Waldorf High School at Home

Learning Arabic

My son Gabriel is very keen on learning languages. He has been studying Latin on and off on his own (well, with a bit of help from my husband who studied Latin in school) for a number of years. He has taken French at a local high school for a year and a half. And he also experimented with German and Russian - I helped him with the latter as that was what I took in high school and also for a year at college.

 

This semester he decided he wanted to study a non European language. Since it's always better to work with someone when learning a language and since I had been thinking about studying Arabic for a number of years, I suggested we do this together. He was pleased and so we have begun. Slowly.

 

Our first consideration was approach and goals. I want to be able to speak to people - I have wanted to work in the Middle East for many years - once my sons are grown I might well do so at some point. Gabriel wants to be able to read - he also wants to be able to write because he thinks the script is really "cool looking". He would like to be able to speak as well. Gabriel is really good at grammar, at the "mechanics" of language. I am really good at "picking up" language and hearing into how people speak. I am lousy at working directly with grammar.

 

We got a few books from the library to help orientate us before settling on an approach. We learned that there is, as one might expect, the Arabic of the Koran which is the bridge between millions of people all over the globe. Then there's the Arabic which real people speak every day. Apparently if one uses "Koran Arabic" "on the streets" with a native Arabic speaker, it is analogous to ordering a sandwich in Elizabethan English in Ohio! Several sources suggested that for conversation, one learn Egyptian Arabic as it is widely understood in part because of the popularity of Egyptian movies. At that hint, we went to Netflicks and took out a couple of Egyptian films to watch. Hopefully the subtitles will help us figure out the dialogue. And if not, it's important that we get our ears used to correct pronunciation anyway.

 

I've been watching Arabic language music videos on YouTube as well. Lots of fun. I wish I could figure out who the artists are and where they come from - maybe North Africa or Lebanon? At any rate, the videos we've watched have been good fun though, being 15, my son has strong ideas about what music he should and shouldn't listen to!

 

After slogging around the internet for a hour or so, I also came upon a site where I could download worksheets for learning the alphabet and also a site devoted to teaching Arabic. Sometimes I just love the internet - here's all these people, presumably all over the globe (looking at their faces, clothes and surroundings) who have taken the time to make little demonstration videos for people they will never meet or know to use! I love that! That really is the bright side of the internet. For today I will not dwell on the shadow side!

 

Anyway, on that site I found useful clips of the alphabet, for instance, where each letter is highlighted while someone says each letter's name. I found clips of an elder reading something slowly - perhaps surahs from the Koran? - so slowly that one could really hear and appreciate the words. I found dialogues between people - I found some lovely little children in a classroom signing and dancing as they sang the alphabet (unfortunately the sound quality was poor on that one so I couldn't make out the words).

 

And I ordered some materials from Amazon to get Gabriel and I on track with our studies. I will report here from time to time on our progress!

 

ma'a as-salaama!

Good bye AP History

Last semester, as those of you  who have read my high school blog know, my son and another student and I embarked on a study geared toward taking the World History AP exam. We got the text book (Peter Stearns) and started plowing through it.

 

Shortly before Thanksgiving the two students came to me, expressing dissatisfaction about the class. My son, who has an extensive history background and is a very good writer, felt that he was starting to hate history and that the relentless pace we were obliged to take so that we could "get through" the material meant that depth was being sacrificed for breadth - and that the breadth was in danger of being superficial. The other student, who does not have much of a history background and who is quite a poor writer, felt overwhelmed. She was struggling mightily to keep up and while I admired her perseverance tremendously, I had begun to wonder if this approach was really doing her any favors. And I had noticed that my son, always excited about history, was becoming rather unenthusiastic.

 

So together we decided to look at what was positive about what we had done, and then to move on to something else. We decided that the very disciplined approach to essay writing was extremely useful and had helped both of them enormously. We also appreciated the scope of the course and the fact that the authors attempt to make connections between the whole of human history. But.... we could also see the limitations there. We also felt that the way that "all cultures" got even attention did not serve to give an accurate portrayal of history in terms of impact on human development as a whole. Whilst the Aztec and Mayan civilizations, for instance, were important and worthy of study for anyone who wants to understand something of the diversity of the human experience, for them to be presented as having the same impact as, say, Ancient Greece, is ridiculous. Far, far more of the globe, far more cultures were directly effected by the Greeks over many, many centuries than the isolated Aztecs and Mayans! It is, of course, not a question of "better" - there is no judgment here. But it is misleading to teach students that "all cultures are equal" in terms of their lasting impact on human culture!

 

Anyway, we finished off with a study of China through the Song Dynasty. My son wrote a paper looking at the influence of Confucianism on government, and the other student wrote a paper comparing and contrasting Confucianism with Taoism.

 

This semester? We decided that since last semester we mainly focused on non European cultures, that this semester we would do a Western Civilization course. I have designed a course outline and rustled up some resources. At some point I will put those up on this blog for others to consider.