PASCH Schools: Partners for the future

Last week I was privileged to attend the 3^rd Conference of School Principals of PASCH Schools in Southeast Asia. A ‘PASCH school’ is a regular secondary school with a particular emphasis on the learning and teaching of German as an additional language. PASCH schools constitute a global network of more than 1,700 schools. ‘PASCH’ stands for ‘Schools – Partners of the Future.’ Funded by the German government, the PASCH network was initiated in 2008 in order to offer opportunities to youths from around the globe to learn German and to develop a positive relationship with modern Germany. PASCH supports professional development training for teachers, provides language learning resources for schools, offers scholarships for students to study in Germany, and numerous other virtual and non-virtual exchange and collaboration opportunities, including global student newspapers.

Attended by representatives of various national ministries of education, school principals, German language teachers, industry representatives and former students from across Southeast Asia and Australasia, the conference provided an excellent opportunity to gain an understanding of the state of the art of language education in the region.

Most language teaching efforts across the region are, unsurprisingly, devoted to English. However, there is a clear sense that English is no longer enough. To begin with, the countries of the region are characterized by enormous linguistic diversity and mother tongue education in addition to instruction in the national language is increasingly incorporated into curricula.

Second, with the greater regional integration that the introduction of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 promises neighbouring languages are gaining in importance. While as yet weakly integrated in most curricula, their role is set to expand.

Finally, there are other international languages such as Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese or Spanish. Offering the latter in the curriculum is often a niche effort of schools who are trying to differentiate themselves from other schools and who are attempting to provide their students with an additional edge. That teaching international languages other than English is intended to create a small elite group of cultural mediators is best illustrated with the example of Singapore. There, the opportunity to study a third foreign language is offered to students who achieve in the top ten percent in the primary school leaving certificate. Only these top academic achievers are able to pursue a third language in high school by attending a Ministry of Education Language Centre (MOELC) in addition to their regular studies. The languages on offer include Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, French, German, Japanese, Malay and Spanish.

While German may seem like a relatively irrelevant language to pursue in Southeast Asia, this is in fact not true for students at PASCH schools. These highly motivated students do so with two main goals in mind: to pursue tertiary education at a university in Germany and/or to pursue employment with a German company. Speakers at the conference included a number of students who had achieved their goal and who spoke about their experiences of learning German in school, participating in exchange programs, studying at a German university and working in a role where their German skills are advantageous.

In addition to achieving personal aims, fostering German skills among a small group of cultural mediators also benefits the wider society, as speakers from various national ministries of education stressed. These benefits are related particularly to knowledge transfer. Interesting examples include partnerships with German companies to deliver an innovative automotive engineering program in a Malaysian college or partnerships between Singaporean polytechnics and German small-to-medium enterprises to deliver a dual vocational training program. In fact, attending industry representatives stressed the importance of combining language skills with strong academic and vocational skills for success in the global workplace.

Finally, a number of school representatives argued that a focus on German had improved overall language education in their school. A teacher from an Australian high school, for instance, mentioned that – in the context of Australia’s notorious ‘monolingual mindset’ – his school’s focus on German has had positive effects on language learning more generally. As students in the German immersion program have discovered the value of learning German, their desire to learn another language has also increased and the school has unexpectedly seen enrolments in its Japanese language program rise, too.

In Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, the positive side-effects of a school’s focus on German are different and relate to improved teacher quality. Speakers from these countries explained that teacher quality – both in terms of proficiency and pedagogy – was a concern. This affects predominantly English language teachers, as English is the most widely taught language. Participating in the professional development opportunities offered by the PASCH school program has helped to disseminate pedagogy training across languages and thus has resulted in improving the professionalism of English language teachers, too.

Despite their diverse backgrounds all speakers stressed that the problems facing humanity today are global problems and that the world needs to move beyond competition to become an international learning community. Linguistic diversity will inevitably mediate the success of our partnerships for the future.

