Good English – A Key to Panama’s Future Success

Speech delivered on April 23, 2024 on the Launch of Nationwide Lecturers Community & Coaching of Trainers Programme 

It’s a pleasure to be with you at this launch of the Nationwide Lecturers Community & Coaching of Trainers Program. Congratulations to everybody concerned in getting this thrilling initiative so far, and to everybody who’s right here committing to its future success. To all of you concerned with the Panama Bilingue program, to representatives of the Ministry of Schooling and of CAF, to academics and faculty leaders, to these of you right here with Pearson.

It appears relatively acceptable that this launch is happening at this time, twenty third April, as a result of at this time is William Shakespeare’s birthday. Shakespeare has completed extra to form the English language we converse than anybody else who has lived. Which is kind of outstanding, provided that had been he nonetheless alive, he could be 460 years outdated at this time.

Charles I, King of Spain, is known for numerous issues, amongst them his remark, made just some years earlier than Shakespeare was born, on the significance of languages: “I converse in Spanish with God”, he mentioned, “in French with ladies, in Italian with my associates and in German with my horse”. Being multi-lingual has all the time had its benefits!

If, as a younger Panamanian rising up now, you may start your grownup journey with a fluent command not solely of Spanish, however of English too, you’ll have already got two keys to success, no matter you resolve to do. And that’s as true whether or not you head off to see the world and discover work in distant continents, or whether or not you choose to remain right here in Panama.

Panama, with its strategic geographical place and its pivotal function in world commerce, lies at a crossroads of continents and oceans, cultures and economies. For a teenager in Panama excited about their future, the flexibility to speak with confidence in good English is greater than an educational achievement. It’s a vital ability that can suit you to take up alternatives on the earth of worldwide enterprise, in academia, in analysis, in IT. The King of Spain famous 5 hundred years in the past that languages construct bridges. And that’s simply as true at this time – bridges between nations and firms and cultures.

In addition to being in people’ personal greatest pursuits, it’s equally clearly in Panama’s nationwide curiosity that its faculties and universities needs to be equipping younger folks with good English. Panama wants bridges. It wants enterprise leaders who can work with prospects from across the globe. It wants diplomats and politicians who can converse up for its worldwide pursuits.

Success relies upon, in fact, on the nation having good academics, plenty of good academics. Their function, your function, is completely central to success. Schooling is a folks enterprise. With out sufficient folks – good folks – it can not and won’t operate. Panama wants good leaders and academics in its faculties in each a part of the nation, and particularly in these areas the place requirements are low.

The Nationwide Lecturers Community & Coaching of Trainers Program that we’re launching at this time is meant to equip and empower hundreds of academics with the instruments they should assist their college students to excel. It should assist them to be taught from each other and share experiences.

To paraphrase the English author and playwright Oscar Wilde, there’s no level having prejudices except you discuss them. Certainly one of my private prejudices is that languages matter and, most likely greater than another language, around the globe, English issues. Lengthy earlier than I turned a diplomat, I frolicked instructing English language and literature in India. I loved it a lot the primary time that I went again to India some years later to show a second time. I did so as a result of I believed then, and I consider simply as passionately all these years later, that equipping youngsters to talk English effectively issues.

At this time being Shakespeare’s birthday, I really feel I ought to finish with a citation from considered one of his performs. In “As You Like It” Shakespeare writes, ‘All of the world’s a stage, and all of the women and men merely gamers. They’ve their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time performs many elements’. Good English, taught effectively in faculties throughout Panama, by academics with the keenness and the coaching they want, will equip this nation’s younger ladies and younger males to play their many elements, and to play them effectively.

Girls and gents, as I mentioned originally, to all of you current at this time, effectively completed. I want you each success with this system.