ariadnem | (no subject)

I don't even know why I'm writing this here today. *sigh* Last Monday, one of my students called me an 'antipatriotic'. I couldn't have laughed more...or felt more offended. The thing is, she's learning English and calls me that because I teach English. puff....Dunno how I could hold myself back and not hit her.

It got me thinking, I remember a while ago, cygny asked about prejudices, specifically aghainst Belgians. It got me thinkling at that time, and it does again.

Well world, guess what?! I'm Colombian!!!! and from Medellín. Ohh yes, Pablo Escobar lived and died here, so did the Cartel. Yes, it was my city the one in March's issue of the National Geographic Magazine, in which many horrible things were said about my country. It is people like me, who's always stopped in the airports because we're allegedely charged with drugs....and so on and on and on...it's an everlasting list.

*sigh....again*

It's so easy to judge. Maybe that's why I don't judge people. I hate to be the one on trial. I hate to be the foreigner. Some months ago, a friend from Chile was telling me about how horrible it was to live in my country with all the terrorism and stuff. People have no idea what it was like to live in Colombia 'till say 10 years ago. Things are different now.´

There are a lot of good people still living in this country.

Some people, rant against those who say bad things of us, Colombians. I don't give a damn. I know my country. I know the people around me. I can see the good in them. If the rest of the world can't...well...what a pity. You're missing incredible people, incredible places...bad things do happen, but my country is not the only one with problems, where the most well known, which is different.

I guess that's why it pissed me off to be called antipatriotic. I love my country. Very. But it doesn't mean I can't like other stuff, like English. Even Naty has called me names beacuse of English.

Why don't you just get to a language schooo, learn what you haven't wanted to learn and stop talking about what you don't know. You're so frustrated because others can do what you can't, that you don't even pay attention to what is said.

If being antipatriotic is loving languages, then I'm guilty at charge.

I better stop here....

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

About language teaching... I’m Irish, and we have our own language, which sadly I am not fluent in. I was born in Dublin, and the Gaelic we learned at school when I was a kid was just that, a school subject, an exam to pass, nobody spoke it at home, everything in English. Just like English literature was an exam and not something enjoyable, and those old books were a chore to read. Thankfully I discovered later in life the joys of literature.

I’ve never been called anti-patriotic for speaking English, though in the Gaeltacht, the Gaelic-speaking regions of Ireland, I have felt out of place...

I’ve never been called anti-patriotic for Teaching English, but at times I have thought about the implications of language teaching and colonialism.

I’ve never been called patriotic or anti-patriotic, but I have been subjected to “special attention” because of my nationality.

I was in London on October 12th 1984, I was nineteen years old, it was my first solo trip abroad, and I was staying with an aunt. That day The I.R.A planted a bomb in the hotel where the then government was having it’s annual meeting.

I got stopped by the police, and got looked at strangely by people who heard my accent. I’d arrived a couple of days before the explosion, and I was going back a couple of days later... it did look kind of suspicious, I admitted that to a Special Branch officer while I was boarding the ferry to go home. Well, my bags got searched, and nothing suspicious was found, so I was let go.

The same thing happened 1990. I was due to go to London, to catch a coach that would take me to the continent. I was just a poor rucksack traveller then, and we didn’t have cheap flights then.

A few days before I left Dublin, there was an explosion in a military installation in England. This time there were deaths... so the British press were printing all sorts of horrible things about “Mad dog Irish” and stuff like that. My mum wanted me to cancel my trip, but I didn’t.

The atmosphere was tense in London, and as the coach I was on drew into Dover, the police stopped us, and a Special Branch man got on and said “All Irish, off the bus.”

There were about ten Irish people on the coach, so we were taken off, made to line up outside the coach, our bags were searched, we were interviewed. My tickets showed I’d arrived in England after the bombing, but I was still a suspect, after all, I was one of those “damned Republicans”, and I admit it, I am a Republican, and I’m a Catholic, and I’m a pacifist, and I’m a vegetarian.

So there are radical beliefs all over, there’ll always be someone ready to criticise you over something, whether it be ethnic background, political views, sexual tendency, language or whatever.

You be proud of your country, of your city, of your language skills and of everything about yourself.

Pay no attention to names like “anti-patriotic”, as Nana once told me “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”

So to finish, you are absolutely right, Marggy, next time you see that girl, tell her to drop out of English class, say something like “Give it up now, otherwise you could become an anti-patriot like me...”

But never hit a student unless the school regulations permit it. As you so keenly point out, you can hit ‘em harder with the grades.

You keep working on your English and your French, and pay no attention to the narrow-minded ones who think that patriotism means rejecting everything not from your own country.

I'm proud of my country. More now than I was some years ago. I've seen it change, it's grown with me, and since I know its nice face, I can say not everything is bad.

Nobody has ever made e change my mind once I've put myself into something...too bad for them...hehehehe