I was curious to find out whether the emergence of a new industry (nail care) and the transnational domination of that industry by a specific ethnic group (Vietnamese) had anything to do with language? Sure has, as I’ve learnt from a 2011 article in the International Migration Review (Eckstein & Nguyen, 2011).

Migrants often find that lack of proficiency in the local language is a barrier to workplace entry in their field and/or at the level at which they are qualified. They also often find that they can’t wait around till their language has improved sufficiently before having to make a living. The Vietnamese leaving Vietnam in the 1970s were no exception to this.

Linguistic barriers to employment are highest in the professions, where usually (part of) the qualifications and training process needs to be re-done and/or certifying and registration exams need to be undertaken in the local language. That’s why migrant lawyers are rare. Linguistic barriers to employment are lowest for self-employment in areas with little state regulation. That’s why migrant-owned corner stores are frequent.

Within a particular industry, the same rules apply. Let’s take the beauty industry: if you are a cosmetic surgeon and want to move to another country, chances are you’ll never work as a cosmetic surgeon again. Depending on where you are from and how your previous qualifications are assessed, you are facing years of re-training, qualifying exams in the new language and other hurdles to re-gain your license to practice in the new country. At the other end of the beauty industry, you’ll find nail technicians: to practice as a nail technician in Australia, for instance, you don’t need any formal qualifications whatsoever. Limited proficiency in English thus poses no or only a minor obstacle to workplace entry as a nail technician. However, speaking Vietnamese might confer an advantage, as I’ll explain now.

In the 1970s, the family of a former commander in the South Vietnamese Navy found that there were few opportunities for them and fellow Vietnamese refugees in California. Like many others in a similar position, they tried their luck in all kinds of ways and opened a beauty school, the Advance Beauty College (ABC) in Garden Grove, CA, an area aka ‘Little Saigon.’ They taught in Vietnamese and after a short course, students could go and start their own nail salon. Many of them did because in addition to the lack of linguistic barriers, the financial investment was low, too.

At that time, nail salons hardly existed and manicures and pedicures were a preserve of the rich and famous. However, the emergent supply of Vietnamese nail technicians and nail salons meant that manicures and pedicures suddenly came into the reach of Californian women of lesser means.

Vietnamese nails-only shops revolutionized manicuring in much the same manner that McDonalds revolutionized inexpensive, fast food service. Like McDonalds, the nails-only shops appealed to busy Americans who wanted quick, dependable service, when convenient to their schedules, and who were content with the provisioning of the service in an impersonal manner. (p. 654)

Vietnamese entrepreneurs thus did not fill an existing market but created a new one. Once established, this market spread easily through franchises. Regal Nails, located within Walmarts, for instance, was founded by a first-generation Vietnamese, as was the Australian market leader, Professionails.

Once established, linguistic necessity became a virtue for Vietnamese nail entrepreneurs, as ethnic networks ensured a continuing supply of first-generation workers with few other options. As such the continuation of the business model depends on continuing emigration from Vietnam because with better education and bilingualism, the second-generation does not need to rely on their ethnic ties and have many other employment options.

As I’ve explained it was the absence of regulation combined with the availability of training in Vietnamese that made California that birthplace of the Vietnamese creation and subsequent domination of the nail care industry. Furthermore, when the State of California introduced licensing exams for nail technicians in the 1990s, there was the option to take the certifying exams in Vietnamese. Thus, the Californian state chose, in this instance, not to erect a linguistic barrier to employment for its Vietnamese-speaking citizens.

Once established, and as the nail care industry expanded beyond California, across the USA and, later, went global, Vietnamese domination had the effect of excluding non-Vietnamese from the industry so that today lack of proficiency in English is rarely a barrier to becoming a nail technician but lack of Vietnamese does constitute such a barrier. As the industry transnationalized, it moved back to Vietnam and many nail technicians now train there before emigrating and have jobs already lined up before they even leave the country.

