Talk:Carla Grissmann

Unsubstantiated claim

StenLasha The article states "She also helped to reform the entire Sri Lankan education system.", which is really a bold statement to make - the reference provided does not back this up either. In fact the only mention is that she has collected some masks from Sri Lanka. Unless you can provide a reliable published source for this statement I will be deleting it. Dan arndt (talk) 10:05, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

I copy-paste from the article I cited: "Her flat is decorated with choice finds: masks from Sri Lanka, where she was sent by the Asia Foundation to write a report on the teaching of English and ended up helping to reform the entire education system there." The source, therefore, does back up the claim - it uses virtually the same wording - and I would contend that it is a reliable source. StenLasha (talk) 10:24, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

• Essentially all that means is the interviewer is basing it solely on what Grissmann has told him. I've done a thorough search and I can not find any collaborating sources, particularly Sri Lankan sources, which verify the claim that she reformed the entire Sri Lankan education system. If you can find any collaborating sources provide them otherwise my comments above still stand. Dan arndt (talk) 11:35, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Steppe is a reliable and reputable magazine, and the article is written by someone with ten years' experience as an interviewer for respected publications, and I think the idea that Grissmann has invented a story about rewriting Sri Lanka's educational system and fed it to a gullible interviewer is far-fetched. I suggest that you preface the claim with the word "allegedly" - that strikes me as a good compromise, while I keep a look out for corroborating sources StenLasha (talk) 14:07, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

At this stage I'll leave the statement with the maintenance tag in place to allow you time to identify and cite a source that collaborates it. If you can't find anything however I will delete it. Dan arndt (talk) 23:53, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Dan arndt Granted, I haven't been able to find a corroborating source for the educational reform thing - but why did you delete the mention of the hotel in Ladakh as well? The interview discusses this in some depth. Unless we conclude for that she is a pathological liar, surely the testimony of the interview is valid - especially since the other claims in the paragraph (her time with John Hopkins and her job in Paris) are easy to corroborate. "Grissmann lived in Tangier, where she was friends with Paul and Jane Bowles and John Hopkins; she worked on the glossy magazine Realités in Paris for two decades (‘I walked in, God being great, at just the moment they needed an assistant editor’); she also set up a hotel in the Indus Valley, in Ladakh, north of Pakistan and west of Tibet, which she makes sound like a South Asian Fawlty Towers: ‘A Japanese man had painted all the wrong names and numbers on the doors … The bathroom tiles were bought from Delhi and had to be glued onto the walls … In the night I remember hearing them fall, one by one, off the walls with a clatter … The cook slept on the cement floor outside his kitchen with all his noodles in a pile near the top of his head to keep them safe through the night … We were only busy once, when the Swiss explorer Ella Maillart brought a busload of lady mountaineers in lederhosen …’. Grissmann has, in short, lived a life of adventure, unbridled by domesticity." StenLasha (talk) 09:33, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

StenLasha, I'm happy for you to reinstate with supporting inline citations. Dan arndt (talk) 11:21, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Drobnic (talk) 19:45, 3 August 2017 (UTC) Regarding Sri Lanka and Carla's work there: I worked with Carla as a consultant, advisor, and friend almost from the outset of her assignment there. Her work was important, but "reform" is the wrong word to describe what she did. Teaching English to the incoming university students had become a hot political topic after a generation of rejection of using English in public institutions. Sri Lanka's government, responding to demands from the upcoming generation for better English skills, instituted a crash course in English as a Foreign Language for all incoming university freshmen. There was also a desire by the universities to upgrade the resources for further English language learning available to the students, especially in the science and technology faculties. Carla organized the crash courses at the main universities (a huge task) and obtained materials to establish resource centers for the English language teachers and their students. I accompanied her to each university in July/August, 1982, and saw first-hand the many obstacles she had overcome to get the language courses up and running. Drobnic (talk) 19:45, 3 August 2017 (UTC)Karl Drobnic

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