Four score and seven days ago, I began my journey to become an English assistant in France.
It is by mere coincidence that I came across a Gettysburg Address reference last week on The Daily Show. A brilliant jab at Sarah Palin’s tweeting addiction, Jon Stewart in all his humor and brilliance suggested what Lincoln’s famous address would look like in 140 characters or less:
No offense to 'honest_abe' and the talented writers on the Daily Show, I cannot demonstrate my 87 days abroad in the same fashion simply by the fact that I actually have a twitter. As I drop my head in shame, I have to admit that I’m a terrible tweeter – a twit perhaps – and have severely neglected my page immediately upon its creation. So in lieu of of tweeting, I've decided to do some tweaking to Lincoln's famous speech to capture the atmosphere of life as an English assistant in the Franche-Comté. Without further ado, I will take my place at the podium:
Ahem. (Clears throat.)
The Besançon Address
December 9, 2010
Four score and seven days ago our airline carriers brought several of us forth to another continent, another nation, conceived in Liberty and a bottle of red wine, and dedicated to the proposition that all English assistants are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great linguistic and cultural war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure the bureaucratic chaos and the obstacles of a complicated educational system. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave 12 hours a week out of their lives that that nation might live and speak English properly with every “th”, every “r”, and every “h.” It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men and women, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power and our tiny 700€/month salaries to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here in either English or French, and it can easily forget what they did here. It is for us with living assistantship contracts, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced with their hundreds of worksheets, song sharing, boisterous gests, voice recordings, and power point presentations. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead or whose visas have expired we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full or half-attempted measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead or repatriates shall not have died or immigrated in vain -- that this nation, under Nicolas Sarkozy, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that the English language of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
(Cheers come from the crowd.)
Knowing that Lincoln is rolling in his grave, I forever look to him as a role model. Four scores already completed and seven scores of days to go, I will happily continue the battle to anglicize the rest of the world. I’ve really been enjoying my life as an elementary school teacher in Besançon; not quite ready to join the ranks of the dead and repatriated assistants yet.
