A Week of Madness!

One of the lessons I have learned while working at my school is that some people have far too much time on their hands (obviously not the teachers) but that this time is in no way related to considered thought. If it were, no one would be able to come out with an email suggesting that we change the name of my department from modern languages to something else because they think that the word modern suggests that other languages may not be. Of course, it is true. Some languages are not. In fact, some are ancient or classical. Am I stating the obvious? I certainly feel that I am.

However, someone with too much time on their hands, thinks that because we only teach French and Spanish in grades 1 through 10 and that we call our department Modern languages that we are somehow suggesting that all the others aren't. Oh my! What sort of logic is that? Rather, we might want to consider why we only teach two of the thousands of modern languages that there are in the world.

So, what do they want to call the department? The World languages department, of course! Now, what I'm trying to work out is what non-world languages might there be? Do we have non-terrestrial languages? Klingon or Ferengi, perchance? Well, some say that math is a language and certainly, there are computer languages but is it likely that we will confuse French and Spanish with those if we don't use the word 'world'? Do I even need to answer that?

The silly season is upon us early this year and I expect more to come.