![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/village.gif\")
Since 9\/11, recruiting the raw material on which the
\n Dowbrigade’s day job depends has become increasingly difficult. We are
\n talking about foreigners who come to this country to participate in and
\n contribute to the finest and most extensive university system on the
\n planet.<\/p>\n
These young men and women come, not to take jobs from Americans, but
\n to acquire training and tools which will make them more competitive in
\n the job markets back home, and allow them to contribute to the development
\n and modernization of their local environments. <\/p>\n
For over a hundred years, foreign graduates of our colleges and universities
\n have acted as ambassadors of the American social, political and cultural
\n norms which have become the basis of the emerging global culture. Of
\n course, there nothing near consensus on this new global culture. Entire
\n areas of the world have rejected it and in many more educated elites
\n participate in it while the masses are still excluded.<\/p>\n
But its spread to the far corners of the earth is primarily due to the
\n convergence of two factors; media, primarily TV and film, and graduates
\n of American higher education. These individuals literally conform the
\n ruling class in many countries of the world. They own the biggest companies,
\n run the biggest law firms, control the armies and central banks. An untold
\n number of Presidents and Prime Ministers have degrees from American universities.<\/p>\n
With the exception of a short list of countries (England, France, Germany)
\n no one really has a University system that can compare to ours. In many
\n countries, the wealthy and powerful families would NEVER send their kids
\n to local colleges. Anyone who is anybody has a degree from an American
\n or European school. A lot of these kids who ended up in the US have passed
\n through the Dowbrigade’s classroom over the years.<\/p>\n
Well, they aren’t coming anymore, at least not in the numbers they were
\n a few years ago, and despite the fact that the anemic dollar makes an
\n American education a bigger bargain than it has been for decades. In
\n part, it is because the Department of Homeland Security, in taking over
\n the Immigration and Naturalization Service, has made it much more difficult
\n to get a student visa, and in part because they are coming to see America
\n as a hostile,and dangerous place.<\/p>\n
Instead, they are going to Canada, to Australia, or to England to study
\n English, business, engineering, medicine, law, government, and communication.
\n Increasingly, they are taking English courses over the internet, although
\n this is nowhere near as efficient as immersion in an English language
\n environment.<\/p>\n
It could be argued that the Internet is, or can be, an English-language
\n environment. One can imagine a regimen integrating canned classes,
\n live language interactions, English language movies, web-based tasks and readings, podcasts, TV shows and games, 8 or 10 or 16 hours a day,
\n all delivered over the Internet, which would provide an authentic and
\n varied English immersion experience, but as of yet no one has put something
\n like this together. Another project for a rainy day.<\/p>\n
However, it appears that the highly wired South Koreans have come up
\n with another innovation which is destined to dry up one of our last pools
\n of human capital. Isolated, independent English-language villages
\n are sprouting up like mushrooms after a spring rain.<\/p>\n
\nAn article
\n in today’s Boston Globe<\/a>, describes one of them as a
\n "novel, government-funded language complex on a small island 40 miles
\n southwest
\n of Seoul. "Welcome
\n to English Village. Enjoy your stay."<\/p>\n\n First developed by officials in Kyonggi, a prosperous province of 10
\n million people south of Seoul, five more English villages are sprouting
\n up across South Korea, including an $85 million town under construction
\n 32 miles north of Ansan, which will boast a main street with Western-style
\n storefronts and a small live-in population of native English speakers.<\/p>\nAs tougher immigration laws make it increasingly harder for foreign students
\n to learn English in the United States, immersion villages, according
\n to specialists, have promise beyond South Korea. The Japanese, for instance,
\n have visited this English village and may implement the idea.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nIt all reminds us of other self-contained artificial environments, like
\n the biosphere or the Village in the Prisoner. And didn’t the Soviet Union
\n set up scenes like this to train their spies and infiltrators? Lacking
\n empirical data we can only assume that the model works, and that there
\n are hundreds of graduates of these institutions, sleeper agents deeply
\n ensconced in towns and cities across America, waiting for the call which
\n will never
\n come. <\/p>\nWe find ourselves wondering what life must be like for the native speaker
\n teachers who populate these fairy lands. Surely some of them will be
\n bloggers. Stay tuned….<\/p>\narticle from the Boston Globe<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since 9\/11, recruiting the raw material on which the Dowbrigade’s day job depends has become increasingly difficult. We are talking about foreigners who come to this country to participate in and contribute to the finest and most extensive university system … Continue reading