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LETTER tram the EDITCR
For this issue of New
Standpoints,
we have chosen a miscellany of topics, fitting this mid-winterjearly spring season, marked with carnivals, unpre- dictable weather, swift changes and evolutions, with their dark sides but aiso bright intervals.Changes and fantasy first, with A Midsummer Night's Oream and its delightful transmogrifications, mock performances and declarations of love, and the theme of Carnival, Pancake Day and Saint Patrick's Day in Chicago; the windy city and its green river are likely to be in the limelight for this year's celebration of St Patrick!
Then we turn towards political and social issues with recent immigration in the United States, focusing on the Hispanie community. We also have an interview with Erin Gruwell talking at length about Freedom Writers, her teaching experience in the Barrio. And not surprisingly, you will find echoes of her views on tough kids in our rubric Interaction. Though the European and American contexts are totally different, the basic issue remains:
how can we teach students who see no reason to school and be permanently confronted with failure? It is reas- suring to see that on either side of the Atlantic, teachers Gan think about new methods in order not to leave 'dis- ruptive , or 'hopeless' students behind.
The third theme is about the evolution of the British Press and the way news is delivered nowadays: printed or on-fine? Free or not? Of course, we could not do without a trip to Citizen Kane's land with press mogul Rupert Murdoch.
50 understandably, our worksheets are focused on training pupils to write: writing their own dia ries, like the Freedom Writers, or writing a press article or more simply writing the contents of leaflets or posters against drink- ing, but as usual, we also emphasise oral skiffs: debat- ing issues such as immigration, or the future of the press...
50 there:s a lot of hope, optimism and gaiety in this issue of New
Standpoints
issue, and wehopeyou
