On the evening of the 3rd of
July, and just after the Tour de France parade passing through Millenium Square
heandig the Leeds Arena grand gala opeing, Spanish Business Quarter
decided to celebrate their second event in Leeds in La Tasca. This was a
great occasion to share all the excitement around the Tour de France with all
members of the SBQ community.
We had great conversations
about our SBQ project and how it is growing interest in different communities.
Our program for year 2014-15 will be ready end of Summer and there will be many
new activities and participants enjoying from the experience. Participants were
very happy to share their experiences in trading in Spain and North of England,
challenges, opportunities and tips.
We had the opportunity to enjoy
an amazing black paella (congratulations chef!) and a great
performance of modern flamenco by the star of the event, our favorite dancer
from the Northern Ballet, Matilde with Ana (in the picture with Blanca and
Alejandro).
I was a university lecturer for over twenty
years and until recently I taught Spanish and, in particular, translating and
interpreting. I had a clear goal to help my students become as proficient as
possible both in the general use of language as well as in the specific skills
of translating and interpreting.
As most teachers or lecturers know, it is
vital to ensure material used for teaching is relevant to students. Effective
teaching should start with a student’s prior knowledge and give them additional
ways to extend, use, develop and apply that knowledge. But each new fact,
concept or process introduced in a course should initially relate to the
student’s previous experience so they can take it on board, conceptualise it
and assume it.
In attempting to do this, lecturers
sometimes get it wrong. We can make incorrect assumptions concerning our
students’ prior experience, particularly when making cultural references to
explain a point. I remember using a text for translation about alternative
lifestyles which mentioned “hippies” and a reference to the Beatles and their
song “Strawberry Fields”. Although I knew it well (and bought the record the
day it was released!) my 18 year old students were not aware of this song, so failed
to make any connections between the reference to the Beatles and Strawberry
Fields and the main context of the text.
This, among other things, has got me thinking
about the profound issue of the key role of communication and understanding
between teacher and student. In fact, the question I consider most often these
days is; why is it that older people teach younger people?
The answer might appear obvious. Older
people have more knowledge, more experience, more skills, greater self-control
(in general) than young people, and these are the things that younger people
are supposed to learn.
But, as the issues of communication and
understanding between teacher and pupil are so crucial, there are some key
drawbacks to having older people teaching younger people, especially in a world
which changes so rapidly.
In my case, my education began in the 1950s
and I was at university in the 1970s.Students
I taught in 2013, who will graduate in 2017, will be fully immersed in their
careers and society in general in the 2020s and beyond, 70 years after I began
my initial education.
How can it be right or effective that
someone educated in the past should prepare students for the future, for a
world which will be so different, in ways in which we cannot even imagine? Why
should someone like me use my experience to try to prepare students for a world
which I cannot conceive, cannot imagine, do not understand and probably will
not inhabit?
It’s unlikely that the young will ever be
expected to teach the old. Perhaps the issue is rather, what should the old
teach the young? How should the young be educated? Facts and information are
available instantly through the internet and, anyway, they change constantly
and rapidly. The knowledge a student gains on the first year of a science or
technology degree can be outdated by the time they graduate. There seems little
value in asking students to learn information or facts by rote if things change
so rapidly. What, then, should education consist of?
Perhaps it is time to refocus on those
timeless and universal truths that ancient civilisations were so keen to
identify? Perhaps we should all learn about what it means to be human, how to
understand and come to terms with ourselves and with others, how to locate,
verify and apply information, how to understand the relationship between cause
and effect? Perhaps there should only be one course at all universities,
worldwide? BA/BSc (Hons) Learning to Learn?
Competent linguists may believe they have
actually learned a foreign language, understood the rules of grammar and
syntax, mastered semantics… But, as experienced translators know, if that were
all there was to language, then machine translation would have been perfected
many years ago…
What good translators know is that when
translating they employ a high degree of linguistic knowledge. But, even more
importantly, they draw on a deep understanding of both historical and
contemporary society, of technical, economic, social and cultural developments
and of the human condition. Whatever your teachers taught you, as they were
probably older than you, it is your job, your responsibility to select, adapt
and develop, to relate and ultimately apply your learning to today, and to
continue doing so for tomorrow – and the day, month, year after.
