Critical Mass ELT: Reflections on the World of English Language Teaching

Critical mass (noun)
Definition 1. point of change: a point or situation at which change occurs

A bit of a gap
I had said to myself, and to others recently, that I wouldn’t be writing anything for a while as there’s been a lot going on that has been blocking my creative ‘flow’. Won’t bore you with the details, but here I am on a Saturday night having been out for a really nice dinner and having consumed a couple of glasses of red wine with my nearest and dearest…I also spent a great afternoon talking to a good friend, and it’s had a positive affect on my feelings about doing a blog post. So here it is!

Is research on language a waste of time?
This one is inspired by quite a lot of blog posts around and about this month on the subject of research. Actually it has been inspired by the fact that in some blogs that I admire (and in the postings of bloggers who I follow), there’s a sort of assumption that a) language research is something that is only carried out in university settings (some even declare they are not ‘academic’ sites and want to distance themselves from this type of research) and b) that language research is a bit of a waste of time. The other thing that is evident is that there is an over-emphasis on defining research more in terms of quantitative (countable) results than that which is less easy to pin down and define but asks questions about the “why” of language and the way it is used socially – which in turn could help us to understand better the way language is taught and used in the EL classroom (and beyond). Now there is a long and very interesting debate in the whole quantitative/qualitative conversation, but that’ll be one for another time as it needs a different approach. I am personally of the view that the best method to answer the research question(s) should be picked and remain open minded as to potential uses of both.

A few questions….
So this one is more about whether there is any value in language research, and particularly critical language research. To ask what the point of it is really. And if it has any use beyond the people who carry it out and their peers – this is a sort of self-interrogation for me as I have invested a lot of time in the last 10 years in doing just that – researching language and its use. I am asking myself if it will be destined (if I ever finish it) to briefly circulate in the journals and conferences that research generally ends up being circulated in? After all they are often quite expensive and not accessible to everyone. Blogging is an important antidote to that perhaps. But I do believe that research-informed teaching is likely to cover more bases, and notice more depths of a language classroom.

My research journey
Teenager
When I started my relationship with ‘research’ or ‘asking questions about the world around us’ as I prefer to see it, I was aged about fifteen. I had a school project on Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK (for murdering her lover). It’s quite a story which is brought to life in the film “Dance With A Stranger” if you fancy watching it. It is possible to give the film and events a really interesting class and gender analysis – and a good performance from Miranda Richardson in the film which helps explain the contradictions in what was called a crime of passion. I went to the British Library (with my mum) and sat there amongst the dusty old microfiches (remember those) all day and found some ancient newspaper articles and court transcripts – it fascinated me. I wrote my essay with all the excitement of a teenager (well I was) and it was just so much more alive for me having been to see that authentic material. It also included some things Ruth herself had written.

University
Shuttle forward a fair few years….then when I went to university in Liverpool to study “Literature, Life and Thought” (cutting edge as it was even in the name), and I did a different sort of research of the literary kind – looking at novels, poems, plays and films and what “critics” had said about them. Oh how I loved that time – with brilliant courses like “voices and votes” (about the literature of women’s suffrage) or “political Shakespeare” (looking at contemporary interpretation of the Bard’s work) or “literature and madness” (about the literature of the mind). My memory of doing a course on “gothic literature: documents of darkness” and being taken on a guided tour of the Liverpool cathedral graveyard sticks out as inspired – all the lecturers were so with it and contemporary. What a great experience! ‘Research’ in that setting involved asking questions about literary expression and what it could mean. No field work……just thinking about people’s writing and analysing it.

