Self Portrait
(As quoted in an interview with Emily Moore,
Guardian Education, October 1999)
I moved to Los Angeles in 1947 after three and a half years in the
US Army, and before that the French Army and the French Resistance.
In addition, I had been in concentration camps, slave labor camps
and prisons for two years in France - primarily put there by the French
government.
After the war, I thought that the biggest weapon in maintaining a
free society was education. I remembered my psychology professor at
the Sorbonne saying, "nobody knows anything about the learning
process of the human mind". I thought, "If we don't know
how we learn, how can we ever know how to teach?" I decided to
devote my life to probing the learning process. I chose the most alien
subject - foreign languages - to enable me to evaluate achievement
levels, starting from zero. I set up a language institute in Beverly
Hills and started researching. The language center became more and
more successful - but my ultimate objective is to demonstrate what
can be done in learning in general.
If you ask any language department at any university how long it would
take to cover what I do (that is to cover not to know) they will tell
you two to three years. However, with my method, to know it and use
it takes two to three days. From zero!
Everybody has a tremendous drive for learning, but that drive is smothered
by a heavy lid. I feel passionately angry about this. We all have
a natural ability but if you are told you do not have an ear for languages,
you give up. Learning has become associated with tension and hard
work. Conventional teaching closes, rather than opens, the mind and
it is my dream for children to be taught in a different way. Learning
should be exciting. You can go through a whole day and you do not
want to stop.
To read more about Michel Thomas' life experiences,
click here:
Short Biography
*For a full account of his fascinating
life, read "Test of Courage: The Michel Thomas Story by Christopher
Robbins, published by Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.
Click
here to order |
