Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
History of the English Language
Fall 2006
Week 7 - Canagarajah (1999), Chapter 1 - Discussion
1. How do you think the way you teach English may affect the way your students think according to Canajarajah?
As we see in this very interesting initial chapter of Canajarajah, learning is not simply a passive act, nor is it without important effects on people`s cognitive systems. In this chapter Canajarajah is making claims for the basis of critical pedagogy which not coincidentally are also tightly related to new developments in the field of neuroscience. In fact, both sides seem to have a major problem with ideas about the brain, learning, and emotion/ thought that have come down to us from the enlightenment movement of the 18th-century. To simply contextualize, one of the major ideas of the enlightenment movement was that there were universal properties in learning and cognition and that these were separate from both culture and emotion. Learning was not seen as necessarily a physical or emotional act but rather as a merely cognitive process which could be activated through the correct type of minimal input. Therefore, people, no matter what their cultural or cognitive background, would learn the same way if given the proper instruction. Surprisingly, despite major advances in all areas of scientific endeavor including psychology, pedagogy, and neuroscience, this is often still the prevailing view particularly in many of the social sciences to which both linguistics and psychology belong.
According to these traditional pedagogical practices though the main role of the teacher is to tap into the universal nature of knowledge and the brain and activate learning. People learn the same way and people think the same way in this view. Thus, learning something new can never be seen as being possibly negative because it is a self-contained act which does not affect other aspects of the cognitive system. Canajarajah does not mention this term precisely but we can simply see that the view of the brain in this enlightened modelit is one of strict modularity where different systems (different aspects of intelligence, different spheres of knowledge) are all self-contained in their own modules and do not affect each other. In terms we might better understand, learning is 100% nature and 0% nurture in this enlightenment view.
Canajarajah obviously disagrees with this antiquated but still highly evoked viewpoint. The learning of a language such as English is not, in his view and correctly so I believe, a simple act of acquiring knowledge. No learning situation is like this, but languages in particular and some languages more than others are culturally loaded. The simple act of teaching English is a political statement on the part of the teacher, as it may be on the part of the learner depending on how they have come to learn English. As we saw from our reading of Crystal (2003) as well as our exploration of certain political situations in Sonntag (2003), people learn languages because of an overwhelming motivation. Is motivation may come because languages are powerful, that is the speakers of this language are powerful, or because it provides access (more equally or to a greater extent than other languages may provide) to a multitude of resources. Languages are not neutral and I never will be, therefore learning language is not a neutral or benign act. Learning a language not apply in act and certainly teaching a language is not a benign act. Teachers must first and foremost be aware of this fact.
Teaching anything real change the structure of your students` brains. This is not necessarily a bad thing this is a good thing because that is what learning is. How we go about this will have a very large effect on how your learners view themselves and their world. A language is a system for internalizing to world so that this internalized worldview can be used for communicative purposes. Different languages reflect different views of the world. Different languages of value different aspects of the world and reflect cultural history. These are ideas which have been played out over the last 80 years. They are not new, but they are very slow in entering into regular pedagogical practices because language teaching and particularly English-language teaching still comes primarily from the inner core. As mentioned before, this is particularly heightened in relation to the English language, because as we have seen in Sonntag (2003), English is the face of globalization. Sadly while the end result of a positive type of globalization may ultimately be equality of all peoples and nations the road to achieving this equality is extremely unequal. The English language reflects this inequality, or at least does so in the traditional models of pedagogy. Canajarajah does a good job of showing this in the simple narrative which he uses in the beginning of this chapter. In virtually every society which is forced to learn English, even developed ones, there are cultural gaps between what English represents and what the local language or languages represent. Following traditional pedagogical modes, learning English involves either abandoning or shifting cultural aspects our knowledge. Simply because English is stronger and, in most places in the world, useful. Speaking English isn`t just acquiring some new vocabulary and a structural system for ordering it but it involves embracing certain ideas - ideas such as capitalism, democracy, consumerism, and globalization. You may notify but this much before but these types of ideals are strongly reflected been how we persuade our students to study English. It is deeply embedded in the materials we use. Students are constantly beat over the head with images of well-off speakers of English living a wonderful life very different from their own. We know these images are only partially true. English as it is taught often provides a strong contrast to the lives are our students are living and purposely so. We want to convince our students they can achieve a better life through English and this affects their lives.
2. Canajarajah lists six ways critical pedagogy differs from standard pedagogy. Which of these six is the most personally relevant to you?
There are chiefly six ways in which standard pedagogy can be said to differ from critical pedagogy, according to Canajarajah. Let`s take a brief look at each of them in turn.
Learning as a detached cognitive activity versus learning as personal
The basic idea here is that people learn, not in the same way, but according to what they already know. New information to be learned must somehow be incorporated into pre-existing information or a pre-existing system of information an order for learning to truly be efficient and useful. Therefore every learner is going to learn different things in a different way. Learning truly is personal.
Learning as transcendental versus learning as situated
Learning is not some mystical force which transcends time and space. Studies in learning have shown a very strong correlation between the context of learning and learning itself. Canajarajah simply states this as the basic idea that learning is situated. Yes, learning always curse in a particular context and as mentioned above this context affects learning to a great degree. To ignore the context in which her teaching is to really ignore reality. Ignoring reality is a very dangerous thing.