Certificate-level training
Next stop a few years later was my Certificate level training. My natural urge to do research (or ask questions) was supressed by the sheer speed and intensity of the course. Every time I put up my hand to ask a question it was as if the moment had passed. I am sure it pissed off the trainers no end – they required compliance as there was so much ‘material’ to get through – questions were not really part of the agenda unless they related to the point in focus. They wrote on my post-course report that I was a ‘bright’ student with an ‘inquisitive’ mind who would do well in life (hmmmm…..always felt just a tad patronised by that last comment. In the manner of a naughty 2 year old). Truth be known, they didn’t really have the answers to some of my more annoying questions about language and its use…or teaching and its practice. They referred me to “The Practice of English Language Teaching” which thankfully helped answer some of my incessant wonderings (don’t often plug but thank you Jeremy as that book was a lifesaver in some of the assignments that I toiled over but didn’t make much sense to me in terms of their usefulness)….but much remained unanswered and off I went into the classroom. Lucky I had a bit of social awareness otherwise I would have been dangerous and probably started playing pass the parcel with my students or treating them to the “silent method” (very popular at the time of my course). Thankfully certificate level training has moved on I think – please share experiences about changes. And of course its all about the trainers – that is for sure. Just like teaching, the trainer is the one who can shape the way the trainees experience the course. I need to say that as I know lots of great trainers who I am sure do a good job – but having said that, there are clearly limitations at that level of training aren’t there? I mean where else in the world of education can a month’s intensive course qualify you to start teaching?

Diploma-level training
A few years down the line I embarked on my Diploma – great, I thought….more space for asking questions. Well, not really. I read a lot and started to include some of that in my assignments, but to my dismay I was told that I was using too many sources! “It needs to be more focused on practice” they said…..”but doesn’t that need to be informed by some sort of framework?” said I. All the lesson planning etc was focused on practice but I felt uncomfortable pulling those lessons out of a magic (and to my mind slightly taken for granted) ELT hat. Although it was a great experience, I felt that once again my need to ask complicated questions, which at that time were to do with the dominance of the native speaker model or language varieties or access -well they just didn’t really have a place to be aired. That may well have changed now a bit….but then, what was being requested was practice within a range of acceptable theories (that were often unstated). I remember very well someone saying to me “Oh no, you don’t want to do any reading…..just one publication and then get on with the lesson planning and rationale”. That always struck me as odd on a training course. Odd and a bit short sighted. Isn’t there some way of incorporaring both? Would love your views on this as no doubt those who can be bothered to read this post will have been through something similar. What I did learn though on my Diploma was how to do good materials quickly. And that has stayed with me. But I would have said perhaps less content, more time for reflection may have been a good way to go.

Back to University – Master’s
Some time later (and once I had recovered from all those teaching observations and the most difficult exam ever in the DELTA)….I decided to do a Master’s degree in ELT. A whole new world opened up to me – that of critical research. Research with a social and questioning purpose. I remember the first time I read “Linguistic Imperialism” I felt that all my uncomfortableness with the limitations of “EFL” (as it was called in the Greek setting) were explained. Even though I realise the gaps in the work (and that it is not very empowering for Non-NESTs who resist things in ways that are not evident in the book), it broke the ice on a debate that was SO needed in ELT and provided a framework for understanding English in its colonial context, which is all it ever really set out to do. And for stating clearly that language and language teaching are also political and social processes. After that it was a veritable feast of other people who seemed to blow the lid off the (in my view) liberal ELT world and its bouncy bouncy pairwork (please take this comment in the humourous spirit it is intended). People like Alastair Pennycook, Bonny Norton, Marnie Holborow and Ryuko Kuboto. Amazing commentary, sharp insight….so important.

To explain: reminds me of a comedy sketch I saw, I think it was French and Saunders – one is a language teacher and the other a student. The student is crying on the stairs and the language teacher asks what’s wrong – said student explains that she has had some bad news of a family death and starts to cry harder. Said language teacher says “no Paula, its not ‘he die’ it’s ‘he has died’ remember?’. All wrong – no matching of language as a tool of social communication with language teaching. I got to go out and do some field work and was introduced to a new kind of research. Asking people questions, investigating their ‘views’, accepting views as socially constructed and representative of various positions – looking at that as a way of examining how things are understood and also implicit in changing and shaping the world around us – all of which happens through language. It seemed to match all my interests in perfect harmony. People learn language, people use language. I developed a lot of new perspectives -but was there any point really? I did lots of research myself and it has informed my teaching practice, but what next?

I won’t talk about my PhD as the process is not yet over and is still too raw to talk about, but its an extension of the above really. More on that later down the line perhaps.

