Daily we receive the message from the media that green is good. We, as consumers, maintain that green buildings, green cars, green plastic and now even green rubber should be the focus. With products such as latex rubber made from a desert plant called guayule becoming more common, this is proving easier and easier to do.

Hevea, a product of the para rubber tree, is what most rubber is derived from. Para rubber trees are native to Brazil. They were transplanted to Southeast Asia and have been carefully bred to produce increased hevea. Most rubber comes from this region of the world today, with the balance synthetically produced from petroleum. While it's true that most rubber is organic inherently, it's not "green" necessarily-at least not as green as guayule.

The benefits of using rubber derived from the environmentally-friendly plant guayule are simple to see, beginning with proximity. Guayule can be grown in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, whereas hevea, the other natural source of latex rubber, must be grown overseas in tropical climates. Since guayule is grown so close to home, the cost to the environment is lower than importing hevea-based rubber from overseas because of reduced fuel usage.

A second green benefit presented is guayule's location. Unlike the common hevea rubber produced from para rubber trees grown in tropical areas, guayule is a tremendously hearty plant. To keep its health it does not require any chemical pesticides because it's naturally resistant. To remain healthy para rubber trees require chemical pesticides because they are tremendously susceptible to leaf blight. Guayule's natural pest resistance is significant since chemical pesticides have been associated with various health and environmental risks.

A third green attribute of guayule is that it can be used as an ethanol feedstock. Unlike corn, which is commonly used to make ethanol, guayule is not a food source and therefore does not impact the world's food source in availability or price. In some situations the demand for corn to produce ethanol has impacted the food supply in the market. But that's not an issue with guayule since it's not a food source.

Finally, guayule is an excellent source of hypoallergenic natural rubber latex. Hevea latex allergies are a serious issue-it's estimated that 10 percent of the U.S. population has a latex allergy. Currently, most hypoallergenic latex is derived from petroleum-based synthetic rubber. Obviously, a natural source of hypoallergenic rubber is fundamentally superior to rubber synthesized from petroleum.

Throughout the 20th century, guayule gained popularity because of import restrictions, leaf blight decimation, and common latex allergies among health care providers. Although more rubber can be produced from a single para rubber tree than a guayule plant, the locale, energy-producing potential, hypoallergenic qualities, and overall greenness of the guayule plant is unbeatable.

Now the question is how do green-conscious consumers support this product? Local farmers in the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, along with the Yulex Corporation, are working to produce the crop and manufacture latex products from it. Finding ways to support these entities is a sure way to invest in the success of the environment and the affordability of guayule produced rubber products.

Introduction

In the 1990's when I was contemplating learning Spanish, I was told repeatedly by well-meaning friends that if I really wanted to learn Spanish I would have to live in a country in which Spanish was the dominate spoken tongue. If you Google "Spanish Immersion," you will get 1,790,000 hits. After exhausting myself by reading about 250 websites, all of which tried very hard to get me to enroll in their costly Spanish Immersion Courses located in various Spanish-speaking countries, which would have required me to re-mortgage my home a billion times plus hope some rich philanthropist would bequeath me the entirety of his off-shore accounts, I decided to include this quote representing the consensus of what "Spanish Immersion" means:

"It is learning a foreign language the same way we learned English (or whatever our native language is): by living it. In a typical language immersion school, the student doesn't study only in the formal sense — he or she lives the language. Classes are taught entirely in Spanish, speaking in another language at any time is discouraged, and the student lives in Spanish-speaking environment." (Spanish Immersion School FAQ, Schools Help You Combine Study and Travel, By Gerald Erichsen, About.com)

With an idea similar to this quote as the definition of "Spanish Immersion," my wife and I, who also wanted to learn Spanish, sold all our earthly belongings and moved to Guanajuato, Mexico in the year 2003 to "live in the language." After four months of Spanish classes (five days a week and three hours per day) and four years of living here, we could not speak or understand Spanish any better than we could before we came to Mexico. Though we could tell you the differences between the verbs estar and ser and when to use the subjunctive, we were not anywhere close to fluency though we lived in the language as full-time expatriates.

We suddenly and very disturbingly had an "Oh my God, what have we done" moment!

