Questioning practices, beliefs and biases about teaching and learning English
View(s):What does it mean to become an English teacher in a global community in which the English language carries tremendous capital and its hierarchical status often remains unquestioned? How can English teachers assist their learners to access privileged forms of English while supporting their critical awareness of its history of colonization and discrimination, which is very much a part of the global spread of the English language? How do the changing trends in the teaching profession globally shape the practices of one teacher in one class? How can teachers negotiate the hegemonic status of the English language in their lesson planning and lesson delivery? How do teachers’ own identities become salient in their day-to-day practices?
These are some of the questions Suhanthie Motha raises in her insightful, accessible and well articulated book Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching: Creating Responsible and Ethical Anti-racist Practice (2014). As she states upfront, she does not attempt to provide concrete answers to these questions, but instead discusses them and guides the readers. She directs them in ways in which they can think about these issues critically and in ways that are in tandem with their own teaching contexts, practices and beliefs. Grounded in her own professional practices and those of her graduate students, the issues that Motha raises in her book are issues English teachers around the world face inside and outside of their teaching contexts.
As I read through the book, I recalled an experience one of my old school friends, who is now a teacher, once shared with me. She recounted teaching her Grade 2 students a lesson that involved an apple cellar and the frustration of making her students understand this concept and other concepts and vocabulary in the American textbooks her school was using. She is an elementary school teacher in a small international school in the outskirts of Colombo. Her students came from Sinhalese and Tamil speaking households with little or no exposure to the English language outside of the class. Because of their parents’ inability to get them into a government school which they considered was ‘good’ for their children, or due to their belief in the many financial and social benefits that English can provide for their children, these children were coming to this international school where they were following an American curriculum. They were using American textbooks and other instructional material that were way too removed from their day to day lives and practices for them to make connections with what they were learning.
Though this is one single incident, it is not an isolated incident. Such instances where the students follow curricula that are alien to them, or instances of teachers not having the time or the freedom to support the students’ critical understandings of how the English language operates, are far too many to be ignored. As Motha stresses throughout her book, we can no longer perceive English language teaching to be an apolitical, ahistorical, and neutral endeavour. It is for that very reason that Motha’s book is a very timely read for everybody interested or involved in English language teaching.
Motha begins her thought provoking book with a well researched and articulated argument about the dangers of the rapid spread of the English language and the illusions and the inequalities that are inherent to that. While many embrace the traditional narratives of the promises the English language holds with no second thoughts, Motha points out the dangers of the global dominance of English. On the one hand, contrary to the liberating effects of the English language, the spread of English has a stratifying effect and thereby perpetuates existing or new social divisions. It produces an unequal social life, a social order and a hierarchy. Very often these inequalities and differences are invisible and extremely subtle. On the other hand, the learning of English will provide the students with linguistic skills to further themselves economically and socially. But, like the students in my friend’s Grade 2 class, who are following a foreign curriculum and are learning content that is not related to their lives, English would be learnt at the expense of their first languages and cultures.
If learning the English language, its spread, its power over the global community, the effects of learning or not, are so powerful, what does Motha propose? She sees the power of English language teachers to grapple with and address the many issues surrounding the unequal spread of the English language. Her book is based on the premise that English language teachers can no longer ignore the connection between acquiring English and the production and accumulation of wealth. Teaching English, as she stresses throughout her book, is much more than teaching the mechanics of the English language. It is in fact political. Therefore, teaching and learning of English should not happen without the consciousness of its political nature.
Contrary to the common practice of positioning teachers at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, where information is funneled down to them, Motha identifies teachers as transformative intellectuals, and assumes teaching to be an intellectual practice. She points out that it is through intellectual engagement of teachers and collaboration between them that change can take place. Therefore, teachers need to come to full terms with their agency and the power to makes changes. They need to be reflective practitioners who have the knowledge and the ability to connect the events within their classroom to the larger socio-historical contexts. Motha argues that teachers need to teach their students English while fostering a critical understanding of the ways in which acquiring the English language, language hierarchies and accentedness would position them within their school communities as well as other settings in the larger society. As she points out, inequalities could be sustained or defused through instruction. Therefore, noticing and preventing the reproduction of the existing status quo becomes the responsibility of English teachers.
Another interesting aspect of Motha’s book is how she generates her data. I use the term generate as opposed to collect data, to highlight the manner in which she co-constructs her data with her four teacher participants. By generating data, her study does not assume that data is out there to be collected as such, but is instead co-constructed through dialogue and mediation between the researcher, her participants and the immediate as well as the historical context in which they were working. She foregrounds the conversations and narratives that emerge in the afternoon teas she hosted at her home every couple of weeks for four likeminded teachers: Alexandra, Jane, Katie and Margaret. By doing that, she brings to the forefront the value of teachers’ knowledge, experiences, dilemmas and most importantly the power of dialogue and collaborations among equal minded professionals. Motha creates a community of practice where she and the teachers can have an open and safe dialogue outside an institutional environment. By privileging and valuing teacher knowledge, she shows the readers how teachers can be transformative intellectuals who play an active role in questioning, challenging and transforming the classed effects of teaching and learning English.
In each of her thought provoking chapters, Motha develops different aspects of her argument. She ends each chapter with a series of questions that get us, the readers, to question our own practices, beliefs and biases about teaching and learning English. By doing this she helps the reader to make connections between what is presented in the book and the readers’ own lives. Though Motha states that the book is intended for early career teachers, this is a good read for anybody who is curious about the business of teaching and learning English.
(Sreemali Herath is a doctoral candidate in Languages and Literacies Education at OISE, University of Toronto. She also teaches ESL at York University, Toronto, Canada)
Book facts Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching Creating Responsible and Ethical Anti-Racist Practice, by Suhanthie Motha, 2014, Columbia University Teachers |