What has all this research taught me?
I still think (critical) research is essential and it has taught me some important things about language and thought. Most notably, nothing is simply explained. Everyone has a ‘theory’ they refer to in their explanation. There is no such thing as neutrality as neutrality itself is a theory and position. Most language teaching theory plays it safe in the middle ground which is socially and politically acceptable and is often unstated in materials design. Critical research can help to widen perception and understand multiple perspectives better. It doesn’t need to be done in a university – community research is just as valid. Understanding how people think about language can inform teaching and make it richer. Language teaching is about people – some people are exploited. We shouldn’t be ignoring that. Critical language research helps provide living evidence of how language use, policy, teaching, examining etc. affect the people who are on its receiving end and how we as teachers are implicated in those processes.

Over to you!

“People whose pockets were worn thin by hope. They were the loose change history spent without caring”

It’s been an intense week of discussions here in Critical Mass ELT, on Alex Case’s Blog and on Marxist ELF – all about pay, conditions and joining forces in ELT. And there is much more to say on that. I’ve got some more ideas of things I’d like to say and write on those important issues, but this week has been a bit of a busy one and my brain isn’t up to the challenge straight away. So I decided to take a brief interlude with something completely different and I will return to the important issue of change in ELT soon.

I am also a great lover of poetry and often use it with my students. One of my favourite poets is Brian Patten from Liverpool. I lived in Liverpool for four years – was at university there. I had a memorable time in the ‘pool’ and probably would have stayed there if it had been easier to find a job. Liverpool is a great city with a fascinating history -it was once one of the richest cities in England and its wealth was built on the slave trade. It was and is a city of fight back in a way that you can only really understand if you live there, and that has gone on for centuries, from the anti-slavery movement, to the docker’s strike, to the anti-capital of culture movement. Liverpool factory workers had a national reputation for being “disruptive” at various key historical moments and there was even a police strike there once (hard as I find to get my head around that, if it could happen anywhere…!). Liverpool citizens boycotted “the Sun” over the Hillsborough scandal and still boycott it to this day which in my book, with all of the reasons above, would be enough to move there for life. Add to that a vibrant music, theatre, political scene and beautiful surrounding countryside and the Mersey (always need to be near water me)…. It was my one and only choice on my UCAS application form. I didn’t want to go anywhere else but there. So many happy memories and personal/political/social adventures.

Anyway….back to Brian who you can see pictured above. He has written some amazing verse, and I thought I would share two of my favourites with you. I use both with my students at different levels and ages. The first is a love poem, and the second is….well I am not sure how to characterise it. Both are evocative and full of imagery just ripe for discussion and reflection. They can act as a stimulus for a whole lesson in a DOGME style, or as a break from another focus if you have less time. Here’s the first:

I caught a train that passed the town where you lived

I caught a train that passed the town where you lived,
On the journey I thought of you,
One evening when the park was soaking,
You hid beneath trees, and all around you the light dimmed itself,
As if the earth were lit by gaslight,
We had faith that love would last forever.

I caught a train that passed the town where you lived.

I like this poem because it is short and simple – easy to teach. I don’t usually risk teaching love poems as they are too overly sentimental and glitzy on the whole. Not so with Patten’s lyrical offerings. This poem manages to evoke, through the capturing of a sense of time, the way in which love can be felt so intensely, it causes everything to slow down around it. I think it brings to life the beauty and loss of love very powerfully and I applaud the fact it doesn’t have a “love will save the day” Hollywood ending which makes it unusual. It suggests that ending relationships with people does not mean that we stop thinking about them, or are not touched by the loss of them long after we may have ceased to have contact.

The second poem is slightly longer.

The Betrayal

By the time I had got to where I had no intention of going,
Half a lifetime had passed,
I’d sleepwalked so long. While I dozed.
Houses outside which gas-lamps had spluttered,
Were pulled down and replaced,
And my background was wiped from the face of the earth.

There was so much I ought to have recorded,
So many lives that have vanished –
Families, neighbours; people whose pockets
Were worn thin by hope. They were
The loose change that history spent without caring,
Now they have become the air that I breathe,
Not to have marked their passing seems such a betrayal.