Learning processes as universal versus learning as cultural
Taking these ideas a little bit further we could say that learning is also cultural. That might seem racist to say so, but it`s certainly true that people from different cultures learn in different ways. We can explain this by linking it to the idea of learning styles, or different intelligences. Different cultures are going to value different types of learning (learning styles) or different types of intelligences more than others. Somebody who is a successful learner in one cultural setting may not be in another. The English language itself carries its own cultural values about learning and intelligence with it as it engages learners all over the world. Teachers of English embody not the local cultural values very often but choose to highlight the cultural values, and this includes learning values, of English. This can be quite problematic for people learning English in quite disparate cultural settings.
Knowledge as value free versus knowledge is ideological
This ties into what we are he said above that knowledge needs to be both situated and also linked with previous knowledge. In the critical pedagogy view, new knowledge at some point needs to be linked with previous knowledge and ideas/ideologies. Bits of information are integrated with other bits of information forming large networks of information or schemas/frames. Somewhere within the schemas are frames is also information about how this information is to be used. Usage is the key. Information which is not used, which is not activated will simply disappear from active cognitive structure. But use is ideological. We use things for reasons and for specific purposes all of which come from underlying ideologies about how the world works and our position in the world.
Knowledge as preconstructed versus knowledge is negotiated
The idea in this point is that knowledge is not preconstructed (based on innate forms which simply need to be activated), but is actually negotiated. It is through a process of negotiation that new information is integrated with old information. As new information comes into a cognitive structure it is not simply tied on to that structure in a nice, neat way in the same way that boats are tied to a dock. This new information must be integrated with the old information, which means that both the new information and the old information must somehow be altered so that it fits. A simple analogy would be the game of Tetris. In Tetris you already have a certain structure, to do well in the game unique to take these new structures which are falling from the sky and alter them so that they better fit into the overall structure below. If you don`t you get a giant mess very quickly and the game will come to a quick end. Knowledge works the same way. Integrated into the pre-existing cognitive system it must be altered, and in turn alters the system. If this negotiation does not occur then the knowledge will be floating around unattached and there will be large gaps in the system. Ultimately this knowledge will disappear.
Learning is instrumental versus learning as political
The claim that learning is political is related to motivation. Because different languages represent sects of ideals and cultural norms for that target language, deciding to learn that language means making its decision to both value and accept the norms of that language. This is certainly the case in Korea where certainly English is more highly valued than Korean for many different aspects. The act of learning English and doing well in English is a political decision reflecting an acceptance of the values of English which, through the negotiation process mentioned above, is simultaneously a rejection of Korean values (at least to some degree).
3. `There is a reason why periphery communities may nurse a grudge against the enlightenment movement, which helped, enhanced, and/or initiated parallel socio-political movements in the West, such as industrialism, capitalism, and colonialism.` How can you explain this quote - defend or refute it.
In a very real way, the enlightenment movement was used to support and the colonial endeavor. It is obviously for this reason that former colonial properties may somehow bear a grudge against this movement itself. It is interesting to note that the enlightenment movement bears the same sort of strange dichotomy that globalization does today and from this we can really see how globalization is a modern-day extension of the enlightenment movement. Basically the enlightenment movement claimed that everybody was equal due to are inherent humanity. This sounds like a wonderful thing and it did have some positive effects, such as the long overdue abolition of slavery. The interesting dichotomy is that while this belief freed slaves all of the world it also gave the Europeans a solid reason for continuing to develop and expand their colonies. The underlying reasoning for this was that since all humans are equal, at least potentially, and a large portion all of these humans around the world are not meeting their potential, but we (Europeans) are, then we must have found the right methods of learning and developing. It is therefore the duty of those who have found the right way to show the others this way. We can see that globalization seems to be founded on a very similar type of methodology or reasoning. Developed countries have found ways to develop through the process of globalization. Developed countries know the true and useful secrets of the world and through the globalization process less-developed countries will slowly but shortly also come to know these inevitable truths. The main problem with this is that there is no such thing as truth. One person`s truth is another`s lie. People see things in different ways and may be not every society values success through commercial gain. Different societies will evaluate the slippery notion of standard of living in different ways. No society enjoys being evaluated according to the values of another society because they will always shed a negative light, but over time and with enough prodding they get used to it. South Korea, again provides a good example of this, because South Koreans have a tendency to evaluate their own country against English speaking countries not according to their own set of values, but according to the values of those English speaking countries. Most people don`t seem to notice this strange situation, for indeed it is the status quo, but this unfair and simply ridiculous comparison still shows undertones, wherein most South Koreans I have a love-hate relationship with English-speaking countries and speakers.
4. How is it that schooling does such a good job of supporting the status quo?
The irrefutable fact is that for the most part schools are designed to preserve the status quo. This is particularly true in South Korea where the government plays such a definitive role in the educational system. The people who design the educational system are the people who are the elites, the people who have done well and benefitted greatly from the system. As elites they have absolute no reason to try to change the system, have a lot to be gained by not having the system changed. The same can be said of teachers, albeit at a somewhat lower-level. As regards the English-language, the people who are teaching the English-language are those who have done well within the system. At the moment this testing based system which we find in Korea is under attack from some parents and may be a few teachers, but the system itself is having to terrible difficulty trying to change, because certainly it is what the teachers know and what they are comfortable doing. That is the power of the status quo. Most schools are reluctant to bring in any kind of new ideas because they are afraid that these new ideas will not be embraced by society and students will therefore suffer. The reputation of the school will go down and the school will eventually go bankrupt. As with any other kind of system once a pedagogical system becomes ingrained and prevalent, it becomes very hard to change. The bigger something is the harder it is too affect it and to change it.