English in a new age of empire

[Harold F. Schiffman]

English in a new age of empire

Teachers should question their role in extending the reach of an
'imperial' language, argues Julian Edge

Thursday April 15, 2004

Guardian Weekly

Some events change history, some just change the way a person sees that
history, and it is not always easy to tell the difference. When the United
States, Britain and Australia joined forces to invade Iraq, it occurred to
many EFL professionals that those nations are also the three major English
language teaching providers worldwide. Did the invasion, and does the
continuing occupation, change the relationship between English teaching
and international politics, or simply bring it out into the open? We know
that many people want to learn English because of the advantages that it
can bring them: personal or professional, cultural or economic. It is at
this level of individual aspiration, moreover, that most English language
teachers find their engagement and motivation. We celebrate the successes
of our students and work to enable more success for more of them.

At the same time, to say that people want to learn English because of the
advantages that it brings them is much the same as saying that there are
power structures in place that reward the learning (and teaching) of
English. To the extent that we wish to receive the rewards available, we
continue to learn and teach English without challenging those structures.
We do not dispute the requirement for a doctor, say, to be a good language
learner in order to qualify as a doctor (not a requirement for native
speakers of the major dialects of English, of course); we point to English
as the language of research and publication, and the argument is won. This
functional acceptance of "the way things are" supplies us with a working
definition of a difficult concept, hegemony.

Post-Iraq, however, we are faced with a change from a relationship of
economic, cultural and political hegemony, which involves constrained
consent, to one of outright and overt military force. Is the US shifting
decisively from its age of republic to its age of empire? Is English once
again becoming a language of imperial administration? Clearly, if the
current policy of occupation and handover has any kind of success, then
the future government of Iraq will stand out from others in the Arab world
in several ways, one of which will be the ubiquity of English, without
which imperial policy would be infinitely more difficult to pursue.

To put that another way, English language teaching becomes an arm of
imperial policy in ways that were not so obvious before. Does it therefore
become possible to see EFL teachers as a second wave of imperial troopers?
While there is still carnage on the streets of Iraq, English language
teachers and teacher educators are in place, working to facilitate the
policies that the tanks were sent to impose. Do we also become "legitimate
targets" for those who resist the occupation? Iraq, of course, is only one
example of ELT involvement. Another is the intensive campaign of English
teaching being promoted by the British Council to support
"inter-operability" among military and security forces across eastern
Europe on the grounds that this commitment to "peacekeeping English" is a
positive contribution to regional autonomy.

Perhaps the most important point to make is that wherever, and whoever, we
teach, if we are involved in teaching English to speakers of other
languages, we are involved in a worldwide network of issues regarding how
and to what purpose that language is used: sometimes towards goals we
would applaud, sometimes quite the opposite. If we do acknowledge that
involvement, furthermore, how should we respond?  Few of us have so much
freedom of action that we can pick and choose among the teaching projects
that we take on, although those of us that do have such choices might want
to take the opportunity to make our voices heard.  In a more proactive
sense, is there any room for a policy of "attachment", in the same way
that the journalist Martin Bell has argued for a "journalism of
attachment", one that goes beyond objectivity at all costs and says that,
in some cases, a stand must be taken?

An example of this is an emerging ELT grouping called English for
Palestinian Purposes, with which I am involved. It attempts to avoid a
cycle of blame and recrimination with the following statement of beliefs
and intentions for teachers. "We recognise that Palestine is a
multilingual society with its own developing purposes in terms of
education and language policy, and we have no position on what the role of
English in that policy should be. Nor do we have any political,
ideological or religious agendas to pursue. We have a certain amount of
experience and expertise in the teaching of English as an international
language that we should like to offer, along with a limited amount of time
and unlimited goodwill, in the support of Palestinian purposes. In making
this offer, we also seek to establish contacts with Palestinian
educational institutions and organisations, and to seek funding and
sponsorship in order to make our offer real in Palestine."

In a more everyday sense, we need perhaps to look again at the materials
we use in class and the worldviews that they represent; at the methods
that we use and the interactional and learning styles that they
foreground; and at the extent to which we teach a language of compliance
with, to the exclusion of a language of protest about, "the way things
are". In short, when we are asked, as English language educators, what
contribution we make to a better world, we need to be ready to reply in
ways that we at least find convincing.

 Julian Edge is a senior lecturer at Aston University, England, where he
organised the (Re-)Locating Tesol In An Age Of Empire symposium last
December.
For information about English for Palestinian Purposes email:
j.edge at aston.ac.uk, or Scott Thornbury: sthornbury at wanadoo.es

English in the age of empire

Over the next few months, ELT practitioners from different language
teaching settings will contribute their perspectives on teaching English
in an age of empire. Next month, Bill Louw writes from Zimbabwe about the
potential of the internet to provide language data that escapes many of
the usual mechanisms of control, and to promote the learning of a
"data-assisted literacy" that will enable learners to continue to avoid
such controls.


http://ameblo.jp/languagestyle/entry-10025347085.html
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