Other things caught my attention:
A caterpillar climbing a tree in a playground,
A butterfly resting on a doorknob.
And my grandmother’s hands!
Though I saw those poor, sleeping hands
Opening and closing like talons,
I did not see the grief they were grasping.
The seed of my long alienation from those I loved.
Was wrapped in daydreams.

Something I’ve never been able to pinpoint,
Led me away from the blood I ought to have recorded.
I search my history for reasons, for omens. But what use now Zodiacs, or fabulous of complicated charts,
Offered up by fly-brained astrologers?
What use now supplications?

In the clouds’ entrails I constantly failed,
To read the true nature of my betrayal,
What those who shaped me could not articulate,
Still howls for recognition as a century closes,
And their homes are pulled down and replaced,
And their backgrounds are wiped from the face of the earth.

The language level of this poem is much more complicated and it would probably be unrealistic to expect students to understand this without several readings. Poems need unravelling slowly and their density is a challenge – this is one I wouldn’t use as a filler, only as a main task. For me I often use it as a whole lesson where I start with an introduction about Liverpool (well all students know the football team, the Beatles etc). I am sure the goal should never be that the majority of this vocabulary becomes useable to students and I wouldn’t even attempt it if that was my intention – it may just be a question of appreciating it for its literary richness and demonstrating how language is used for expressive purposes. But it is teachable with more advanced classes, and you can perhaps extract key bits for lower levels, like the verse from which I removed the opening quote to this post which stands alone as a vivid description of the disposability of working class communities.

I think this poem can be taught critically and insightfully as it is a rich source of comment on so many issues. Once again Patten captures time so brilliantly. Imagining himself as a child with his grandmother whom he did not understand at the time and as a young person desparate to escape from his family (and it is implied his working class background). Later he writes as an adult returning and realising it is too late to express his feelings for his family once they have gone, although it is only then that he can fully understand their pain and struggle in a way he couldn’t when he was a child and his need to understand his roots has grown with time. These different narrative positions are an interesting source of discussion as they chart the ageing process in ways which are internationally recognisable. Patten wrote this poem after his mother’s death, so it also expresses the grief of losing a loved one. On a more critical level, Patten captures the temporary nature of working class life as homes and communities that have been there for decades are brushed aside in the face of stamping ‘progress’ and ‘regeneration’, with no recognition of the inhabitants who he remembers as a child. He also touches on the struggle to survive economically in difficult times which is absent from the glossiness of so much ELT material.

I’ve used both these poems to great success – focussing on meaning, then focussing on language. And of course, focussing on imagery. How does the poet create such powerful metaphors for every day life? A question you may wish to explore with your students. Or just enjoy the poems yourself.

>Critical mass (noun)
Definition 1. point of change: a point or situation at which change occurs

An Introduction of sorts…
This is not an easy post to write. The reason is that I cannot apply the same approach I would have done half my life time ago (that’s when I was 20). Back then, I was a bright eyed and bushy tailed super active leftie bolstered by the like-minded people in the political groups I was a member of at the time. The pleasure at meeting similar souls never lessens, I am happy to say, though their profiles have evolved a bit since then. Some of the groups didn’t survive the challenges of the modern world and disbanded, or disappeared into sectarian infighting, so I left them behind – I have always been interested in linking up, not fragmenting. But some did survive and being part of organisations that promote the real potential for change is certainly a crucial part of my life. I am sure you’d guessed that already.

This blog is is a personal challenge as the readership is more diverse, so I have to pay careful attention to all the different relationships people have with the idea of collective political action. I am pretty sure I won’t convince everyone so there’s no point pretending. And perhaps the difference is that I don’t see my role as convincing anyway. I would have said at 20, with all the enthusiasm of the newly converted, that you *must* join a union because it is your social(ist)-anarchist-revolutionary duty (no clues as to the organisations I have been involved in as it will change how you read this post). I stood up for what I believed in (still do) but my courage was a faster runner than my need to explain. I still feel it is a political responsibility and to me that is self-evident, but it is no longer always transparent what that means as unions have come in for a lot of flack over the last 15 years or so (more on that later). Plus, sometimes people resist things outside the structures of a union and succeed, so its not an all or nothing situation. And of course for some, risking being part of a union could mean losing their job or worse.

