Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 15, 1990 TAG: 9006150030
SECTION: A-7 NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short
One of the first 122 U.S. volunteers leaving this weekend for Eastern Europe, 66-year-old Felix Lapinski, has a highly personal motive for traveling to Poland to teach English.
"I learned Polish at my mother's knee," he said in an interview Thursday. "Now I have a chance to teach Poles English, which is really the access language of the modern world."
Lapinski was one of those selected from thousands of volunteers.
At the invitation of the new Polish and Hungarian governments, the Peace Corps aims at creating a network of trained teachers to spread the use of English, which Peace Corps Director Paul D. Coverdell said has become the essential "language of commerce, science, mathematics and computer technology," as Eastern Europe turns its face to the West.
The volunteers will first spend several months of language-training in Polish and Hungarian university towns. They are expected to begin teaching this fall.
Coverdell expects a decade-long effort, with the Peace Corps expanding its reach to such countries as Czechoslovakia and broadening its scope to include instruction in environmental protection and business development.
But as the effort begins, the focus is on helping Poland and Hungary to set up a system for the wide-scale teaching of English.
"In the very, very recent past, English was a closet language in Eastern Europe; you had to learn it secretly," said Jerry Welch, the Peace Corps' deputy director for Central Europe and other regions.
by CNB