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Student Teach Thyself: My Dubbed Podcast in Italian

Navigating the difficult task of teaching oneself Italian through the marvels of AI voice dubbing is a 21st-century twist on the ancient wisdom of “Physician, heal thyself.” That age-old saying, ripped from the heart of biblical narratives, pushes us towards self-reflection and repair before we set out to fix or guide others. When we apply this idea to the adventure of self-learning Italian — or any foreign language! — by using our own voices echoed back to us in Italian through AI wizardry, welp, it’s like we’re living in a high-tech remix of that proverb.

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Attacking the Common Core: Building a Nation of Illiterate, Xenophobic, Non-Mechanical, Artisans

We’re in trouble in the good ole USA.  Our academies of higher learning are giving in to the bad behavior of the students seeking to earn diplomas from their educational institutions.  Our values as a civilization are under attack by leading educators who wish to dumb-down the curriculum to better suit students who are applying to colleges stupider, less talented, and much more self-interested than ever before.  The disconnect between classroom realism and real life reality is enough to make your brain explode in flames as you come to realize our great nation of minds is quickly decaying into a leveling pit of repurposed mediocrity:

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When Fluency No Longer Matters

There’s an infuriating move afoot in several major universities to “dumb down” graduation requirements by removing foreign language fluency from the core program of study.  Some schools incredibly want to make a mere semester of a foreign language an elective and not a hard requirement for earning a diploma.  When I was in college, we had to take four semesters of a foreign language in order to graduate.  Soon, that minimal forced fluency that formed many generations of students will no longer be important to a college education.

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Discounting Foreign Language Skills

There are several ways to kill a language.  One is from non-use.  Another is bleeding funding.  The worst of all ringing, public, grammar deaths is the refusal to test for language competency — because then nothing is ever at stake in the acquisition and practice of the language and the student need not learn to correctly use the language in a context of consequence and deepened meaning.

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The History of Our American Sign Language Classes at CUNY

Janna and I were delighted to create, and then teach, our “Hardcore ASL” style of learning as a new series of American Sign Language courses offered by the City University of New York professional school, and while we no longer teach there, the experience was both historic and defining.

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American Sign Language Explodes on Campus

On December 6, 2010, the New York Times ran the following article — Colleges See 16% Increase in Study of Sign Language — this excellent graphic from the story demonstrates how American Sign Language is now the “Most-Studied” Foreign Language on campus with a 16.4% increase over the last three years, and that translates into a very real nationwide increase of 91,763 students.

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A Dangerous Lack of NYPD Interpreters

When there’s no money to fuel a City or feed a State, the first things to get axed are the everyday necessities of living, as well as proper access to protection and equal communication facilitation in the system.

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