Shuttle forward to the present. I am OK about the fact that a discussion like this needs time and patience, and the purpose of my posting is to hear what you think as much as to tell you the right way to go. This is a shared process and I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I am now more likely to be found talking to individuals at the back of the political meeting room or demonstration – filling out the details has become more and more crucial to me in recent years. But I am still very much present at those events, and unlike people I met along the way who gave up, I still think (to nick a slogan from the anti-globalisation movement) another world is possible. Not just tinkering, but changing. There is a difference.

Supporting Collective Action
This post is about why I still believe that collectivising our problems is the right thing to do for EL teachers if they want to stand any chance of improving the profession for themselves and others. I would argue the same for all workers (because I do see myself as a worker even though we don’t like those sorts of words in ELT) and despite all the problems with unions and other collectives that I have experienced first hand through the struggles I have been involved in – which are many and various. Unions/collectives are organisations of people and in their current form often provide a home to the same old power-hungry career seekers (in the upper echelons) – they need to be held to account by members a lot of the time as it is quickly forgotten once voted in whose interests they are there to represent.

But the truth is, when they work, those collective experiences are truly memorable. The fog is lifted and hope is felt that cannot be achieved through the routine of every day experience, but only when people come together and join forces to change something they all believe is wrong. People do this all the time, in all different ways, so I am sure you’ve all felt it and know what I am talking about. We won on more than a few occasions and it changed our lives a little bit forever and made us walk a little bit taller thereafter. The powers that be would hardly invest so much global energy on making unions illegal or curtailing their rights if they weren’t effective now would they? But because unions are not possible in all contexts, this post is also about organizing collectively in other ways to improve our profession/conditions/pay.

A few givens…
In this post, it should be taken as read when I refer to EL teachers, I am talking about NESTs and non-NESTS. I don’t think NESTs should be paid more because of their passports, market driven demands, or because they are seen to be representatives of ‘authentic’ English. I think EL teachers should be judged on their experience and qualifications, whether NEST or non-NEST. But I disagree with qualifications being used as a replacement for continuining professional development opportunities as they are not affordable for all. The criteria for deciding how much someone gets paid should be transparent and equal, so everyone has the chance to move on. I think male and female EL teachers should be paid the same, and I think those that work part-time should still be entitled to rights that are often denied them when they are not full-time (and as we all know, there are less and less full-time jobs around these days).

I also think we stand a better chance of changing things if we stop focussing on each other’s differences. For this reason, I would widen teaching as a job to include writers, teacher educators and forward thinking educational managers. This probably sounds light years away from the place where you work? Well the situation is far from perfect for many, especially when so many teachers work in the private sector, often the most difficult to change. Well what I have described is the goal, the discussion is about how we could get closer to that ideal.

Why reason doesn’t often work
Over on Alex Case’s Blog there was a recent discussion on whether it is possible to convince those in control of the purse strings of education to invest in teachers and pay them more. Is it possible, we discussed, to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that paying teachers more will make them happier (and therefore better at their jobs)? If we provide pedagogically researched evidence of improved student performance and satisfaction, as well as increased teacher investment in creating sustainable structures, will we be listened to? Well the simple answer is no – and that is the conclusion we drew.

Personally I think this is the sort of question that would have probably felt completely out of place had it been asked 20 years ago – it fits now because of the way things have dramatially changed as global capitalism has magnified so quickly. The pursuit of short-term profit is at complete odds with sustainability, and reasoning with the best arguments in the world will not be able to bridge the gap that occurs when public services are run primarily for their ability to make profits. Matters of pedagogical concern are always left waiting in the queue in this equation. Teachers are being asked to perform at higher and higher levels, with lower and lower investment, both in terms of their pay and the resources around to support them in their work. There may be some exceptions, and if there are please let us know! So realistically what are our options as a profession if we want to improve things for all of us, rather than focusing on improving our own individual circumstances? Over to you!