Being the person I am, I went into research mode (research which led to many books and about 600 articles, by the way) to take apart and dissect the points of the uniformly-accepted definition of what "Spanish Immersion" or "Language Immersion" meant…the true meaning!

Many tourists we've met in Mexico, when they learn just how long we've lived in Mexico, invariably make the statement, "I bet you are now 100% fluent in Spanish", to which we were forced to reply, "Then you would lose that bet." I would ask these folks what they thought fluency meant. They would give all manner of replies with the basic idea conveyed that because we "lived in the language" and that somehow, perhaps as if by magic, we had managed to absorb the language like a sponge.

Myth # 1

Living in a country in which your targeted language is predominately spoken guarantees nothing!

There truly is this universal belief by every language student or tourist we've interviewed that they think there is some magic osmosis that occurs when you live in Mexico. You will wake up one day and be native fluent. You will be able to rattle off Spanish at the "Speed of light and a hearty Hi-Ho Silver" with the best of them. And, really with the false and misleading definition of what "language immersion" means posted all over the Internet, how can you blame the uninformed?

Coming to the country where your targeted language is spoken will not necessarily work to give you fluency. Coming for a week, or forever, will not mysteriously empower you with fluency. One reason is one we've observed now for more than five years of living in this country.

The vast majority of Gringo students come with good intentions but one of the very first things they do is form friendships with their fellow Gringo students. They hang out together for their entire time in the country. Though they go through classes, afterwards, in their free time, they associate mostly among themselves. They hang out with those who are from their home country practically the entire time they are here. If "Immersion" was, and it is not, "living in the targeted language," then the typical language student who has spent a fortune to come here defeats the purpose, don't you think?

The only way coming to Mexico to study Spanish will work for anyone is to have the highest degree of spoken fluency in Spanish before coming to study Spanish.

Confused? Read on…

Myth # 2

Immersion in a foreign language means "living in the country in which the targeted language is spoken."

Not so!

Nor does immersion, when applied to second language acquisition, mean "grammar-translation courses taught in concentrated periods of time." (Winitz)

What it means to be "Immersed" in any language other than your own, for the purpose of second language acquisition, "refers to massive amounts of input with meaning, similar to the way we are exposed to and learn our first (native) language." (Winitz)

To further expand on this correct definition, "True Immersion refers to massive amounts of Comprehensible Input, which is the exact manner in which we all learned our native language."

Many times I've had people tell me that there are hundreds of methods of language learning in which you can enroll or purchase for home study. I reply to that by saying "There are hundreds of language-learning courses that will teach you something about the language but there is only one way to achieve spoken fluency and that is by Comprehensible Input."

"Comprehensible input means that students should be able to understand the essence of what is being said or presented to them." (What Is Comprehensible Input? Excerpted from Teaching English-Language Learners with Learning Difficulties)

We met this lovely woman in a bookstore here in Guanajuato. After telling us she and her husband were in Guanajuato to study Spanish for six months, I asked her how her classes were going. What she said perfectly describes the Comprehensible Input problem. She told me that she and her husband were enjoying the experience of being in the city and seeing the sights. However, she went on to say, she wished that she could actually understand what her teachers were saying and she wished she had the linguistic skill to ask questions.

In the attempt to achieve the highest degree of spoken fluency in the targeted language, you must be exposed to meaningful, understandable, and highly comprehensible input. Progress is made when input is introduced that is at a slightly higher level…a little more difficult than the input you've mastered…and so on and so on.

Comprehensible Input, by the way, does not have to occur in a foreign country where the targeted or desired language is spoken. You can do this wherever you live. Having to "Live in the language" or in the country in which the language is the dominate tongue is a myth.

"The best methods are therefore those that supply 'comprehensible input' in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are 'ready', recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production." (Krashen)

And this quote leads nicely into the next myth.

Myth # 3

Language Acquisition is different than Language Learning

Language learning looks something like this:

You enroll in a class. The only difference between a Spanish class in Mexico and one in the States will be the Mexican class will be conducted entirely in Spanish. You will be given a book, maybe a workbook too, and begin to learn the Spanish parts of speech—all taught in Spanish!

"American systems concentrate so heavily on memorizing “surface” grammatical rules that they provide only a set of limited vocabulary items." (Winitz)

Whether you are in you home country or in the country where the language you want to learn is spoken, you will be sitting in a classroom in which grammar is disseminated.

