There is a fountain in the market square in Klagenfurt, Austria: der Lindwurmbrunnen in Klagenfurt, the lindworm fountain, consisting of a lindworm, or wingless bipedal dragon, out of whose mouth the water flows. There are links and references to it everywhere on the web. In the images section of google, you an find a picture of a Wurm, of a Lindwurm, of a Brunnen, and of the Lindwurmbrunnen. On German youtube, you can find the Klagenfurt lindworm with a modern-day funny twist to it. It is called "Lindwurm Forever."
If you want to find out about Klagenfurt, you can see it on a map, in pictures, in a panorama shot, lots of times on youtube (a Sunday a.m. bike ride or a student's reminiscences of a year spent studying there). Webcams are available as well.
What would be the benefit in having students take a concept -- a word or phrase or film title or book title from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein -- and creating a wiki about it? Or a webpage? With his or her reflections on it? I think I'll find out in the next months. Here are my reflections on one concept, born from a decade of thought about these dragons:
Thoughts on the Lindwurm and its Brunnen
Water flows from the mouth of the lindworm in Klagenfurt. Located on the market square, it presides over the city from its center point. The lindworm is the snake, the dragon, the bipedal dragon, as it so aptly says in the Wikipedia definition. Such a dragon is one of the traces left over from ancient times, just like St. George and the Dragon, from ancient times when the dragon meant something different from what it does today. I am reminded once again of the fight between the pre-Christian and Christian religions for the hearts of the people. The dragon, the snake, the lindworm have become synonymous with the devil and his demons, with evil and its personification – something to be slain with the sword, just as St. George does. Is that where it all started? With good over evil? Or does it, like other ancient symbols, refer to a time and/or place where the dragon is/was good, or a mixture of good and evil? Does it go back to Adam and Eve, or does it go further back, to the pre-biblical finds of 2500 B.C.E., when a woman and a tree and a snake were carved on various pieces in various places of the present-day Middle East? Does it go back to a time when the dragon guarded the golden apples of the Goddess Hera in Greek mythology? Does it go back to even earlier times – times of the Minoan Snake Goddes, or even earlier? I suspect that the dragon that must be killed is the old religion that must be stamped out, in order that the newer religion may flourish. But that old dragon is still around, in the churches of Europe – yes, St. George can be found there killing his dragon, in the snake under Mary’s feet, in the folktales from the forests and mountains, in the statues at the center of a market square in the center of a town in Austria. … And did it used to be a revered snake? The giver and taker of life? Just as today’s Christians revere their God, the giver and taker of life? A good question. Where to find the answers? And the lindworm’s water that flows from its mouth: a symbol of the waters of life? Or a mere coincidence? I don’t know.
And what about Klagenfurt, Austria and its relationship to the Lindwurm? As I traveled around Italy, especially, I noticed that the dragon was a motif inside and outside of churches. I saw a dragon in Venice near the water's edge, as well as in churches in Genoa, where St. George was on the job. They seem to be most prevalent in the Catholic parts of Europe I've visited -- in the more ancient parts, speaking from a perspective of the spread of new religions. The Catholic Church is older than the Protestant and had to incorporate more of the ancient beliefs, either by accepting them or setting themselves up against them. These dragons are not so visible (if at all?) in the areas of later ideologies, the Protestant/Lutheran areas, and certainly you won't find them (at all?) in the United States, where the Protestants are the dominant force. Klagenfurt is in Austria, a predominantly Catholic country, and it is not far from Italy, the seat of the Catholic Church. So what does this mean? I think the European dragon, i.e. nuances of ancient European religions, is not alive in the U.S. St. George succeeded, although ... new religions have been springing up that embrace (a new interpretation of?) the old ways. ... The saga continues.
Of course, there have been dragons all over the place in folklore and mythology, in all of Europe. Even St. Patrick was killing them. And many of the Greek heroes were slaying dragons. But did they come from a group (Zeus) who were in conflict with another group (represented by Hera)? What is the origin of it all? For certainly serpents were and are symbols of healing.
Showing posts with label language programs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language programs. Show all posts
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
More Thoughts on Education in the World of Languages
Good morning, World!
What will the day bring? Oral exams. Interaction. A fun lunch with our lab director. Meetings. Working out at the Y? Purchasing that last item for the German club “Christmas Party?” Oh, yes, wrapping the white elephant. Perhaps a few moments for introspection.
