This episode’s vocabulary
Pipe dream
noun — an idea or plan that is impossible or very unlikely to happen.
Spell
noun — a period of time for which an activity or condition lasts continuously.
Skill set
noun — the range of things that someone is good at, especially things that are useful in a particular job.
Brain drain
noun — the situation in which large numbers of educated and very skilled people leave their own country to live and work in another one where pay and conditions are better.
Immediacy
noun — the fact that something seems real and important, so that you feel involved with it.
Misguided
adj. — unreasonable or unsuitable because of being based on bad judgment or on wrong information or beliefs.
Sustainable
adj. — able to continue over a period of time.
Questions and answers
Rory is going to describe a short term job he'd like to do in a foreign country. He's going to say what type of work he'd like to do there, what country he'd like to work in, and he's going to say why he'd like to work there. Rory, are you ready to rock and roll?
Let's go.
Yay, off you go.
I've thought about this a lot, actually. And it's probably sort of a pipe dream, really, when I think about it, but when I had a brief spell in Haiti, I spoke to one of the people running the hostel I was staying. And we spoke about running a teacher training program at the local university for English teachers in the capital city. Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm very enthusiasticabout teacher training. And it seems there aren't many people who have the skill set that are prepared to work in such places. Haiti is like a third world country, and they have lots and lots of problems with infrastructure and civil disturbances, which make setting things like a sub extremely difficult. And I actually picked Haiti since I felt it would be a place to have the most benefit to both itself and the people who live there. They have teachers, but the key issues lie in both, the lack of professional development infrastructure in the country, and in the brain drain happening, because people with the means to often just leave, and they take their experience and knowledge with them. Of course, there are other places, but Haiti was where I was at the time. So I suppose the immediacy of the surroundings played a part in that too. Another reason I picked teacher training and not teaching is because lots of people already do this thinking they're doing the right thing. But this is actually quite misguided as some people actually take work from local teachers or undermine their work in the process of trying to help. Moreover, many of them have no idea what they're actually doing. And that has the end result of making things even worse for the students who are already facing all of these problems. Teacher trainings are a lot more sustainable, since local teachers can take the knowledge and use it in their lessons. It's like old people, it's, sorry, it's like the old saying about teaching people how to fish, you know. You can give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. But if you teach a man to fish, then he can eat for a lifetime. And I think that's true in the case of teacher training, as well.
Rory, thank you so much for your answer. How lovely is that? Teach a man how to fish and he's gonna be fishing for the rest of his life, right?
Something like that. -