Raising Our Voices
We need more in English language teaching to raise their voices and decry the hucksters and hypsters in our educational midst.
Like so many, so, so many, I’ve been perturbed by where our media culture is headed and the lack of free thinking journalism available. The lies our MSM (mainstream media) boldly says without consequences.
There seems to no longer be any “4th estate” – the traditional and primary role of journalism, keeping the powers that be in check, doing oversight, asking probing questions and sticking pins and needles into the traditional soft, easy to swallow narrative. Doing what in many ways, traditional bodies, and organizations can’t do for themselves.
Progress is the sharp head of a spear and it is only kept sharp by those asking questions, saying “no” and those keeping our practices reflective, honest, aligned with inquiry and not dogma.
Now, many of you might rebut that this role has now been taken over by social media, nay, the people at ground zero. I think this is overstating the case. We still bend to authoritative sources and views. Even influencers become orthodoxy. There is still a dire need for a type of journalism that helps balance the scales of justice. Woodward and Bernstein, Menchen, Nader, Assange, Lapham, Hedges – there are so few out there.
However, I’d like to take the analogy and apply it to my own domain, education. I’ve been there 30+ years, 20 of them in the trenches, 10 or so mucking about as a mentor, professor, author, consultant, speaker, community builder and blablabla. What I’ve seen is how there are so few of the 4th estate in English language teaching. Not just muckrakers and those in leadership ready to challenge and expose the wrongs of the current narrative but those who have their names “out there” and who really do call “a spade a spade”.
Where have the the B.S. detectors gone?
I’m a thorn in the side of many in education. For good reason, I question the motives driving so much commercialization, selling with their ed-tech evangelism and hyped enthusiasm, their silver shining bullets. Every day, I get emails, requests, please review these articles on education and 99% is pure B.S. Speculation that wraps itself up as truth by way of a few unreplicable studies. It all goes wrong when endorsing the notion that teaching is straight, measurable, tidy, excelible and data friendly. It ain’t.
We still need to come to terms with the replication crisis throughout all academia. Look at educational technology. It let’s us do some amazing things across time and space but as for learning outcomes - there is scant evidence it has had any effect. Tech supports learning but does not make it happen. That goes 5 fold for AI and especially generative AI.
Learning is not dependent on technology, technology only can allow doors to open - students, our minds will always still have to walk through them, on their own to learn. It’s a muscular, human process. A journey not a Netflix night on the couch.
Hucksterism. Evangelism. Makeitupism. I’mbuildingMYcareerism. Everyone is selling something as “the solution”. We need people calling out these used car salesmen selling us their wares and myths. I’m sorry to inform all - there is no “next big thing”. I’m the bearer of bad news but forget all your notions about the science of X. Education is enacted daily, repeatedly through small actions, relationships and communion. No magic wand for that. Teachers doing their magic, their important magic, day in and day out know that …
Here’s a long list off the top of my head of words, phrases, descriptors that all should raise an eyebrow if we encounter them and in many cases, they should make us stay well clear of their messaging and calls to join their cause. My next blog post will be confessional - a kind of “Classroom Confidential” expose about my time as an ed-tech huckster, a confession and description of the many ed-tech evangelists out there, selling false goods. I’ve been there, I’ll describe it well.
It seems when the 4th estate does become active in education, it almost seems like a miracle, an exception, of note when in fact it should be every day. For example, when this article on the “fast language” biz came out a few years back, it set us all into a flutter and frenzy. But we’d be wrong to share this as a shining success. Why? Well, it did nothing much. Why didn’t it change anything? Well, because it was an exception. The 4th estate works only when it is constant, always applying pressure – this is how culture is changed, this is how teaching will be changed for the better. Under pressure.
So these few words today are a call for more out there in social media, in educational journalism, to challenge the moneyed narrative that testing works, that coursebooks work, that explicit teaching works, that synthetic syllabi work, that online teaching works just as well, that wordlists work and all the other orthodoxy that falsely infuses and counterfeits our classroom teaching. I could go on and on … just mention one jingoism and fashion-fed term and I’d be off to the races, be it ideology, social justice, race, native-speakerism, woke ELT, standardized English, prescriptive grammar, worksheets, flashcards, robots – check out my #eltpetpeeve hashtag on Twitter for my thoughts on many of these topics.
I know there are some online and in research doing the work of the 4th estate. But plenty few (I do like to throw in a delicious oxymoron in my writing, forgive me). Geoff Jordan gets under people’s skin but he tells it like it is and doesn’t walk a tightrope like so many, playing both sides for the sake of career and opportunity and maybe even just being liked. I’d put many of the “leaders” of ELT into this gray zone – Scott Thornbury to name one. Perhaps I’m being too harsh but I think he could go much further in calling out those plying tricks and trends in ELT. But there are far more other Illuminati in ELT, a much more deeper shade of gray.
These days I often think of what Mario Rinvolucri would have to say about AI and the washing it does of the valuable communal shadow work that is teaching. We need the critics to keep us sane - keep us seeing the essential human to human orientation that will always be real education.
The Adaptive Learning In ELT blog, and Philip Kerr does a great job bringing out the other side to common and assumed topics and approaches. But sadly, he too is moving on. Then, there are those who’ve stuck to their guns and arguments for a long time, they should be read and listened to – Stephen Krashen, Mike Long, Steve Kauffman. In the realm of ed-tech, big praise for the critical acumen of Audrey Watters. I do long for the voice of Babel’s Dawn to rise again from the dead. He really did so much in the realm of the anthropology of language. In the realm of general education, got to admire how Alfie Cohen stirs the pot so well. Kudos to Gladwell too – many don’t know of his work in education and especially the failure of our focus on credentials.
I’m on my last boat ride and will be sailing into the horizon soon. I’ve put up the good fight and learned a lot along my way. I just want to put out this clarion call for more real, hard-hitting, calling things as they are, journalism in English language teaching. We all benefit from this healthy 4th estate.
Ecrasez l’infame – a la Voltaire. Decry the infamy.
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