That is a situation in which something might be learned about the language but it will not come close to language acquisition, which is what we all want, do we not?

"Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding." (Krashen)

What comes first in the language acquisition process is listening, not speaking. Many do not or cannot make the distinction between acquiring a language and learning a language. There is a difference. One engages the development of speech in the speech centers in your brain while the other engages the cognitive portions of your brain. If what you want is the acquisition of speech, then you need to engage in the process that gives it to you. You will not find speech or language acquisition in a classroom using a textbook. You just won't! Long before you begin to form words and sentences, you need to listen—a silent period!

The Silent Period

"Observations and studies of children's second-language acquisition (see Krashen 1985) have revealed that in the initial phase of the language acquisition process, there is typically a 'silent period' during which children acquiring a new language in natural settings are silent and concentrate on comprehension. And they may respond, if necessary, only in a non-verbal way or by making use of a set of memorized phrases. This phenomenon is also observed when we see how children acquire their mother tongue." (Taeko Tomioka)

This same phenomenon must be engaged in the adult learner in order to acquire speech in the targeted language.

"In a study by Petoskey, 1974; Winitz, 1981; J. Gary and N. Gary, 1981, they postulated that the most effective methodology for the adult learner of a second language is one in which listening (that “period of silence”) is the focus before any speaking is done." (Learn How to Learn Spanish: Bower)

Listening first, and I mean lots and lots of intensive listening to comprehensible input, and speaking second is how you, Mr. Adult Bilingual Wannebee American, learned English. You must use this same method to learn Spanish or any other language you choose to learn.

"A number of experiments were conducted to test a 'silent period' hypothesis and results reported seem to constitute arguments in favor of a 'silent period' in initial stages of L2 learning even in the formal environment. There are also several researchers who have developed teaching strategies based on a 'silent period' hypothesis. The purpose of this paper is to search through the literature concerning such experiments and researches and to consider the possibility of introducing such strategies in ESL/EFL classrooms." (Taeko Tomioka)

One such researcher is the founder of The Learnables Languages, Harris Winitz, Ph.D. Language Development, K.C., Mo.

Learning Spanish has never been easier!!

Soon, teachers and educators across Latin America and Spain will be attending the Fifth Ibero-American Conference of Teachers, Educators and Researchers (Quinto Encuentro IberoAmericano de Colectivas y Redes de Maestros que Hacen Investigacion e Innovacion Desde Su Escuela y Comunidad). One of their objectives is to make teachers and educators authors of and protagonists for the emancipation of the educational process. The hope is that teachers can expand their influence beyond the limits of their school rooms; that they can mobilize and organize to the extent that a pedagogy of emancipation can spread beyond school walls and influence the socio-educational and political realms.

Participating in this year's event will be representatives from Argentina, Spain, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, and Brasil. Representatives and teachers from Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua are also expected to attend and participate. The Venezuelan chapter will host the event this year. Its National Coordinator is Professor Mirna Sojo Sojo. She will be assisted by Maritza Lopez, Arturo Perez and a host of other dedicated and forward thinking educators.

While discussing the conference with Professor Sojo and when perusing the informational materials that have been distributed, the theme of emancipating the educational process is a recurring one. But emancipating it from what, some might ask? Could the answer be status quo governments? Many in the United States are convinced that the educational process is not geared toward developing people but controlling them and preparing them to perform tasks that serve the interests of government and big business. Apparently this train of thought is prevalent in other countries as well. Could it be that progressive educators in the United States can look to educators in South America for a measure of guidance?

The aims of the conference include deepening the interchange of experiences among teachers from the participating countries, strengthening the learning experience and teaching techniques, recognizing the teaching experiences that promote forms of organization, articulating proposals that perpetuate the production and sharing of knowledge between teachers and communities, recognizing the educational experiences that spring from the communities and empowering the conference's mobilization movement within the participating countries.

