George Ann Gregory, Ph.D.

There sits the Tagalog language materials on my brother’s desk. They are still unopened even though he has promised is wife that he will learn some of her language before their next visit to the Philippines.  The Irish professor ran into one of his former students on a train in Ireland. After the professor greeted the young man in Irish, the young man leans forward and whispers, “Do you mind if we speak in English,” as he indicated the older woman sitting next to him.

Inertia is resistance to change, and it takes a bit of force to overcome it. Historically, this has certainly been true. Consider the amount of force that was used against American Indian children in boarding schools to overcome their resistance to change. I am certainly not advocating brutality to children to return the use of our own languages. Actually, I am playing a bit with the different meanings of the word force.

Force is the amount of energy it takes to change motion. In a modern, technological world, often times too much energy is expended on just moving bodies over some distance several times a day, usually in some kind of vehicle. Surprisingly, not using a body does not conserve its energy, so people wind up with less energy than when they started. In terms of revitalizing languages, this means that adults come to evening classes with perhaps less energy than they feel they need to overcome this inertia. When the language classes are passive with students perhaps just listening and repeating, adult learners leave without sufficient “power” to make changes.

Power is related to energy and force, of course, but again I am playing a bit with the meanings of words. Power is part of empowerment, and we want our students, regardless of age, to have the power to use the language they learn. We want them revved up when they leave class so that they can overcome the inertia. We want them to leave so revved up that they want to use the language with everyone they see. They so enjoy their own language that they want to share it with everyone. And that is overcoming inertia.

Consider what kind of class that would be to rev up students and have them leave wanting to share their language with the world. It would be more like a fast game of stickball rather than like watching golf, wouldn’t it?