The One About Tumbling Walls

I teach English to speakers of other languages.  It isn't the career I had prepared and studied for,  but in many ways it's the career that is best for me.  Maybe that's the way life works; your personality, skills, and circumstances eventually guide you to where you ought to be.

On my own time, when I'm not teaching English at my university, there's a place I go to help other learners with their English language skills.  It's online in the open secret of Second Life, the 3D environment where anyone with an internet connection is loosed from the bonds of location to venture beyond their home, their town, or their nation to a wider and wilder world created from the minds of artists, businesspeople, programmers, and many others, including people like me, teachers.

This is where learners from China and Korea sit side by side with those from Japan and Russia.  A housewife in Estonia and a travel agent in Brasil practice speaking English with each other as though the 11,000 kilometers between them were but across the room.  Teachers from America and Australia work together unfettered by the restrictions of place to help learners meet their goals, goals that include self-improvement,  competence on the job or job advancement, more enjoyable travel opportunities, and more awareness and familiarity with the people and cultures of the broader world.

There's no money in doing this, but it isn't about money; it's about people.  The world will only prosper and humankind will only advance when there is understanding between and among us.  No, learning English is not the true and proper goal in itself.  Learning English is only the walking-stick that supports us along the path up the steep grade of our human progress.  Generations further up that path will not even realize how much language was a barrier to our common advancement but only because of the hard work we have been doing to build bridges, tunnels, and highways in communication now. Learning English, or any language, does not solve the problems between human beings, but it does help us get started.  When the barriers of communication are breached, it will not be long before the walls come tumbling down.