The central themes that will be covered during the conference are various but interrelated. They include:

(1)Exploration of what goes into making a teacher or educator. Taken into consideration are the teacher's personal, practical and preparatory experiences, and how they influence his or her ability to relate to and interact with those who are being taught;

(2)Exploration of practical and innovative teaching methods. The construction and development of curricula take front stage during this segment;

(3)Exploration of political projects that focus on what actions teachers can take to emancipate the formal educational process. How can teachers harness their power so that formal education is made more responsive to the needs of individuals within a community as opposed to the needs of governments and corporations? What can teachers do to facilitate the incorporation of multiculturalism, ethnic experiences, multiple languages and other such factors that tend to be neglected or trivialized by status quo educators and administrators;

(4)Exploration of emerging educational techniques and experiences; and

(5)Exploration of scientific and occupational initiatives.

The conference, which is held every two years, will begin on July 13, 2008 and continue until July 20. The organizers have separated Venezuela into fifty expeditionary school district routes. For the first four days, each participant will stay in one of these districts. Each district will accommodate between 15 and 25 participants, who will be able to meet with teachers and members of the community, interchange ideas and objectives and discover how to make community objectives a more integral part of the education process. Participants from other countries will thereby have the opportunity to actually experience what teachers and community members experience and emancipate the educational process by augmenting the role and relevance of community priorities. Attendees will spend the final three days in or near Caracas, attending workshops and meetings that bring most of the participants together.

In the words of Professor Sojo, “As a consequence of this conference, we want to produce a document that makes a strong case for an educational alternative free of neoliberal and capitalist influences. A high quality, free education that is beneficial to our communities can be provided.”

The Fifth Ibero-American Conference of Teachers and Researchers is open to participation by non Spanish speaking educators, and translators are in place to accommodate them. For more information google “redcires.”

Mba Mbulu is an independent educator specializing in the politics of history, particularly as it relates to people of African descent throughout the world. He is the founder of Aset University, author of several books and creator of an alternative education curriculum. He can be contacted at mmbulu@asetbooks.com www.asetbooks.com AsetUniversity

Caribbean Medical Schools

We have usually heard jokes about medical degrees earned by doctors in third-world countries and how they are prime candidates for a lawsuit. Or maybe we hear about such higher institutions of medicine as Caribbean medical schools as places to work on one?s tan. But there are legitimate Caribbean medical schools, those which are accredited, those which have high standards, and those which turn out some fine male and female doctors.

One of my community college students was a brilliant poet and at the same time a young man adept in the sciences. I imagine he was one of the rarer right/left-brained individuals, able to do logical and creative work equally well. He had a huge following as a slam poet. Then, in his second or third year, he decided to apply to a number of Caribbean medical schools. After the traditional wait, and much self-searching and occasional doubt, he was accepted at one of the finer Caribbean medical schools. I was incredibly proud, as he was my student, a fellow poet, a friend, and he had come to me for one of his recommendation letters to the Caribbean medical schools. What impressed me even more was that the school that accepted him wrote me a separate letter of thanks, and invited me to visit their satellite and main Caribbean medical schools if I was ever in the area.

But Caribbean medical schools have more qualifications than just my knowing someone who was accepted and who is now attending or more value than the graceful efforts made to thank mentors and invite them for a tour. Caribbean medical schools have rigorous programs of study and internship and maintain quality and high-bar standards. These institutions work students in the core sciences, through the pre-med steps, and through the medical practical and clinical phases, as well.

Here are some of the schools, those considered the top Caribbean medical schools:

American Global University School of Medicine (in Belize)
American International School of Medicine (in Guyana)
American University of the Caribbean (in St. Maarten)
Central American Health Sciences University (in Belize)
Grace University School of Medicine (in Belize)
International University of the Health Sciences (in St. Kitts)
Medical University of the Americas (in Nevis)
Ross University School of Medicine (in Dominica)
Saba University School of Medicine (in Saba)
Saint Theresa's Medical University (in St. Kitts)
Spartan Health Sciences University (in St. Lucia)
St. George's University School of Medicine (in Grenada)
St. James School of Medicine (in Bonaire)
St. Martinus (in Curacao)
St. Mary's School of Medicine (in St. Lucia)
Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara School of Medicine (in Mexico)
Universidad Iberoamericana (in Santo Domingo)
University of Health Sciences (in Antigua)
University of Saint Eustasius Medical School (in St. Eustasius)
Windsor University School of Medicine (in St. Kitts)