The “Four Cs” of 21st Century Education by Adam Shames drew this response:

Creativity, critical thinking, communication and communication can all be exercised and nurtured by teaching the simple intercultural language, Esperanto, to all our children in primary school. Esperanto fosters creativity more than other languages because of an extraordinary potential for combining word elements to create meaningful words. Sixteen rules with no exceptions provide a framework for both successful invention and critical thinking about concepts and their expression.
Esperanto enables children to communicate with peers in dozens of diverse cultures and to collaborate as a global community.
Learning Esperanto provides skills,understandings and motivation to learn other languages more effectively.
A new resource “Talking to the Whole Wide World” enables any primary teacher to teach Esperanto to fluency.

Thanks David, this is much appreciated!.....

Hello, Penny - I've just sent the following to The Guardian at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/25/modern-language-decline?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments

The solution to this problem is long-term, but the only moral one, namely to establish Esperanto in primary-schools and secondary schools, so that children all over the world have the same language in common from an early age.  It can be done, for example by the means developed by the New South Wales family firm, Mondeto.com.  Visit its website and learn how every primary school in the English-speaking world could be teaching Esperanto in every class, without specialist teachers.  The Mondeto resource-book "Talking to the Whole Wide World" is being translated into as many languages as possible, and its benefits could thus be felt worldwide. The alternative to Esperanto is unachievable, for nobody is capable of learning hundreds of languages, and machine-translation cannot succeed because every national language has too many idiosyncrasies.  One huge obstacle, however, is the body of modern-language teachers.  Out of pure prejudice, they oppose the teaching of Esperanto, maintaining that only national languages have any merit.  If they would only open their minds and look up Esperanto and Mondeto on internet, the whole scene would change.


Chion bonan,

David.

I've got to learn how to trackback! Travelling to the Expo in Melbourne today- here's my response to the blog above.....

penivos said... Esperanto certainly is alive and may soon be putting on a growth spurt in Australia.

It turns out that the best way to get children bilingual in schools is to teach them an easy language first -all the way- then transfer those concepts, skills and attitudes to a harder language later.

Linguists call it "the apprenticeship language strategy"and it new materials called "Talking to the Whole Wide World" make an Esperanto language apprenticeship something every primary school teacher can provide.

It will be on show at the Melbourne Educaton Expo at Caulfield Racetrack this weekend.

Penny Vos
www.mondeto.com

Today we received our list of potential partner schools in the "School's First" initiative.
We hope to help some lucky students towards a really amazing adventure.

Abstract for a colloquium to be presented at the conference:
Professor Michael Clyne said, in his preface to my book "Talking to the Whole Wide World: Integrated LOTE and Intercultural Studies for Australian Primary Schools" (Vos, 2010): “many Australian children miss out on...the opportunity to develop linguaphilia...".
Michael, like many linguists, did not miss out because of his bilingual roots. My presentation is about how universities can equip primary schools to give all Australian children an early experience of functional bilingualism, with diverse intercultural communication, before the end of primary school. It will also show how this will prepare them, both academically and emotionally,  for more successful target language acquisition in secondary schooling and beyond.(Literature review by Corsetti, 2005 cites 17 supporting studies). This presentation will highlight the problems in the existing model of LOTE provision (DEST, 2000) and show how they may be practically addressed using a "language apprenticeship" strategy (Lo Bianco, 2010) encapsulated in a resource which enables monolingual generalist teachers to simultaneously learn and teach Esperanto, as an apprenticeship language, to fluency. The methodology and rationale of the resource, including the characteristics of language which suit it to the role of “apprenticeship”, will be explored in some detail, as will the role of universities in enabling change, starting with rural communities which are the least linguistically advantaged.

Hope it gets accepted!

