A life in words

  • I Disapprove: English Immersion as Foolishness and Arrogance

    See this link about English immersion education programs. English immersion sounds like something that foreigners do when they want to learn English fast. That’s something such a system is good for. However, at least in California, English immersion is in essence a rejection of bilingual education. Now, maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe California’s bilingual…

  • A Few Thoughts

    Hey! Thanks for reading and replying. Here are some more thoughts I’ve had related to that. Susanna’s Comment Thanks for writing such a great post. I really enjoyed it. And now I am more convinced than ever that I have to go to Paris someday. I like to believe that it really is everything I…

  • En españa—totally soaked, newly conscious

    I’m completely wet. Tonight we’re going to see the new Pirates movie, Piratas del carribe 3: en el fin del mundo, as they call it here. So to accompany that, we’re going to watch the first movie on a projector here at the school. Well, we were supposed to meet at 4pm, so I headed…

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations…. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form….John Stuart Mill, On LIberty