Педагогические науки/2. Проблемы подготовки специалистов

Liubov Khalezova

PhD, Assistant Professor, Sevastopol Humanitarian Institute, Russia

What should we teach: language, culture or self-esteem?

Modern world dictates brand new tendencies everyone has to follow: globalization, access to any information via Internet, possibility to communicate on-line and so on.

And as usual younger generation is already on the front line, thinking they are changing the world for better. But is it always so? Who teaches them? We do. So the most urgent task for university scholars is not simply to analyze the on-the-spot situation, explain historical background and give theoretical knowledge, but to teach them that honey catches more flies than vinegar. As for the language teachers we face the problem of what to teach: language, culture or self-esteem? The best methods of studying this case are empirical, of course. There are loads of variants of how to make young generation think critically and be open-minded discussing the questions like: If live in a country and am the citizen of this country, if I work here, pay taxes BUT speak its second language, or just my native language, different from the official – am I a patriot? If I am the citizen of a country and speak only official language BUT have left this country for another to work and earn more money – am I a patriot? Or am I just a cosmopolitan one free to live whenever I want? Is my language responsible for my identity? So while teaching any language what to pay attention to: drilling grammar, reading literature in original, speaking practice, business communication, writing e-mails or something deeper?

Teaching any language means teaching culture. And not only the culture of the country which language is being studied, but the culture of your own state. Being a cosmopolitan is great. Being ready to represent your country and culture in another language is better. The modern world is becoming more and more fragile just because of millions of mosaic pieces which are introduced regularly.

Globalization on the one hand opens the borders to new economy standards, new political standards and new immigrants as a result on the other hand. There are very few homogeneous states now – people move because of war conflicts, poor life conditions and for lots of other “modern reasons”, so together with their native language they bring their own vision of reality to the territories with stable and settled ideas of how to live HERE. Those people will send their children to schools, those children will mix with the locals and the task for the teacher is to avoid any possible conflicts.

We cannot deny the fact that the diversity of customs, cultures and habits is already here. So we only have to understand, respect and study because the same knife cuts bread and fingers.