Language and Globalization: Promising and Possible Dangerous Consequence
Already too much has been written about globalization and its perils and problems, and yet it is undeniable that the world will continue to be more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. That this interdependence will increase is irreversible; but how this interdependence is shaped, for good or for bad, is not. In this light, educators are seeing their critical function as less one of transmitting information and more one of enabling individuals and societies to cope with, survive, and direct this interdependence toward positive gains of improved quality of life, equity, and a harmonious diversity, rather than toward exploitation, injustice, intolerance, extremism, or violence. As the key to participating fully in this interdependence and directing it is communication-hence the increasingly vital role of the teaching of language, the indispensable tool of communication.
It is in this context that we should look at the concerns about the extent to which our efforts can be used for evil as well as for good, and the link between our specific task of enhancing language proficiency and the ethical and value content within which we do it.
To start with, language is a medium, or a tool. Like any tool, it can be used or misused. Instilling a person with the proper mastery of a tool does not prevent that person from abusing the tool or instrument. Those who create the tool and cultivate in others its mastery cannot be held to blame for an individual's deliberate misuse or abuse of it. Creators and cultivators of the technology that gave us e-mail and the internet cannot be blamed for its abuse by pornographers, for example. So also those who foster language proficiency cannot control the use to which it is put.
And yet, paradoxically, it is impossible to cultivate proficiency in this tool, in the use of this vehicle called language, without using it on some content, and within a given context. As social psychologists remind us, it is impossible to communicate words or even ideas without in the process transmitting attitudinal preferences or worldviews that the communicator holds. This is true in the teaching of every subject area, and not just of language. A few negative examples, rather extreme but nevertheless real: In one war-torn country, primary school children are taught arithmetic by being told two machine guns plus three machine guns equals five machine guns. In another, geography teachers explain to their children that this country is their neighbor with good people, and that country on their other side is their neighbor with bad people. The subject areas of language and history are of course the most prone to implicit to explicit loading of value content.
And on an even more pervasive level, values education takes place quite independent of the content of the explicit curriculum. Children learn about the toleration of dissent, the acceptance of diversity, the rights of the dissonant groups, not from social studies or ethics classes, but from the way the teacher conducts discussions, gives out grades, treats individual students, handles student misdemeanors, and interacts with other teachers and their supervisors. In that sense language teachers are no less responsible or more responsible than other teachers for the extent to which they influence the valuing process and the shaping of dispositions and worldviews of their students.
The challenge therefore is one common to all educators: In an era of ever greater interdependece, how to we ensure that through our respective fields, we foster the appropriate set of knowledge, skills and attitudes or dispositions that enables individuals to channel this interdependence towards positive purposes? This is not a question of adding subjects to our program of studies, and perhapds not even a question of adding content to our existing subjects. It is more a re-visioning of the ultimate purposes for which we teach, which in turn requires an re-examination of our own individual knowledge, attitude and skill sets.
Up to quite recently, UNESCO (for whom I worked) in particular, and educators in general, focused on the aspects of education that dealt with knowledge and skills, and were hesitant to put too much of a focus on values education, for obvious historical and political reasons. But in this age where greater interconnectedness has spawned a countervailing reactionary force which heightens economic, political, ethnic, and cultural gaps, families, educators, and even education ministers are now clamoring for an approach to education that goes beyond knowledge transmission and skills development. As the Delors Commission for Education in the Twenty-First Century puts it, education must focus, not just on the first pillar or two, but on all four pillars: learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, and learning to live together. And I suspect that it is only by attending more diligently to the last pillar that we can overcome today's most fundamental crises.
For teachers of a second language, then, this does not imply that their task of developing a proficiency is any less important, nor does it imply that the content or the technology of their pedagogy must by changed or added to. It does imply, however, that without adding to their task or even changing the basic nature of their task, they can and must imbue this task with a perspective that recognizes a broader and more urgently needed vision of education for interdependence. It will not change what they teach, but it will change why they teach and, to that extent, how they teach.
