberals to question the direction he is taking our nation. Moves to undercut social security, the spiraling national debt, the violence carried out domestically and abroad in the name of "the war on terror," the expensive and unwinnable "war on drugs," the erosion of personal privacy, the degradation of the national infrastructure. Mercenaries hired by the GWB administration make ten times the salary of a US soldier in Iraq for doing the same job, while those same mercenaries go house-to-house in New Orleans turning citizens out of their homes and confiscating their meager weapons of self-defense. These things should be of grave concern to ALL Americans.

Unbelievable opportunity thrust into our hands. Ironically, the GW Bush presidency could serve as the catalyst for a new generation of cooperation and progress rarely seen in US politics.

That can only happen, though, if cooler heads prevail. Both conservative and liberal commentators and columnists, pundits and analysists, have resorted all too often to childish name calling and unproductive rants. One radio personality this week said of Bush, "He's such a baby," and then went on to rant and rave as if he, himself, were pre-pubescent. Friends, we MUST raise the level of discourse.

Yes, we find the lies, deception, narcissism, cronyism, and insensitivity of this administration abominable. Yes, we want judges and justices that will uphold and protect Americans from tyranny, even presidential tyranny and "tyranny of the majority." But we must be both intelligent and mature in our fight. We need to find our own Karl Roves, with savvy and spunk to manage both the battles and war into victory, but simultaneously commited to an ethical standard which professes that the means are just as important as the ends.

The characterization of Republicans as "small government, low taxes" is not accurate. (How much has the deficit grown under GW?) Neither is the characterization of Democrats as "tax and spend." (Who was the last president to balance the budget and create even a budget surplus?)

All Americans want taxes as low as possible with services as high as possible, though we may disagree on where exactly that line may be. No problem! Where we agree let's get moving, where we disagree let's try to find reasonable compromises. But let's not let ideology warp our perceptions or our actions. Focusing on the goals and then reasoning together to find acceptable paths to those goals will make our nation great once again. For in the eyes of the world, we have most certainly stumbled. An unjustified war based on the manipulations of corrupt politicians, a natural disaster that exposed the ugly underside of American poverty, racism and political cronyism, an inconsistent foreign policy based not on promoting democracy and human rights, but on serving the interests of the multi-national corporations that fund the political machinery, government contracts that enrich friends of the ruling elite, an an environmental policy seemingly destined to poison the soil and envelop America and the world in a choking cloud of dust, toxins and heat.

Make no mistake. The world does not see America as great today. We must do better. And it seems we cannot while GW Bush is at the helm.  ¶ 9/16/2005 09:03:00 PM 3 comments links to this post

  English in the Japanese jr hi classroom My greatest frustration teaching English to junior high schoolers as a native speaking helper has always been with the Japanese co-teachers. I'm sure it's not limited to Japanese people, but most teachers I've worked with have not, themselves, been teachable. The native speaker usually teaches only one class in every 3 or 4 in a Japanese junior high. The Japanese teacher often erases any benefit when he or she demeans the native speaker's advice as simply "his accent" and returns to incorrect patterns once the native speaker has gone.

I would never demand that my students speak with the same accent that I have. It's perfectly acceptable to speak English which bears the marks of one's origin. IF, that is, it still falls within the boundaries of accepted "correct" English. Few things make me crazier than teachers passing along to their students English that sounds like this: "I WON-toh tsu puREH BEHsu BO-ru tsu MO ro" and telling their students it means "I want to play baseball tomorrow."

Furthermore, English teachers working with native Japanese speakers should take extra care to always and only model correct rhythm and intonation in *every* English utterance, because of the wide gap between English and Japanese in this area. And yet I still hear teachers every week enunciating and accenting every word with no regard to the words' functions in the sentence. And since native speakers connect words together to form 'legato' phrasing, teachers should also be modeling and teaching this, as well.

It's easier to forgive a teacher that writes mis-spelled words on the board. At least with mis-spelled words the students can correct the teacher, and a skillful teacher can make a game of it. Unfortunately, mistakes of pronunciation, rhythm and intonation remain uncorrected in most classrooms. And Japanese teachers of English seem uninterested in mastering and then teaching these most important of English skills. Is it any wonder that so many Japanese students claim that listening comprehension is the one skill they never seem to master!? They almost never hear it!!!Unless they spend significant time abroad, they only hear natural English for the few seconds in class when the native-speaking teacher (or the CD or cassette) model a few words, phrases or sentences.

One more common error of English teachers and then I'll quit for today. Time and again I've seen teachers fail to initiate students into using proper verb tense until it's too late. I can't even count the number of students in my high school and university classes who show up without understanding how simple present tense is used in English!

A teacher I observed yesterday instructed students to answer the question, "What do you have for dinner?" with what they had eaten the previous night, never explaining that present tense in English is generally used for regularly occurring lifestyle actions, and rarely (if ever) for something that occurred in the past. A significant percentage of those students will NEVER understand how present tense is used, even if eventually taught several weeks or months down the road. I know. I see them in my university courses all the time.

Short of hiring native English speakers to take over English classes full time in the junior high schools, Japanese teachers of English must recognize that the greatest benefit from having native speakers in the classroom occasionally is to the teacher, not the students! It is the teacher's chance to improve his/her communication skills, and to get correction on language issues.

Teachers with the humility and hunger to acknowledge their insufficiency and continually strive to improve their skills are not as common as one might hope. Teachers need not have mastered English to be good language learning coaches, but they themselves MUST be lifelong learners, and that attitude must be passed along to the students.

Lastly, the native speaking English teachers must also remember that they are teaching a foreign language, as opposed to a second language, i.e., English taught to immigrants in a NY classroom. Few students will be able to accurately reproduce the teachers' accents. Nor should they be able to.

Like the Japanese teachers of English, the native speaking teachers must also demonstrate humility, acknowledging that their own English may not be perfect. (A British friend had to correct his habit of substituting /f/ for the th sound when he began teaching in Japan.) That humility should extend to broadening one's English to include words, phrases and pronunciations that are "native," but to someone of another English-speaking culture. I regularly teach "Good day" even though that is rarely used in my American homeland.

Focusing on the issues that directly affect the students' ability to understand and produce English that communicates should be key. Word order, vocabulary, tense, subject/verb agreement, rhythm, intonation and pronunciation are all vitally important. None of these, at least, should be discounted or relegated to the "well, if there's any extra time at the end of the semester" box. These, at least, are not optional.  ¶ 9/13/2005 04:35:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Hello and Welcome Hi, and welcome to my blog and podcast. Listen to my first podcast for a more detailed introduction. I'll try to get more information out there as the days go by.

I'm Phillip in Japan, a US citizen residing long-term in Tsuruoka City of Yamagata prefecture in northen Japan, on the coast of the Japan sea. Look here for notes regarding life in semi-rural Japan, teaching English, and an ex-pat's rather cynical and opinionated rant on life in the US from the outside looking in.  ¶ 9/11/2005 07:43:00 PM 2 comments links to this post