Living Your Ethics
It has been observed that most of what really needs to be learned is learned in primary school, or even earlier. Assertiveness, a habit of mind between aggression and submission, is one of those essentials.
To be assertive is to respect both oneself and others. It is an attitude familiar to Christians as “love your neighbour as yourself”, and to many other religions and philosophies in different words. Foreign language education is a perfect opportunity to model assertiveness for our children.
Esperanto takes 100 hours to learn. Making a commitment to this much effort is neither submissive nor aggressive, but assertive and respectful of other global citizens, whether "economically important" or not.
That seems an appropriately peace-promoting choice for a Montessori school.
To be assertive is to respect both oneself and others. It is an attitude familiar to Christians as “love your neighbour as yourself”, and to many other religions and philosophies in different words. Foreign language education is a perfect opportunity to model assertiveness for our children.
- A submissive approach would be to accept what others choose to impose on us, like whatever language is currently being funded. Then we stop when the funding stops, with not much to show for it. We won't question whether you really have 2200 hours in which to learn Mandarin, just start as we're told.
- An aggressive approach is to notice that we have a strong hand and push it. English has money and political clout, so let someone else- billions of “someone else” s - spend 2000 hours learning English. It’s not our problem.
- An assertive approach is to recognize that we all have other things to be doing, and that we can cooperate to adopt a solution which is fair and manageable for all.
Esperanto takes 100 hours to learn. Making a commitment to this much effort is neither submissive nor aggressive, but assertive and respectful of other global citizens, whether "economically important" or not.
That seems an appropriately peace-promoting choice for a Montessori school.