Well, it is that time to say good bye to my students. I finished the last two months teaching intermediate English. My students are more fluent so I have decided to discuss the value of English in their lives. I have been very disappointed with the curriculum available. It promotes an affluent lifestyle. So I wrote my own final lesson. It is religious without the jargon. With ESL students it wouldn't communicate anyway.
What English Doesn't Teach
Many of our classes begin with the question: “Why do you study English?”
The most common answer being “English is the language of international trade.”
The second most common answer is getting a good job.
Seeing so many Cambodians working at jobs that don’t support them, I can understand the hope that globalization is better than isolation.
Doing business with foreigners is more profitable for some than doing very little business with just your neighbors.
So in an effort to do business globally, Cambodians eagerly learn English.
What you haven’t read in your textbooks is what English will not teach you. All the English fluency in the world won’t teach you to be content, at peace with what you have and do not have. You have read stories of travel, hotels, and great inventions. The more you study and see what others have, the more likely it is that you will be unhappy with your own life. Some think that such unhappiness will make you work harder to make Cambodia a better place. Gazing upon all that is available, if you have the money, widens a hole in your heart. Working with an empty heart is worse than working with an empty stomach.
An empty stomach finds satisfaction when food comes. When you have an empty heart no amount of money brings satisfaction. The business of business is emptiness. What sales people do best is convince you your life is missing something. Of course they have just the thing to sell that will fill your emptiness. Emptiness cannot be filled by a good job or world travel.
Yes, it is hard to be at peace within when you have so little. But working your whole life out of envy of others is the greatest misery of all. For international trade to take place you have to want what others have. So the developed world first seeks to establish that their way of life is better than yours. This was not hard to do in Cambodia because so much was destroyed in the wars. In the west the industrial revolution made the harvest and processing of food virtually labor less. Using machines to do the hard labor has left much farm soil worse off. Land has less ability to produce food. In the state where I come from, Pennsylvania, the most profitable farms use neither electricity nor diesel-powered tractors. The people who run these farms care for the soil, it is better than when they started farming it. While these people have committed themselves to a simpler life, they are neither poor nor uneducated. They value community and the land and are financially secure. The English language will give you a window to see the world but it will not give you peace. Looking through that window may only make you unhappy. If you study English to have a better life, study first what “a better life” is. A million sales people will tell you they have what makes a better life.
There is a saying in the U.S. “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” Lack of peace within one's heart makes you always want what is beyond your reach. With only a little English you see only the grass (on the other side of the fence) and none of the weeds. Another cultures way of doing things may appear better, but is wrought with pain and disappointment equal to your own.
English will do nothing to protect you from greed, others or your own. An empty heart causes people to take more from the land than it can give. An empty heart causes people to take more from their neighbors than they need to live. But emptiness can lead to blindness. In Cambodia, English is needed to get a higher education. To get an education one has to work very hard and spend a great deal of money. Doing so much to improve yourself can easily give an attitude of being better than those without education. Those who work so hard to climb to the top have little empathy with those at the bottom. Education is power. But power without empathy creates poverty. Power gives birth to pride. Power feeds indifference to the needs of others. Out of emptiness we pursue power, thinking it will make our lives better. Power makes us blind to the needs around us. One is blinded to the poverty of power.
English can improve the business you do through trade. More skilled workers invites more corporations to do business in Cambodia. English can improve a student’s employment chances. But no one lives on food alone. Many foreigners come to Cambodia because of the open business climate. They come to make money. If you go into business with someone, even as an employee, be sure they treat all Cambodians justly. When you take a job thinking only about your own prosperity you become a partner to another's greed.
A long, long time before English was the language of international trade, the Greek language was used to do business between many cultures of the world. From one tiny conquered nation came a message of a just community created through the redemptive sacrifice of one. In giving his life for others he cleansed our empty hearts. To anyone who confessed their emptiness there was given the seed of an abundant life. This seed is the voice of God living within. People were set free from the blindness of power and became a community of justice. This community grew and spread. It became so large that the conquering culture, that once tried to destroy it, legalized its existence. Sadly, it's character got replaced with rituals. But the teachings of the Redeemer were preserved. From time to time there is a revival of community through these teachings. There is far greater peace and hope for you, and for Cambodia, in understanding these teachings than in understanding English.
What I have wished for, as we have plowed through these lessons on English, is a curriculum using development as the foundation for the stories that teach grammar. Development is more than making lives easier for people. Development is more than making the soil produce more food. True development is about building character. Character does not get you a job but it will keep you from taking a job that destroys communities or the land that must serve others after you. Character will enable you to ask the tough questions about the results of your choices today. Character gives you the power to make sacrifices for the good of others. Character does not create poverty but community. It is concerned that all relationships are just.