I was reading Barbara Ganley’s blog entry that my colleague Pete sent me yesterday. She was asking why we need all these end-of-term exams, papers, etc.:
Which brings me to December as end-of-term season. Over Thanksgiving break, I watched my younger daughter wade into the four term papers she has to write, the three presentations to prepare and several final examinations to study for. And she attends a college that on paper, at least, understands the foolishness of grades and short-term-memory learning and the disconnect that comes from single-discipline-based majors. I also see on Twitter that people across the world are grading papers and preparing exams. Every course in every institution seems to follow the same pattern, the same kinds of assignments over and over and over. Where is the creativity? The larger view? Do we think students are that dull that they need to repeat the same exercise scores of times?
http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/december-arrives-a-quasi-hypertext-musing-on-storytelling-and-stories/
Something I have to think about. Yes, what about our students? When they take German as a requirement course, what is it that they come away with? How do our exams help or hinder them?
I have morphed through so many ways of teaching the languaculture matrix, and there is actually no solution. Too many variables. Too much choice. Too little time. I don’t really long for the “olden days,” but they were indeed simpler: grammar and translation for a year, then in the 2nd year redo it, because all had been forgotten (it was called grammar review), then in the 3rd year, if you were not fortunate enough to have the money to spend abroad, read literature that you could hardly get through, and in the 4th year more of the same. You came out with a pretty good understanding of the basics of formal grammar, you knew about some of the “great works,” but you couldn’t really use the language, and you didn’t really understand the culture. Unless you were among the lucky few who grew up with the language and culture, or who had spent time abroad. If you were lucky you went on to an immersion program and then finally got a scholarship to go abroad for a year.
It was a holdover from the days of the privileged, and even today still is in some places. Those days that Wilga Rivers used to talk about, the late 19th century when the WHITE SONS of the wealthy got a liberal arts education to “round them out” as future statesmen, when they took their year abroad to develop themselves, when Latin and Greek were considered the ideal languages to study and the “modern” languages and literatures were still looked upon as vulgar, in both senses of the word.
What a different world we live in today! What a different world from the one I inhabited when I began taking Latin in 1961, French in 1964, and German in 1966. Textbooks, ideas, pedagogy, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, connectedness to the world were either completely different or did not even exist yet.
Nowadays, it’s much different. But, whew, oh so overwhelming. Take the classroom, for example. Take technology, for example.
Yes, take the classroom. After having spent a semester with my Russian colleague Lonny in my colleague Pete’s cross-listed Russian/German translation and localization course, ideas sparked by being there, talking ideas, talking curriculum, talking collaboration and plans, and just having fun in general – after having spent a semester interacting with my undergrad and grad French, German, and Spanish students in yet another crosslisted course about ideas I’ve been reading about – a text-based, genre-based foreign language curriculum, and being influenced by their ideas as well – after having my second semester students blog yet again on my Germans-Americans website on intercultural (mis)communication, after reading and attempting a re-write on an article I finally re-submitted, after reading and interacting in a teaching circle about assessment, after talking active learning at those meetings – after all of that I sat down and did what we used to call clustering, what is now called semantic webs, I believe: bubbles of ideas interacting with bubbles of ideas, and I wrote down my wish list for an ideal course.
Trust and respect
Co-creation of content, syllabus, and rubrics
Honesty – being “as honest as possible”
The pleasure of learning
And it went on and on and on…
And then I thought again. Next semester: possibly four courses because one won’t make. Four preparations. The possibility of four ideal courses. The tiny voice in my head from Angelo and Cross’s assessment book: “start simple.” Well, let it gell over the holidays. Let it gell.
And then there’s technology. Lunch with our lab director Melissa Bowden today to get advice on where to go from here. I’m stuck – whether it’s scanning and organizing, photoshop, blogs, email, or newer technology, I’m at the next threshold, which basically translates into: I’m as far as I can go without help for advanced understanding of it all. Where to go from here. I have come to the conclusion that I will always be frustrated with technology, but each year, as I “master” more, it will be different frustrations: frustrations with advanced aspects of technology I know somewhat well, or frustrations with new technology, as last year’s frustrations become the known or better known and fade into the sphere of background knowledge.
And now, it’s off to see what the day will bring.
