The Arabic Connection

To continue on the subject of foreign language teachers on the timely suggestion of my blogger comrade MaterialMom, the author moves on to the Middle Eastern Crisis.

An Indian school in an Arabian set up has a few set backs. One of them being the compulsory Arabic. From the tender age of six, clueless toddlers were thrown into the terrifying jungle of 'alef, baa, ta, tha, jeem...'. Actually, the langue itself wasn't too bad. It was the teachers.

The three witches from Macbeth were cherubic angels in comparison to the dear darlings who taught us. Their screams would've made banshees cringe and if only they'd talked a little slower- our arabic bad word vocabulary would have made Saddam Hussein blink. But they helped us in many ways. Especially during exams. But first- acquaint yourself with the studying methods.Students prepared in a simple,scientific procedure- if the first letter of the question was this, then the answer would be that. A similar method was followed in the case of match the following, true or false.. pretty much everything,actually. And then we'd learn exactly ten words with the different maathras and attachments. The meaning is meaningless to us, just mug. On second thought, mugging isn't even necessary. The students would simply copy words which happened to appear in the question paper as examples of usages. If even that fails, we can always transliterate names and stuff. A certain classmate transliterated mallu place names in arabic. This streak of brilliance was sadly lost because (a) they didn't get it. And (b) He used it in Give the Opposites, the stupid fool. And now we come to the teachers' help. While attempting (very important word)to write the paper, once in a while the sure fire methods would fail. But then the teachers come to the rescue. They subtly sidle their large forms and mutter a muted (read, normal speech)"This wrong. This and this right." If the student is still at sea, they'd very obligingly point out the right one. So if you actually fail in Arabic- either you are reaaally DUMB. Or the teachers don't like you.

Consequently, we students were able to read and write arabic quite well. Sadly the understanding and comprehension was nil. Rather a waste of eight years,you think? Not quite. We have a lovely store of bad words, and a knack for impressing people by spelling their names in Arabic( I don't know why, but it does) Also, most of us emerge good caligraphists(with notable exceptions such as the author). After all the arabic class was more like drawing letters you really didn't understand. We learn exactly how to charm our way through, our palms are strong and callussed from the canings... so it wasn't a total waste, right?

The author has always maintained that Education is the progressive method through which everything we need to know is replaced by everything we don't. Our Arabic validates this statement na-am?