Saturday, January 10, 2009

Great Quote laden with irony.

So, I'm at Bouldin Creek having a tofu scramble this morning, reading a book I just purchased.  The book is called, The Sociopolitics Of English Language Teaching, and it's a series of articles edited by Joan Kelly Hall and William Eggington.  The book is part of a series called Multilingual Matters. 

Here's a quote that I found in chapter II, written by T. Skutnabb-Kangas.  The chapter is called Linguistic Human Rights and Teachers of English.

"If you are an ESL teacher and/or if you teach minority children through the medium of a dominant language, at the cost of their mother tongue, you are participating in linguistic genocide.  You are killing the necessary diversity and the prerequisites for life on our planet.  Even if you feel shocked and angry at this accusation, it is your duty to know, and to find out about alternatives.  One tool in counteracting linguistic genocide might be linguistic human rights, especially in education."

The irony, of course, is that I'm here to work on a module of my TEFL online course.  I'm taking this course to get a certification to possibly work at a bilingual institution in Ecuador.  I've been very wary of these institutions since the idea came up, and I've since been justifying them since.  I don't know if it's working.  I'm very happy that my folks and friends have been supportive of my traveling before having nailed down a job.  In this way, I'll hopefully be able to avoid participating in linguistic genocide, similar to what I've dubbed 'linguistic colonialism' or acting as a 'linguistic conquistador.'

I hope that my Spanish fluency increases fast enough that I'm able to get involved in something that makes me happy.  Additionally, I hope that I have the conviction to be critical about the possibilities that I explore in Ecuador.  Stick to my guns, so to speak.  

Wow.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

you can do it cameron. you know life is a compromise. do what you know is right,and you will be fine. take care.

conscientizacao said...

Well, thank you...I appreciate it. I'm really excited for the living part of the whole deal.

I don't want to be a lifetime bum, but I am happy to visit the country and get to know the food and the people of Ecuador.

Then I'll get onto the working stuff.