Learn English With President Obama: Simon Buckland
Simon Buckland, sbuckland@wallstreetinstitute.com
To start with, I’m not talking about structural drills based on variants of “Yes we can” and “Yes we did” (“Yes, they had,” “Yes, she would have”), but something much more uplifting.
Actually, the concept originated a few years ago, when a Chinese friend of mine who ran a small educational publishing firm decided to put together a collection of annotated speeches under the arresting title “Learn English With the President of the United States.” As the year was 2002 and the president was you-know-who, I suggested making the term plural, in order to encompass some more exalted models. My friend never got around to following my suggestion, as he sold the business shortly afterward and returned to the much more lucrative practice of commercial law. The close-up of G.W. Bush’s “thought processes” may well have proved the tipping point: No successful enterprise was ever going to be constructed upon such foundations.
This isn’t to pile onto Bush yet again (though no amount of contumely could ever be more than he deserves). It’s true that intermediate and advanced students might derive some useful amusement from contemplating his strangled syntax, or his inability to correctly formulate common axioms like “Fool me once . . .”, but one wouldn’t want to take them there: It’s too depressing. How could someone achieve the highest office who not only was so impaired morally (perhaps not so obvious) but can’t even use his own language properly? Thoughts crowd in about the dumbing down of public discourse, the decline in standards of literacy, and so on—gloomy, disempowering thoughts that we don’t even want to be thinking ourselves, much less sharing with our students.
This is where we were a year or more ago, and where we aren’t any more. Those of us whose livelihoods center around the dissemination of English have an additional reason to celebrate the election of Barack Obama: It offers the possibility of returning language to its rightful place in our political life—to clarify, to inform, and, above all, to inspire. The significant role that Obama’s mastery of English has played in his success is a cause for celebration by everyone who cares about language, especially students of English. In studying his speeches, our students can see living examples of how language is used to communicate vision and higher purpose, and in the process understand how this has shaped his campaign and his victory—so reaching back to the very roots of America’s national and political identity.
Take for instance this excerpt from Obama’s speech in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008 about race in America:
This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should have been authorized and never should have been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
Rhetoric used to be studied by every educated person from Ancient Greece through to the 19th century. It was one of the three elements of the trivium in the Middle Ages, and was regarded as a central accomplishment of civilization. Nowadays it’s often regarded as devious, dishonest, or at least obscurantist—calling to mind perhaps the “elitist” charges and countercharges that pervaded the election campaign.
Yet there’s nothing high-flown about Obama’s use of rhetoric. It is characteristically direct and to the point. Even intermediate students will pick up on the repetition of “This time” and “we want to talk about,” and all students will appreciate the power and importance of the message his words convey. Language has the power to move us, and it also has the power to change the world. What better reason could there be to study it?
So, thanks to my friend for an idea whose time has at last come: a collection of Obama’s speeches and writings, with background notes and exercises. Of course, I realize that MWISers are highly enterprising and also quick off the mark, so it may well be that 20 such proposals are already sitting in publishers’ inboxes. But just in case they’re not, let me offer the idea as a gift to anyone who’s casting around for his or her next project.
Unless, of course, it falls to me to do it myself. . . .
Yes, I can.
Simon Buckland is in charge of curriculum development for the Wall Street Institute group of schools. He has worked as a scriptwriter and courseware designer since the days of the last Democratic president but one. Though unable (as a British citizen) to vote for him, he was as pleased as any son or daughter of Uncle Sam to see Barack Obama elected.
MWIS Newsletter February 2009 Volume 22 Number 1: Table of Contents
