The Test of Courage: Michel Thomas by Christopher Robbins

I have been a fan of Michel Thomas since I found his exceptionally good language courses. I’ve learnt my French from him. He made it extremely easy to learn to quite an advanced level in a few weeks. I thought that I would read his approved biography. It is certainly worth reading. This was an extraordinary man. Born 1914 and died 2005. The biography takes us through childhood (Polish Jew born in Lodz); education in Germany and France (Sorbonne); early war years; arrest in Nice; imprisonment and escape; capture and torture; resistance years (Lyon and Grenoble); embedding with American GI unit; counter intelligence post war (hunting Nazis and war-criminals; establishing language school in US. I am usually very sceptical about stories of French resistance fighters. However, in Michel Thomas’ case, we might have a real one. Certainly a brave many and wiley interrogator, one man band who achieved a lot. His story is well told against a background of the world as Michel Thomas found it. Robbins gives a a good outline of the times: Hitler’s rise; expulsion of Jews; Vichy France deporting thousands of Jews to Germany and gas chambers; woefulness of French resistance except late and around Lyon; torture and slave labour by SS and Nazis; war up the Rhone with the Americans; war-crimes; Dachau gas chambers; hunt for war-criminals by one part of American Intelligence while another part imported the Nazis and SS to the US (scientists, industrialists, anti-USSR intelligence officers). This history is well written, well researched and worth reading. A very different picture of that period from the picture we are given. The American inconsistency in sending known war-criminals to the US with altered personnel files while at the same time (and later) throwing a few low-ranked guards to the wolves of public opinion is well outlined.

If anything, the weakness is in the story of Michel Thomas post war and how he developed his remarkable teaching method. The method itself is not described nor is its development. Some effort is made to say that the method was revolutionary and that it was almost universally rejected by educationalists despite its proven success. I would ask were is the documentation of the method so that Michel Thomas has left a lasting legacy? Was he more interested in making money from his method than spreading it so more could benefit? Was the method too dependant on him and his skills and could not be scaled up? Have the Nordic countries adopted a method similar to his that allows them to achieve significantly better results with less work than US, UK and Australia?

Anyway. Read it for the history in which no country comes out looking squeaky clean.