that students can decide for themselves .

For all the talk of "bilingual education", I don't hear much about what would actually be "bilingual education": every high school graduate being skilled enough in at least two languages to take classes taught in either.

Learning another language is a huge life skill and real eye opener for anyone.

Language use is driven by usefulness. Rarely is it driven by some high-minded pretense at being a world-citizen or preserving culture.

Usefulness is what's perceived. If you're in a European country your English might be great if you're in a city where you use English and need it for work, or if you admire English speakers in some way and want to have access to their culture and writings or media for some reason.

Otherwise it's mostly a perceived waste of time.

In US high-schools you wind up having Spanish, French, German, and other languages taught. All are equally good languages for all the cognitive benefits. Spanish gets pushed because of domestic politics and ideology--to show solidarity and empathy, perhaps. In some areas it's a useful language; but most English speakers don't find it to be prestigious and if they learn it at all they acquire a sort of creole or restricted code that's good enough for being a shopkeeper or installing HVAC. Some heritage speakers learn it to stay in touch with "their" culture, even as their actual cultures shift and diverge from that of their parents and grandparents and those of other Spanish-speaking immigrants or native born.

Then again, culture and language are distinct.

Not so much learning. Mostly avoidance. From 8th grade up.

Even the bilingual 5th grade class I observed for a while was pretty pointless. There was a distinct bias. The Spanish-speakers were favored by the Spanish-language teacher and coached in a lot of ways. The native English-speakers found the Spanish to be a joke, and the Spanish-language teacher was not favorable to them.

Hard to spot if you didn't speak both languages. The English-language teacher knew no Spanish.

And I could only pity the kids in the bilingual Spanish/English class just because that was the one that the district had designed the "ESL" class. It's the fatal flaw in Lau-mandated ESL instruction in the US for years, one that politically adept groups love and others less numerous are powerless to even complain about. These few kids weren't Spanish speaking and were recent arrivals. Ever see a kid in the US for a month try to sort out English when half his school day is in Spanish? Good for Latino immigrants. Horrendous for Vietnamese, Thai, Russian immigrants.

I deal with avoidance every day, and yes, many of my students do what they can to not learn much or any Spanish at all.

Still, it's not my job to get them fluent, just to get them to travel level. I do what I can, many do learn and go on to learn more, and at least my students have been exposed to a different language and culture in our monoculture area.

in grade school. Every one I knew spoke English, most spoke Germanand half spoke French. Granted, I only knew 10 people.

would be better off if some kids laid bricks in the US instead of overseas.

I say this as someone who had a variety of fast food and retail jobs. I mean someone has to do it I guess and I suppose I learned something, but no real useful skills. It certainly wasn't something I wanted to spend my life doing.

Learning a skill like carpentry or bricklaying or similar at least gives you the skills to know how to fix things, if only around the house.

I think if young white boys and girls (read teens and twenty-something's) have the cash and time and are willing to spend it exposing themselves to real problem areas of the world such as poor countries hit by natural disaster, then it is to be commended. They may actually learn something outside the bubble of US pop culture and entitled living.

I don't advocate these people purposefully taking on roles for which they ate unqualified and which is counterproductive such as laying bricks with no training, but if partnered with a halfway decent NGO, the people CAN contribute in low and no skill tasks that free up other people to do higher skill work.

The snottiness of the OP title and conclusions is really appalling. Why single out whites, also?

Volunteer work for me involves light box packing, it's what I can do for them. While a programmer by trade, and possessing many hobbies, the volunteer demand for plant breeders, soapmakers, perfume makers, and so on is rather light.

The article denigrates my very real skills just because they don't happen to be particularly volunteering-friendly. Plenty of white folks have non-volunteer friendly skills. So do plenty of folks who aren't white.

And in part, the fault goes to the agency. Screen your people and determine what they can and cannot do. Place appropriately.

That's the problem. If the organization is a good one, they will fit the kids in with skills that they can use to help the best that they can. And these programs are beneficial both ways... introducing people in the host country to US kids, and US kids to the problems and people of the host country.

There is a program here in Brooklyn similar to this. It's not just white kids who go, either.

And while I've been appalled on trips to China where we were taken to "slums" for a photo op, there is something about travel, especially at such a young age, which opens the minds and hearts to other people.

This article/editorial just reads like a "why bother?" and justification for not doing anything or caring.

I work where my husband works. Part of that includes handling payroll for the crews who know nothing of insurance, payroll taxes, etc. They would starve if left to their own devises. I, on the other hand, have no knowledge or physical capability to do what they do and without them I would have no purpose.

That the author has no discernible skills is not a matter of race because there are plenty of white women and men who are quite capable (I wonder how many of the masonry elves that rebuilt her fumbling construction attempts were white?). In fact, I'm curious as why the adults in the story allowed them to engage in construction work but insisted on allowing them to not be properly instructed. If they were going to allow the children to do the work they should have also given them the requisite knowledge.