In case any of our non-Vietnamese readers are inclined to feel jealous, consider that it is only the continued ‘Vietnamization’ of the supply chain that makes your cheap manicures and pedicures possible.

[…] they work in the least skilled, least revenue-generating segment of the beauty industry. Most typically, when Vietnamese entrepreneurs expand their business involvements they do so by opening additional salons of the same sort, not by diversifying their beauty care offerings to include those that are most profitable. Similarly, nail technicians do not invest in additional training to qualify for the better paying jobs in the beauty industry. Vietnamese, accordingly, are creating conditions that work against their own longer-term interests. They are fueling intra-ethnic competition that is likely to drive down their earnings, unless they further increase demand for their services. (p. 666)

Eckstein S, & Nguyen TN (2011). The making and transnationalization of an ethnic niche: Vietnamese manicurists. The International migration review, 45 (3), 639-74 PMID: 22171362

Language in the catfish war

I’ve just read False Economy and in addition to learning many new intriguing things about economic history, I’ve also learnt that the catfish war, was, inter alia, fought on the terrain of language. Never heard about the catfish war?! The catfish war is a trade war between the USA and Vietnam, which started in the mid-1990s and in which US catfish producers lobbied for trade barriers and tariffs be imposed on Vietnamese catfish imports.

Initially, US catfish lobbyists delivered a heavy blow to Vietnamese catfish producers when they convinced US lawmakers to implement a law that banned imported catfish from being called “catfish.” Both the US and Vietnamese fish are in the same order of Siluriformes but in different families.

However, their joy didn’t last long because the Vietnamese retaliated by rebranding their catfish as basa. “Basa” is simply the Vietnamese word for the fish in question. First they didn’t have a coherent strategy and so other names also proliferated, including tra, bocourti, panga and swai. Panga, which is mostly used in Europe, derives from the Latin family name Pangasiidae. Basa and tra are different subfamilies – basa is technically known as Pangasius bocourti (hence the trade name bocourti) and tra is technically known as Pangasius hypophthalmus. The Vietnamese word for Pangasius hypophthalmus is tra and the Thai word for it is swai (hence the trade names tra and swai).

It was all very confusing (it took me a good two hours of internet research to figure this all out), particularly as basa is used internationally for both Pangasius bocourti and Pangasius hypophthalmus, and the same is true for panga in Europe. However, since 2010 Vietnam has instituted legislation to label all basa and tra for export consistently as basa.

The Vietnamese strategy of market differentiation worked. In the past decade, basa has come to be seen as an imported premium product and has been doing well in a range of export markets, including the USA. Consequently, US catfish lobbyists changed their strategy: they went to lobby for basa to be treated as a “like product” – i.e. completely reversing their earlier strategy which had been to argue that Vietnamese catfish was different from American catfish. They were successful again and Vietnamese basa has been subjected to heavy import tariffs.

As a discussion paper by the Center for International Management and Development Antwerp explains, the catfish war has transformed Vietnamese aquaculture: export markets have diversified beyond the USA, basa and tra are now being farmed in large agribusinesses, who have the means to innovate and to impose quality controls and to produce to international standards (another strategy in the catfish war has been to allege the inferior quality of Asian catfish and aquaculture).

The catfish war is not the only trade war fought on the terrain on language. Trade names have significant implications for competitiveness and consumer protection, particularly in the seafood business where new species continue to be bred and where the final product on the supermarket shelf has often undergone substantial technological intervention and transformation from animal to food.

The catfish war continues. US catfish producers have recently released a new catfish product, specially filleted premium catfish, under the car-name-like trade name Delacata. However, by now both US and Vietnamese catfish producers are more worried about competition from China than from each other.

In the meantime, if you ask Australian fish-and-chip vendors what kind of fish they use and where it comes from, they tell you: “Dunno! It comes in a box” Do you know what your food is and where it comes from?