Why are people afraid of unions and collective action?
This is a very difficult question to answer but in brief, it is a scary thing to stand up to those in power and to take the first steps out of the individualised way we are all encouraged to behave and ‘negotiate’ our work conditions. For anyone reading this who has always worked in unionised workplaces, you probably won’t get that. Especially in ELT, which has a tendency to present itself as one big happy family (of free-floating individuals), the mere mention of collective action is enough to make people run for cover sometimes and that is presumably why it is a total absence in terms of discussion in most professional development contexts. There are exceptions to that rule of course and I certainly want to hear more about this.

On a more general note, in the last few decades, unions have been given a hard time by the media and by the global capitalists for making unreasonable demands (well hasn’t that always been the case), for not keeping up with the times, for not modernising. What has been the response from the left? Well it was no surprise to me to read on a blog run by a labour party (UK) member, that the postal workers who are being threatened with job losses are making it worse for themselves because they refuse to accept they need to change with the times (subtext: take pay cuts and work harder, so the postal service can maintain its profit level).

This reaction is relevant in many settings and countries and is probably a line you are familiar with. When you hear this from so-called ’socialists’, you can imagine the sorts of attacks unions have faced from the other side of the political spectrum. So, in short, the way in which the world is understood in popular terms discludes the hope of change, and discredits unions for being old-fashioned institutions. For this reason, saying you are a member of a union, in the same way as saying you believe in revolution, is likely to be greeted with a wry smile and a “yeah right” response as it has become a bit of a taboo in the mainstream of life. This is an era of adjustment rather than challenge, or so we are led to believe….or is it?

What I have just described is undoubtedly affected by my own experiences – and I don’t want to forget that for some countries, unions also represented forced political loyalty which means that people distrust them for their potential to manipulate. It would be naive to claim that these historical developments can be overlooked, and for some it may never be possible to forget their experiences of being forced to show allegiance to a ruling party via unions in a one-horse political race. Other examples from round the world are very welcome. What unions signify to people must be taken on board cross-culturally if we are to have any hope of creating new, more open structures for people to become part of. Please share here.

ELT Hurdles

There are multiple hurdles to be overcome, but then when are there not, and this is where the discussion part becomes so important. It is true that as such a diverse and disconnected industry, ELT seems very difficult to organise within, as it is spread across so many sites of interest, public and private, home grown and abroad. Where would we start is a question that has been asked on quite a few blogs of late. What’s the point, say others – perhaps we should all just go free-lance. Personally I am not sure if the latter is the answer, though respect that choice. What we know is that ELT makes a lot of money for a small amount of people and none of that would be possible without the teachers, writers and other folk.

For me it has always been a case of examining local realities and gathering together like minded people where you live first and foremost and then discussing what *could* be achieved and how you may do that. In my lifetime, that has included being involved in setting up a union of oral examiners (and several levels of related action), collectively complaining about pay and conditions with other teachers in numerous jobs and sometimes having to assert my rights on my own (my least favourite option as it does not come naturally still). A good rule of thumb is to pitch your possible activities a bit beyond the comfort zone of the most risk-taking individual in your group, and then that is probably a good start! As educators, teachers often feel that they are letting their students down when they consider forms of action such as striking or refusing to release marks. I would be very interested in hearing your views on this. What have you been or would you be prepared to do?

Other forms of action: the role of Teacher Associations
Another important aspect of this issue is making the discussion more public. Why isn’t there more coverage and debate? Why are the exceptions to the rule seemingly so rare? How do we find out of instances when teacher action was effective? Well the short answer is becoming part of networks of information that can boost confidence in a shared cause. Blogging is good for this – in the opening thread to this blog, some great details of teacher strikes were posted which I would otherwise not have known about. Please post more!