This isn't a cautionary tale about white privilege, it's a tale about crappy child rearing.

where you're completely useless. If you have no idea how to lay bricks, you can haul bricks over to the people that do know how to lay them. Almost any job requiring skilled labor benefits from having unskilled or low skilled assistance. The problem with that is that helping someone skilled when you're unskilled requires you to listen to them, which many people aren't prepared to do.

Not as much as just sending the money directly, obviously, but even so it's a net positive.

Only an arrogant racist can be taken to the top of a mountain by a non-white man with all the assistance necessary and then he and his propagandists spread as fact that the white man discovered Mt. Everest.

And spent the next 50 years or so building (structurally sound) schools and hospitals in Nepal. Not sure he's a proper target of ire

Wasn't he such an asshole?

(Sarcasm!)

The word 'white' or 'caucasian' with black, Hispanic, etc. and end up with a racist screed, the screed is racist, imho.

But I guess "The problem with volunteer organizations having volunteers doing things that they are unqualified to do" makes for a less snappy title.

whites are like herself and privileged economically. There is a growing custom in some circles of volunteering overseas for a week or so, then touring the country. It looks good on college admission forms.

not every white person lives in the US or even in the US lives in luxury. dumb thought that all white people are as useless as the writer.

and with postcolonialist/neocolonialist assumptions and paternalism in Western countries. Being white isn't necessarily a hindrance; knowing nothing at all about the culture and language of the place you find yourself in, however, is. Good intentions aren't enough to overcome a lack of basic skills and the ability to communicate. And well-meaning relatively affluent Western misery-tourists are actually somewhat resented by people in much of the developing world; in a lot of cases? They don't really want you there. The Peace Corps for instance is regarded in many developing countries as a sinister agent of soft US imperialism, and considering US and Western involvement in creating many of the problems of poverty and such in the developing world by destabilising governments and exploiting local labour and resources? It really looks worse than hypocritical in a lot of cases ("sorry we toppled democratic government in your country and supported warlords and that our oil and mining companies have destroyed your countryside and in some cases killed a lot of people while doing it; here, have a school!&quot .

Merry ol' England:
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Germany:


Belgium:


It's a shame this young woman couldn't master the most basic of skilled labor tasks, and that there was such lousy adult supervision on the project.

They assess their volunteers and assign them to jobs they can do, or pair them with someone who is skilled so they can be taught. My niece has volunteered in a number of countries with Habitat and learned several new skills, though she already had some construction ability when she went. She now works for the American Red Cross preparing people for assignments overseas.

It sounds as though the problem is not so much with the author of the article as with the organizations with which she volunteered. Those groups need to better use their volunteers rather than randomly assign them to task that make the volunteer feel useful instead of actually being useful.

Knew a girl who wanted to volunteer and found a good fit.

She went and helped in an orphanage. She was studying the language spoken there and had some familiarity, and this provided her with practice, even as she stayed up all night to monitor the small children sleeping, tend to their needs, and give the professional staff a break in their duty schedules and budgets.

Making herself more useful was that she also gave English lessons to family members of the staff and others that wanted to improve their English.

All within her competence, and mutually advantageous to all sides--the staff, the community, the orphans, and herself. She stayed there a year, room and board provided, and any spending money coming from some of the non-volunteer English tutoring.

I think that is the root of the author's problem. She wasn't going on a trip solely for the purpose of aiding other people. She was going on a vacation that also had the "perk" of making her feel as though she was helping out the poor. I would bet that she did not sleep rough, eat with the people she was helping, or was personally inconvenienced in any way.

She probably also paid the voluntourism company a good amount of money for the experience, very little of which went to the communities she was supposed to be helping.

Good distinction.

One group I know goes to Mexico every year to build houses - they stay with the local people or in tents, do heavy work, take truck loads of construction supplies, and carry their own food. Many use their vacation time, but they return home more worn out than they are when they leave. Most years they build two or three houses in the time they stay.

Another group does similar work in this country - same sort of story.

I don't know the sort of people that do voluntourism.

order to get free lesson through storytelling on this subject. It's a great read, and drives home the complications of cultural differences, misunderstandings, and the ignorance often displayed by elitist imperialists. It was a finalist for a Pulitzer in fiction.

I mean, being culturally aware is a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong here. And it's always good to have the right skill sets for any aid travels, depending on the situation. And I think we can all applaud her for helping to empower the local people as well.

But it just doesn't make a lot of sense to talk about "white privilege" on a subject like this.

There is a basic cultural assumption that we westerners ( i.e.white people) can drop into Tanzania and save the poor black people from themselves. Social class is also involved in this, these boarding school girls of affluent backgrounds.

There are many assumptions wrapped up in that, the main one being is that we automatically know better than them what is best for them, and how to create that better world.

This idea is also a meme in many American films where liberal white people drop into poor black communities and save the day. It is farcial, jingo-istic, untrue, etc. At it's core, it is a racist concept.

The author of this article is to be commended for her perception of the problem, and her work to change it.

Drop a young white college graduate with no life experience outside of college into a poor minority school, but for only two years.

What a solution that is.

Hoocoodanoed?