Articles by Justin Ancheta
The Responsibilties of Communication
by Justin Ancheta
Many years ago, I had the chance to attend a university-level summer engineering camp in high school. Towards the end, there was small-group activity centered around the Challenger Disaster of 1986. My group represented the engineers who were pleading with upper management to delay the launch of the space shuttle Challenger. The twist was that we couldn't use direct language in communicating our intent: words like “clear”, “failure”, “can't”, “must”, “crash”, “therefore”, and “have to” were replaced with words like “perhaps”, “likely”, and “maybe”. (The reason? A...
Blindness
by Justin Ancheta
Recently, one of my favorite paintings has been Pieter Breugel the Elder's “The Blind Leading The Blind”. While it's ostensibly an illustration of Matthew 15:14, it's taken on a variety of meanings to a variety of people. For me, it's an illustration of the many absurdities and perils of teaching English – how we can be blind to so many things, especially in how we lead others who may be just as blind as us.
Like scales falling from my eyes, the extent of my own blindness came to me a few weeks ago. I was going through my lesson PowerPoint files, revising...