Teachers’ associations are also important and they clearly do a lot of crucial work in ELT, not least of which is (in localities around the world) providing reasonably cheap professional development opportunities which may not be accessible for many teachers elsewhere. In a recent survey I carried out in one of the countries of the Former Yugoslavia, I found that for many EL teachers, their association was much more important than a union. Likewise, I noticed from my own contact with TAs, that increasingly they are being asked to take on an advocacy role – some embrace this such as TESOL but some TAs shy away from it claiming that they are a-political and that this is not their role. What this means, in real terms, is that their ‘neutrality’ masks an undeclared allegiance to global EL interests and their efforts not to upset them as they are dependent on sponsorship for survival. Another financial arrangement which seems to subsume the important question of whose interests are being represented. I am interested in knowing why teachers’ voices are not heard talking about their working conditions more, as well as talking about teaching the present perfect? Speaking as a person who has tried (unsuccesfully thus far) to promote a more open agenda in the TAs I have been involved in that supports teachers’ right to fair pay, I can say that sadly it has not gone very well. But I am pretty sure that there are TAs in localities around the world that may well be involved in advocacy – please let us know about them.

My Best Union Moment
To finish off with I wanted to share one of my best union moments which involves the oral examiners’ union I told you about that I helped to initiate, along with many others. We set out to take on one of the largest international EL entities because we found out that a) they were paying us less for the job than other European colleagues and b) they were trying to reduce our expenses. We also predicted (rightly as it turned out) that they were going to stop paying us for training. It was a great success in that we got a pretty high percentage of the examiners interested in the cause and were quite solid across two cities in Greece (with exceptions of people who chose to stand alone but that will always be the case).

My most memorable moment was when a big cheese was called in from a large capital city somewhere in Europe to sort us out as all the local managers had given up, and came armed with the inevitable powerpoint presentation about why the cuts were necessary. What he and his team didn’t realise was that we had prepared our own powerpoint presentation which demonstrated the measly rise in our wages when compared with the enormous rise in the exam fee and local parity across Europe. After said cheese had completed his presentation and sat down, crossed his legs and prepared for questions, one of our members got up and approached the OHP (well it was a while back) and did a presentation from our perspective. The cheese-team were speechless and didn’t know what to do. What I felt in the room was a visible shifting of power from them to us.

Following our presentation we were invited for refreshments (as of course they told us they couldn’t address any of our questions at that moment, but we could all socialise and make chit chat anyway) and we decided, en masse, to leave as they weren’t willing to negotiate with us. Not all of us left, and the doubters who weren’t members stayed and ate their biscuits and sipped their tea – I suppose it must have been pretty uncomfortable. But for us as a group we made some significant gains from taking that stand including an increase rather than a decrease in our expenses (which of course those who stayed for the tea party were happy to take and I don’t recall a single case of them handing it back to us for the union funds). Sadly it didn’t last, because said large entitity outsourced the responsibility to an employment agency who made it harder and harder for us to organise collectively. But for a while there, we really had them, and we made significant gains in the process. Please share your stories too!

Tell me what you think

So to finish up, I would like to hear from you with your thoughts, feedback, stories and links – plus any other further reading that you think may be of interest.

What do you think we should do, if anything, and how can we widen this debate a bit further than it is now?

Further Reading

The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and their Unions
Stories for Resistance, Edited by Mary Compton and Lois Weiner
Palgrave Macmillan, March 2008
ISBN: 978-0-230-60630-2, ISBN10: 0-230-60630-X

Critical mass (noun)

Definition 1. point of change: a point or situation at which change occurs

“In the end everyone on this planet is an immigrant in some way or the other, everyone.” (quote from Steve Chandra Savale AKA Chandrasonic, Asian Dub Foundation)

I decided to blog about something more to do with practical classroom teaching this week. This is 100% inspired by the absolutely brilliant live performance I attended on Friday night at Block 33, Thessaloniki, where Asian Dub Foundation were playing. Lucky me that I got to see them for the fourth time in my life (first time in Greece) because this is a band I grew up with and who have had a major influence on my thinking and teaching. Even if they are not your taste in music, maybe your students would like them, or like them already, so it’s definitely worth considering using their brilliant music in your teaching.

