Your Language Needs You

Two blogs in a day. Cripes. It’s not like I’ve anything better to do. Eating papaya and bananas off the trees in the garden, marvelling at the myriad of crawling creatures and geckos, soaking up the evening rays and eating roast eggs with the advanced form of a baby chicken in them soon loses its appeal.

I spent some time in the library today. Perusing the books available to the children that will inspire their ambition to learn English, flicking through the pages of some publications, clearly put in the library to sate the voracious appetite of the students. In correspondence with Sister Deanna prior to my departure, I had asked her whether it would be worth bringing some football and fashion magazines out with me, to allow the children to read (or look at the pictures at least and hopefully learn English by osmosis). The reply was ‘no’, as the ‘the children have very little desire to read’. After looking through the shelves today I find that really rather hard to believe; show me a teenager in the 21st century who wouldn’t want to read these glorious tomes:

- A laugh-a-minute romp in Frederick Forsyth’s The Fist of God;

- A favourite of mine from childhood – Ken Blanchard and Marc Muchnick’s The Leadership Pill: The Missing Ingredient In Motivating People Today;

- John E. Ullman’s tale of a boy from the wrong side of the tracks – Quantitive Methods in Management (1976);

- Teen rom-com Endocrine Treatment In General Practice from classic children’s authors Max A. Goldziehr et al (1953);

- Jean Marie Stine’s Empowering Your Life With Runes – I remember Mr. Austen raving about that one;

- Crime-thriller 68000 Assembly Language Programming (2nd edition, 1986) from Levethal et al; and

- The World Around Us by Laidlaw Basic Readers, a collection of indispensible short stories for the contemporary youth, including: The Runt Comes Through; Some Jolly Adventures of Robin Hood; The Prize of the Tapestry Weavers; Cowboys Then & Now; and (my personal favourite) Strange Children of the North. First published in 1941 (BEFORE THEN END OF THE WAR), this edition 1953.

And believe me, I’m not cherry-picking here. I could pick up another 10 books and you’d have a very similar list.

NOW FOR YOUR BIT.

Send me your old magazines. Particularly useful would be stuff like Shoot (does it still exist?), Look, Grazia, Nuts (which will probably get some judicious editing before I put it in the school), Teen Mags etc etc. For the love of God give these kids something that they might at least look at. If you do send something (anything!), please send me an email and tell me how much postage was – I will as a bare minimum cover 50% of postage. Please do not sneak any copies of Razzle, Escort or Club in the pack OK?

David Barraclough, St. John’s School Thabom, Moo 8 Baan Thabom, Tambon Khoakhaew Amphoe, Chiangkhan Loei, Thailand 42110.

Even better would be any kids books you no longer need or you can pick up/steal from your local school.

Thanks in advance. I await a deluge of nowt, but its worth a bloody go isn’t it?