Word: transitions
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Such underground violence is the dread of many urbanites, but this particular example took place last week in rural New Hampshire. The participants were 26 New York City transit police who went to Dartmouth College for 14 days of total immersion in Spanish. Of the city's 2,900 subway police, only 135 speak Spanish -in a city with 2.6 million Hispanics...
...followers frequently teach by play acting, as well as by pats on the head for good students. "The method brings emotions into the classroom," explains the professor. "Unless you feel a new language emotionally, the words won't come out when you need them." For the transit police project whose $18,000 cost was paid by private foundations, Rassias based classroom exercises on subway situations: passengers asking for directions, youths jumping across turnstiles, men molesting women. The daily eight-hour sessions were taught by four Spanish-speaking subway policemen who took a four-day cram course in Rassias...
...language. Their ability to communicate got higher marks. The officers' Spanish grammar isn't perfect, and their vocabulary totals only some 1,000 words, but as Sergeant Edward Spinola, 39, explains: "I can communicate, where before I was totally lost." That is good enough for Transit Police Chief Sanford Garelik, who said last week that he was looking for funds for more Rassias-style training in languages besides Spanish that have become native to New York City-including Greek, Italian, Russian and Chinese...
True, some big, old cities, notably New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia, have extensive rapid transit But ila most without exception the equipment is rundown, the subway stations dingy and dangerous and the scheduling haphazard. In most other cities and towns, mass transit is either seriously inadequate or practically nonexistent. Without a car, it is extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, to get from home to work or to shopping in many cities...
...Cambridge City Council supported the injunction by a vote of six to three, despite a warning from the director of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA), the group in charge of the extension, that the delay caused by an injunction might kill the entire project...