For those who are new to Asian Dub Foundation, they are a band who play in an ecclectic style influenced by Hip Hop, Punk and Ragga, using a mixture of instruments – familiar Western guitar/dance sounds and traditional South Asian instruments and rhythms (which they say they were inspired to use from listening to their parents’ record collections). They sing in English with some interjections in other languages such as Punjabi – To read more about them go to wikipedia here or definitely visit their website to listen to music and read more about them here. You could also consider reading more about their status as cultural icons, along with Fun-da-mental, Cornershop and Joi by reading some extracts from this book “Beyond Pop Culture: Pop, Youth and Identity in a Post-Colonial World” here

Why do I admire them as people?

ADF started out as community musicians who were involved in education projects, particularly with young Asians in London (where I am from originally). And they still are. They have always been actively involved in both educational development and political action, and continue to be so, most notably their anti-racist activities. They are part of what has become known as the “second generation” (i.e. their parents were first generation immigrants, but they have grown up in the UK and feel a much stronger sense of overt pride at their Asian identity – they do not feel forced to hide their heritage in the way their parents did to avoid the extreme racism at the time they arrived). I find this pride and strength one of their most powerful contributions as they refuse to be silenced and stand up to voice their thoughts on all sorts of important issues including their own experiences of racism. It is the white British mentality that needs to change as multi-culturalism is a reality argue ADF, which seems the right place to start. Their message is that black and white people should unite to overcome racism seen most illustratively in their song lyrics here which shows how globalisation has a positive side when it is used to bring down the barriers between nations and races in a critical way:

And as the world is getting smaller and smaller
We can only be getting closer and closer
Building this community of sound
Celebrating the unity we’ve found
And we know this is the model to follow
For all the dub children of tomorrow
As they grow under shifting skies
We’ll see every nation in their eyes

From “Black-White”

You can see/listen to this song here

Do they *really* stand up for what they believe in?

Despite having a cult following and becoming famous, they have never forgotten their roots. How do I know this? Well I’ve seen some of them on demonstrations I’ve attended, and doing a lot of gigs for social causes, so the evidence is in their actions as always. Also, when they do concerts, they generally try to use venues that keep the cost down for the attendee. Hence their ticket price on Friday was 15 Euros (as opposed to the 30 Euros charged by ‘ARCHIVE’ on Saturday night also in Thessaloniki at a different venue). This means people on lower incomes can attend, so on Friday there were lots of young people (school age and older children included), as well as us oldees who remember the old school ADF from the early 90s. Plus, check out what Pandit G said when he was offered an MBE (an award given by the Queen of England herself for community work) for services to the music industry which he refused to accept:

“I personally don’t think it’s appropriate. I’ve never supported the honours system. If you want to acknowledge projects like Community Music, the work that these organisations do, then fund them. There’s no point in giving an individual (an accolade). To bring people into the establishment won’t actually help the organisations. If you want to acknowledge the work of these organisations, prioritise funding so they can grow and expand and do the work that they do (in) creating new music, giving people the opportunities to make music, develop new musicians and create pathways where they can go out and establish themselves in the music industry”

There is a lesson in there for all of us in ELT surely – the balance between personal success and community development is always one to keep an eye on – for me I think ADF have proved in so many ways that they really *do* believe in what they do and in changing the social reality for those in need above and beyond their personal gain as musicians. I challenge anyone to find instances to the contrary (I could be missing something), but so far this is what they have consistently done since I’ve been following them and they are incredibly active and prolific in all their activities, refusing to water down their lyrics for record companies for instance (some interesting parallels with coursebook content?). ELT is an industry like any other and surely as educators we should be focusing on creating opportunites for as many of the younger teachers (and as many non-NESTs) in our profession as possible rather than hoarding all the resources at the top of the food chain for the select few (as I have argued elsewhere in this blog, that is how ELT functions much of the time).

SO WHAT DOES THIS ALL HAVE TO DO WITH YOUR LESSONS?

Well, I thought I would offer you an insight into why ADF’s live performance on Friday represented to me the best aspects of a really successful and critically challenging EL lesson. It contained all the ingredients necessary to make things work well, relying primarily on the power that can be created by a group of people communicating through music or language in the same space (with a judicious and necessary input of technology). You could say this is my offering as a musical web 2.0 loving DOGME supporter, and it is fusing together two of my great loves, music and teaching. Here goes!

1. EQUAL RELATIONSHIPS/RESPECT