Primary school is where we provide for our communityʼs children to become whole people. It is a chance we
give them to be all that they can be, in as many dimensions as we can imagine.
In primary school, we are all scientists, authors, artists, musicians and athletes. Later we specialize, and
many of us no longer write poems, but we have done, and that matters. It gives us insight to ourselves and
others, and a basis to build upon if we ever want to change our direction later.
It follows that, in primary school, we should be more than monolingual. We should be, consciously, part of
The World. To have communicated with friends who do not use English, is as important as to have high-
jumped, or made something out of clay, or acted in a play. These potentials need activating early so we know
them to be parts our ourselves.
It is not obvious how this can be achieved. How can our children have this positive experience of linguistic
success, without impinging on the opportunity to experience real success in other, equally important,
domains?
The answer is to provide a simple one first. Just as we provide a simple musical instrument, a simple game
for sport or a simple poem structure in literature, we can provide a simple language for primary use.
A descant recorder is a simple instrument that will teach a future flautist, saxophonist or even pianist, useful
understandings about pitch, tempo, and volume as well as providing manual dexterity and the habits of
waiting your turn, reading music, listening to the the group, practicing when it is hard, recovering from
mistakes, playing by ear, performing in public and taking a bow.
Not only is it more practical to teach a simple instrument that the class teacher can play, but this is more
effective than giving a saxophone to an average five year old, which is just too heavy, difficult and
discouraging and , therefore, likely to be abandoned. A two-step process, well-executed, gives the child two
happy experiences of success: mastering the recorder, then mastering the saxophone.
Similarly, Esperanto is a simple language which teaches that there are other ways to talk: other sounds,
other letters, other words, other ways to make sentences, other ways to be polite or rude. It teaches nouns
and pronouns and adjectival agreement and other grammatical concepts. It also teaches how to remember
things, how to re-word an idea, how to recognize an idiom, how to use a bilingual dictionary, how to be
patient when someone is struggling to communicate with you, and how to find the courage to speak up when
you know that you might get it wrong. Esperanto can be used to communicate with a worldwide community
of a few million speakers from over one hundred maximally diverse cultures. Children in dozens of countries
are learning Esperanto as their first foreign language, and good infrastructure is in place to facilitate contact
between them, in their new meet-in-the-middle language.
The job of secondary school is to prepare for adulthood, to start to specialize and to choose your identity and
direction. A confidently bilingual child with personal experience of foreign language learning, and use, is
much better prepared to choose and commit to learning a third language than a monolingual child can be.
Again, a two-step process offers both more satisfaction on the journey and a higher rate of “arrival” , the
mastery of the target languages.
Australia has never had anywhere near enough LOTE teachers to provide for all its children. Fortunately,
new materials called “Talking to the Whole Wide World: Integrated LOTE and Intercultural Education for
Australian Primary Schools”  have been designed for use by classroom teachers. The teachers learn the
language along with the children in the first year of use. The process is fun and varied, including active
teaching, practice play, songs, jokes, intercultural research, creative applications, intercultural
communication and consolidation exercises.
Classroom teachers are available all day, every day, in every city and village and school of the air. They
know  each child well and can vary time allowances and tap into interests for individuals. They can integrate
language learning to provide more frequent practice, more efficiently. Language immersion works. As
generalists, they model “normal adulthood”, taking LOTE out of the realm of unusual specialists and finally
starting to erode Australiaʼs monolingual mindset.
To be part of this revolution in Primary LOTE education, or for more information, please visit the website at
www.mondeto.com
Primary LOTE

Thanks to Hani Ghali, principal of Sutherland Shire Montessori School, for creating and distributing this lovely invitation (see below) to Montessori schools in the Sydney area, and for organizing the event itself.

Sébastien Castelbou est en train de travailler à la traduction en Français du livre de Penelope Vos. / is working on the French translation of 'Talking to the Whole Wide World' by Penny Vos / estas tradukanta la lernolibron de Penny Vos.

The Sun reports that Esperanto is alive and dancing- read it here!

Thanks to Steve Pitney, who is recommending "Talking to the Whole Wide World" to his school community, for the question
There are 40 weeks of lessons in the book but how much of the book are you meant to teach to the Prep level and each other level to Grade 6 ?
The answer to that is at the teacher's, and school's, discretion.
The "weeks" would only represent real weeks if the class is fairly capable year 5 or 6 and the time allocation is about 2-2.5 hours a week. In that case, the course can fit into one year. Normal time allocations are significantly less than that and younger children take longer to memorize vocabulary (although they have an excellent "ear" for pronunciation).
Other variables include the linguistic background of the children and the teacher, how much curriculum integration is used (like calling the roll in Esp-o, counting in sports in Esp-o ... and how long is spent on intercultural exploration.
Teachers will never "run out" of LOTE to do, using this program, because it provides all of the grammar and enough vocabulary to enable endless reading, writing, speaking and listening activities, both literary and instrumental, and the contacts to support the teacher in leading them. In particular, it provides opportunities to make intercultural relationships in dozens of diverse cultures, which can profitably fill as much time as will ever be available.
For the purposes of coordinating provision within a school, I recommend that teachers annotate their copy of the book, to indicate what has been done (and to what effect) and what has been omitted, and that the book is passed on to the next teacher at the end of the year. This will provide better continuity than a theoretical division which would not be accurately adhered to in any case.

Thanks again for the question, Steve

Penny