Mandela Reveals the World’s Most Powerful Weapon

By Dr. David Nunan

SOME of the best teachers are not professional educators. On the surface, this statement might seem a paradox. Educators are defined by their work as teachers. I’m not trying to suggest that the many people who make their livings as educators aren’t great teachers. It is that some of the most instructive lessons I have learned about living and learning haven’t come from people with formal teaching qualifications nor from people who have worked as teachers, but from people who have nevertheless changed the world. One such person is Nelson Mandela: a great teacher, a great leader and one of the most powerful people of the modern era. Mandela valued education above all else. He once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” In an interview, when asked what is the single greatest problem facing the world right now, he replied at once, “Poverty and lack of education – these two problems combined. It is important for us to ensure that education reaches everyone.” (Interview in the Reader’s Digest, July 29, 2013.)

By Denise Murray

I CAN hardly open a magazine or newspaper without reading about some new course being offered online. The latest surge has been in MOOCs (massive open online courses). Several for-profit and non-profit companies have emerged to offer these courses across a range of subjects. They collaborate with universities around the world to offer their courses online. Anyone can sign up for the course, but they won’t receive academic credit, only a certificate of participation.

Why do institutions offer online courses? And why do students enroll?
The answers to both questions are complex. Online courses actually have their origins in distance learning (DL), developed to provide education to students who could not travel to a brick-and-mortar institution. DL was first offered as paper-and-pen lessons via mail. It then developed to use taped materials. Next came video. All of these modes of delivery still exist, depending on the resources of a particular country or region.

Institutions offer online programs and students take them because of time and distance constraints. For example, my home state in Australia is huge. When I was college-age, there was only one university in the capital city. I began teaching at a school 1,300 miles (2,092 km) from the capital. But I wanted to continue my bachelor’s degree.

Synopsis of Art by Artists of Haitian Descent in the Diaspora –– Part I

By Marcel Duret and Fred Thomas

ON May 15, 2013, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Dustheads” sold for a record price of US$48.8 million at a Christie’s auction in New York. This made “Dustheads” one of the most expensive pieces of art on earth today. Basquiat’s impact can be seen globally. An example is an exhibition of his work from May 21 to August 10, 2013 at the Gagosian Gallery in Hong Kong. The exhibition attests to Basquiat’s acute global relevance 25 years after his untimely death. Basquiat is without a doubt the king of all artists of Haitian descent. But while he has gained international stardom, many other artists of Haitian descent living in the United States and Canada haven’t enjoyed the publicity that surrounded Basquiat’s life and death. Nevertheless, they are a group of extremely talented artists who have contributed to the vivacity of the art scene in North America.

Interview series with Japan’s most renowned translator of foreign films and interpreter for Hollywood stars, Natsuko Toda

TJ: Do different directors have different requirements for translating the subtitles of their movies? Can you think of any unique requests you’ve had, such as maybe having to sit down with a director and going over the subtitling face-to-face?
Toda: No, they have no time and they don’t care about Japan so much. Of course, Japan is a big market, but they don’t pay attention to subtitling. For “The Color Purple,” Spielberg asked me to reflect African-American English from the South in the subtitles. However, this is impossible. If I use grammatically wrong expressions, the audience thinks it’s a subtitling mistake. Also, it makes no sense and the audience cannot understand the story. I explained this to him and he understood, but it was a rare case. I have never gone over subtitling face- to-face with a director.

JUDIT TOROK

A regular visitor to Tokyo, New York City-based Yoga Instructor and Interculturalist Judit Torok shares her techniques for alleviating big city stress.

Bad Excuses

Obviously, these are bad and almost humorous excuses for not joining a beginner’s Spanish class. After all, not speaking a language is precisely the right reason to start learning a foreign language. Taking an introductory class is a safe and fun way to begin a journey toward understanding other cultures as well as learning about ourselves. A determined language learner also develops qualities such as persistence, willingness to make mistakes and overcoming self-consciousness.

Good Design for the Quality of Everyday Life

Interview by Anthony Al-Jamie

Identified as one of the New York Five, Michael Graves is an American architect known for his contemporary building designs as well as his domestic products for such companies as Target, J.C. Penney, Disney, Philips and Black & Decker. Born in Indianapolis, he earned a master’s degree in architecture from Harvard University and is the Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture, Emeritus at Princeton University. His firm, Michael Graves & Associates, has offices in Princeton, New Jersey and New York City. Graves was elected a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and a senior fellow of the Design Futures Council. He has received numerous awards including the National Medal of Arts, the AIA Gold Medal, the AIA Topaz Medal and the Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. He is credited with broadening the role of the architect in society and raising public interest in good design as essential to the quality of everyday life.

I HAVE a vivid memory of how excited I was the first time I was going to fly. I can’t remember my exact age or even where we were going. But that feeling of joy, amazement and thrill remains so very vivid. My body seemed to have a life of its own back then. I could hardly stand still. For days I told people of my pending flight high up in the sky. I would even point up to make sure they got the point, so that they could see the shiny little plane way up there. I planned to make one of those cool white stripes behind the plane. I just didn’t know how. I didn’t ever get round to asking my dad, mom or the pilot about that. Nor about how they shrink the plane so that it gets so small in the sky.

Then the travel day came and it seemed so loud and busy. There was no time for my endless stream of questions and bursts of joy. At the airport, tons of people rushed back and forth with big bags and suitcases. They looked like ants running with their stuff back and forth. They seemed so focused, not at all approachable. And then there were the lines, the papers to check and those small books called passports. A lady put our luggage on a black belt so it would go on a journey of its own, or so I thought. Mom said we would get it back later.

Modern Design and Lifestyle Event Sees Record Attendance

Dwell on Design, America’s largest modern design event, was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 21 to 23, 2013. Organized by the editors of Dwell magazine, the three-day event brought together the best and brightest products, services and thought leaders in the world of modern design.

Over 200,000 square feet of exhibition floor was transformed into a state-of-the-art showcase of the modern lifestyle for the 30,758 people who attended, a 12% increase compared with 2012.

Tadao Ando

Self-Taught Architect

Tadao Ando, born in 1941, is a former boxer who became one of Japan’s most renowned architects. His projects, which can be found in Japan, the U.S., the U.K., Spain, Germany, France, and Italy, are known for having large expanses of unadorned architectural concrete walls combined with large windows and wooden or stone floors. He has received such awards as the Pritzker Prize, Gold Medal of Architecture from the French Academy of Architecture, Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects and Gold Medal of the Union Internationale des Architects. He is a visiting professor at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, and University of California, Berkeley.

The following photos are from Grand Prize Winners of the Japan Tourism Agency’s 2012-2013 Share your WOW! Photo Contest. These were selected from over 38,000 entries from talented photographers from across the globe.

 For more information about the photographers, please see the Japan Tourism Agency’s website at www.japantravelinfo.com

The complete article is available in Issue #272. click here to order from Amazon