What will the day bring? Oral exams. Interaction. A fun lunch with our lab director. Meetings. Working out at the Y? Purchasing that last item for the German club “Christmas Party?” Oh, yes, wrapping the white elephant. Perhaps a few moments for introspection.
I was reading Barbara Ganley’s blog entry that my colleague Pete sent me yesterday. She was asking why we need all these end-of-term exams, papers, etc.:
Which brings me to December as end-of-term season. Over Thanksgiving break, I watched my younger daughter wade into the four term papers she has to write, the three presentations to prepare and several final examinations to study for. And she attends a college that on paper, at least, understands the foolishness of grades and short-term-memory learning and the disconnect that comes from single-discipline-based majors. I also see on Twitter that people across the world are grading papers and preparing exams. Every course in every institution seems to follow the same pattern, the same kinds of assignments over and over and over. Where is the creativity? The larger view? Do we think students are that dull that they need to repeat the same exercise scores of times?
http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/december-arrives-a-quasi-hypertext-musing-on-storytelling-and-stories/
Something I have to think about. Yes, what about our students? When they take German as a requirement course, what is it that they come away with? How do our exams help or hinder them?
I have morphed through so many ways of teaching the languaculture matrix, and there is actually no solution. Too many variables. Too much choice. Too little time. I don’t really long for the “olden days,” but they were indeed simpler: grammar and translation for a year, then in the 2nd year redo it, because all had been forgotten (it was called grammar review), then in the 3rd year, if you were not fortunate enough to have the money to spend abroad, read literature that you could hardly get through, and in the 4th year more of the same. You came out with a pretty good understanding of the basics of formal grammar, you knew about some of the “great works,” but you couldn’t really use the language, and you didn’t really understand the culture. Unless you were among the lucky few who grew up with the language and culture, or who had spent time abroad. If you were lucky you went on to an immersion program and then finally got a scholarship to go abroad for a year.
It was a holdover from the days of the privileged, and even today still is in some places. Those days that Wilga Rivers used to talk about, the late 19th century when the WHITE SONS of the wealthy got a liberal arts education to “round them out” as future statesmen, when they took their year abroad to develop themselves, when Latin and Greek were considered the ideal languages to study and the “modern” languages and literatures were still looked upon as vulgar, in both senses of the word.
What a different world we live in today! What a different world from the one I inhabited when I began taking Latin in 1961, French in 1964, and German in 1966. Textbooks, ideas, pedagogy, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, connectedness to the world were either completely different or did not even exist yet.
Nowadays, it’s much different. But, whew, oh so overwhelming. Take the classroom, for example. Take technology, for example.
Yes, take the classroom. After having spent a semester with my Russian colleague Lonny in my colleague Pete’s cross-listed Russian/German translation and localization course, ideas sparked by being there, talking ideas, talking curriculum, talking collaboration and plans, and just having fun in general – after having spent a semester interacting with my undergrad and grad French, German, and Spanish students in yet another crosslisted course about ideas I’ve been reading about – a text-based, genre-based foreign language curriculum, and being influenced by their ideas as well – after having my second semester students blog yet again on my Germans-Americans website on intercultural (mis)communication, after reading and attempting a re-write on an article I finally re-submitted, after reading and interacting in a teaching circle about assessment, after talking active learning at those meetings – after all of that I sat down and did what we used to call clustering, what is now called semantic webs, I believe: bubbles of ideas interacting with bubbles of ideas, and I wrote down my wish list for an ideal course.
Trust and respect
Co-creation of content, syllabus, and rubrics
Honesty – being “as honest as possible”
The pleasure of learning
And it went on and on and on…
And then I thought again. Next semester: possibly four courses because one won’t make. Four preparations. The possibility of four ideal courses. The tiny voice in my head from Angelo and Cross’s assessment book: “start simple.” Well, let it gell over the holidays. Let it gell.
And then there’s technology. Lunch with our lab director Melissa Bowden today to get advice on where to go from here. I’m stuck – whether it’s scanning and organizing, photoshop, blogs, email, or newer technology, I’m at the next threshold, which basically translates into: I’m as far as I can go without help for advanced understanding of it all. Where to go from here. I have come to the conclusion that I will always be frustrated with technology, but each year, as I “master” more, it will be different frustrations: frustrations with advanced aspects of technology I know somewhat well, or frustrations with new technology, as last year’s frustrations become the known or better known and fade into the sphere of background knowledge.
And now, it’s off to see what the day will bring.
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