Response to Doris Sommer’s Lecture: Bilingual Benefits

I identify strongly with Doris Sommer’s arguments in favor of multilingual and art-oriented education. I am particularly in favor of education which stresses creativity much more strongly than is normally done in educational institutions. Not only should multilingualism be encouraged by the education system, languages, I believe, should be taught mainly through creative activity, rather than through learning-by-rote routines.

That is, creativity should be a basis for learning and should be a common subject of study in itself (rather than an obscure academic discipline in psychology).

Not that other subjects or disciplines should become devalued. Rather, I think they should be combined with an understanding not only of art but of creativity in general, combined with a degree of artistic proficiency, and with the human and social concerns of art (flexibility of perception, tolerance and what Sommer called admiration, empathy), as a way of placing these other disciplines in a context which, I believe, is more human and humane than modern democratic individualist capitalism.

I also think that it should be possible to combine literary studies with literary practice. That is, I think creative-writing courses should not be limited to workshops or made into separate departments, but should form an essential part of any English Department curriculum.

Finally, I think that Moby Dick is not irrelevant to this discussion: in a sense it is a multilingual text – a collage of different “languages” of representation and perception, encouraging the kind of thought processes that Sommer described are the benefits of multilingual individuals and communities.