The purpose of classes

School is a different environment from the rest of life.  This is not always a good thing.

Our tutor is welcoming students back from summer vacation.  They’re tanned, refreshed, excited about what the year will bring.  There is much comparing of class schedules, which is interesting (and also comparing of teachers, which he tries not to listen to).  To his dismay, more than one student has decided to drop the study of a foreign language; others have decided to go ahead, but without any enthusiasm.  As someone who has lived in a foreign country, speaking the language, these are strange attitudes.  Surely the purpose of taking a language is to learn it, to the point of being able to use it?

Well, as we have pointed out, one can put much effort into a language without getting it to a useful point.  And if one is interested in linguistics, only comparing the general structure of a language with others, actual fluency may not be necessary; though few High School students are set on being linguists.  In a more general sense, even a little bit of exploring a foreign language can provide insights into your own, or at least require the sort of mental exercise that we’ve concluded is useful in other subjects.

But the students are not thinking of it this way.  A language, to many of them, is just another subject to study at school.  The implicit lesson is that school is a place where things are done for inexplicable reasons, separate from the rest of life.   What you learn in class belongs to this separate reality, not to be carried outside or remembered beyond the end of the term.  This is the real problem: the separation of school from actual learning.

Nowadays, there is a great deal of effort put into making a connection between school and real life.  Sometimes it works.  But overall the divide in the heads of students persists.