Learning Language

This blog post is a connection to Chapter Nine: Intelligence and Language.

While reading through this unit, I was particularly intrigued with the language portion of the textbook. I thought it was crazy how U.S. states have passed laws that outlaw bilingual education. This reminds me of "tally sticks" in Ireland in the 19th century. In order to push English as the official language of the country, schoolchildren had to wear tally sticks on a piece of string around their neck. Every time they spoke in Irish Gaelic, a tally would be scratched into their stick. At the end of each school day, children would receive punishments based on how many tally marks were on their tally stick. Although outlawing the teaching of bilingualism isn't as extreme as Irish tally sticks, they both discourage the use of languages other than English, which I think is absurd. 

In a time when Spanish is becoming more and more common, it is important to know different languages -- especially in a country as diverse as America. For instance, when I was volunteering at a camp this summer there was a Spanish camper who didn't speak English. In order to keep him informed and on task, we had to translate all of the instructions into Spanish for him. If I hadn't been learning basic Spanish since I was six, I wouldn't have been able to help the camper. This is a common occurrence in South Florida, and it really pushes the importance of knowing multiple languages to communicate with as many people as possible. Although knowing English is typically crucial to success in numerous fields, bilingualism is extremely beneficial as well.

Furthermore,  this unit also reminded me (once again) of The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks. In the first case study, Mr. P lost his spatial intelligence, but still exhibited exceptional musical intelligence. As seen in Gardener's Eight Types of Intelligence, there are various ways people can display intelligence, even if they lack one type. I fully believe in this model and I don't think that a single test can truly determine someone's intelligence. People excel in a wide variety of things, and poor performance on an IQ test doesn't indicate a lack of intelligence.