I have to say that my crystal ball for the future of English language schools is a bit cloudy. Okay, it’s clear that China continues to be a growth area and clearly technology offers all kinds of versatile learning opportunities for students. From Japan, we learn that Sharp has launched an English teaching robot! And the Internet means that students can link up with teachers cutting out the medium of the school altogether. No doubt such remote means of learning and teaching will continue to develop but, ultimately, it is the personal contact that means most in the learning process.

 Actually instead of looking forward, I want to look back at the history of the English language schools. I was privileged to meet Frank Bell in the UK. As a prisoner of war, Frank’s love of languages and his belief in education shaped desire to improve international understanding. Frank organized language classes for his fellow prisoners and after the war continued his work for peace through mutual understanding by establishing the Bell School in Cambridge to teach English. He went on to set up the Bell Educational Trust as a non-profit organization whose money from fees is reinvested in developing and improving the services and facilities for students, and the worldwide services that are offered. Today, Bell has four intensive training centers in the UK and more than 20 partners throughout Europe and in Asia.

The more commercially oriented language schools that followed in its wake and that have now spread so extensively through the world perhaps cannot be said to reflect Frank Bell’s idealism. But even so, the mere fact that English language helps the international community to have meaningful contact must be a factor for good in our complex and often tragic world. Leaving aside all issues of cross-cultural misunderstanding, the use of English internationally at least helps further E.M. Forster’s dictum: “only connect”. If we can only talk to each other, surely there is hope for mutual understanding and mutual respect.