Dr. Catherine Bishop's new book "The World We Want" chronicles a special educational program from the Cold War era with high school students around the world

Last Friday's launch of Dr. Catherine Bishop's book "The World We Want" at The Debs Center of the American University of Beirut in New York City (October 4, 2024) was great. This unique book describes a program called the World Youth Forum, which ran from 1947 to the early 1970s and was initiated by the defunct newspaper The New York Herald Tribune. It involved selecting high school students from all over the world, called "delegates," to attend schools in the New York metro area and live with host families for about three months. They later spoke on radio or television about their impressions of the United States (many videos of the TV programs are posted on YouTube and are making quite an impression). The paper's political and social connections ensured that they rubbed shoulders with celebrities and sometimes US presidents like Truman, Eisenhower, and JFK.

I was invited because I had interviewed a 1947 delegate from Ecuador named Susana Donoso, who was referenced twice in the book. (She is 94 years old and still sharp.) See my 2011 blog post of our interview at https://latin-caribbean-travelblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/susana-donoso-who-participated-in.html . My contribution was a tiny drop in the bucket, because besides her exhaustive research, Dr. Bishop contacted 300 delegates, or families of deceased delegates, from every corner of the globe.

My wife Adriana accompanied me and was as impressed as I was by the perceptive comments of the delegates present regarding the program and its impact on their lives. The youngest person in attendance participated in 1973, and the oldest in 1952 (roughly between 68 and 89 years of age).

More notes on language learning

 

Fitting rooms rendered in Spanish in Bogotá, Colombia

On May 11, 2013, I wrote a post on language learning which you can find at https://latin-caribbean-travelblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/language-learning-in-class-and-on-your.html. Since that time, there are other lessons that I've acquired from experience - sometimes just observing how I react to a given situation - or reading that I've incorporated into my language learning. These are given in no particular order here.

If I feel an inner resistance to moving in a given direction, I don't struggle with it and try to force it to work. Instead, I let it go. For example, I absolutely despise flash cards because I associate them with being in school and having to memorize something to take a test. That feeling is the kiss of death for any of my language learning efforts. If I actually had to, or chose to, take a test, I would consider using flash cards, but overall, my learning is predicated on removing as much stress as possible. If you find that you like flash cards or any other method that I say that I don't like, by all means use them. Conversely, if I say that such and such a method works wonders for me and you find that you dislike it, don't force yourself.

When I write other languages or grammatical concepts of other languages in a notebook, I find that my brain absorbs the content better than when I type it on a keyboard. Certainly, there are times when typing is more convenient or has a benefit because the text can be manipulated, copied and pasted, but part of my language learning has to be done the traditional way for it to really hold.

I may resist doing further language study for a time, but I will know when I'm ready to take it on. This is a natural process that I don't rush.

If I know that I will be traveling to a place where one or several of my target languages is/are spoken, the language(s) move immediately to the front of the line before any other languages, and I practice it/ them more intensely before I go, and of course during the trip!

 

Some subtle ways that Spanish differs from English

 

Over more than 40 years, I have learned many subtleties to Spanish. It is true of Spanish, as it is of learning the guitar, that it's easy to learn poorly but hard to learn well. Here is a random list of differences between Spanish and English that surprised me when I first learned them. Each language apparently has its own logic.

In Spanish, you don't turn on (prender) or turn off (apagar) a faucet; you open it (abrir) or close it (cerrar).

You can't say in Spanish "He almost fell down" (casi se cayó), because people will say, "He already fell down, so he didn't 'almost' do anything." The correct way to say this is "Casi se cae," which literally translated means "He almost falls down."

In Spanish, you don't eat (comer) your soup; you drink it (tomar). The same is true of oatmeal.

There is a curious construction in Spanish that goes something like this: "hasta que no termine" which literally translates as "until I don't finish" where we would say in English "until I finish." 

I will share more of these in future posts.

A sign in Spanish demonstrating how to wash one's hands correctly. I take photos of signs like these to demonstrate both similarities with, and differences between, Spanish and English.