Marxist TEFL Group

Last Saturday, two US Servicemen were shot dead by “their interpreter”. The interpreter himself was shot dead by troops soon after. Reports suggest this attack was due to grievances over pay and conditions rather than in anyway related to the Taliban. What the incident does reveal most clearly, however, is the shocking disregard the occupying forces have for the men and women who risk their lives in the so-called “war against terror” and “reconstruction effort”. Being an interpreter is putting your life at risk, both in direct battles with the Afghan resistance and the vulnerability many feel within their communities for assisting the US and its allies. Many Afghans participate with the hope of an opportunity to start fresh lives in the US, yet the US has acted to sharply cut the number of Afghans allowed to settle in the US.

Which brings us to the whole issue of English and invasion. The BBC wrote in January:

The penetration of English is now influencing nearly all sectors of Afghan society. In previous decades when the Soviet Union was heavily involved in training and equipping the Afghan military, knowledge of Russian was considered a critical skill. But since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Russian has been replaced by English. Courses have been launched to teach English to Afghan military personnel who often work alongside international forces. “Learning English has become an important skill for members of the Afghan National Army and police,” says Ustad Paktiawal, a teacher at the police academy in Kabul. “This enables them to communicate with their trainers from different countries of the coalition and understand each other.” English also helps members of the Afghan security forces to be considered for attendance at military schools in the UK and US. President Hamid Karzai is a fluent speaker of English and so are many members of the Afghan cabinet and state bureaucracy – a number have lived or studied in the West.

(This of course will be the same cabinet and state bureaucracy that, in November 2009, was found to be the second most corrupt in the world).

We raise these issues because unlike Mohamed Faiq and his fascinating piece on teaching English in Afghanistan (read here), we do not believe that there can be any meaningful “linguistic exposure and socialisation” whilst imperialist powers (like Russia and Britain In the past and the US and Britain today) continue to impose their self-interested agenda on this country. We would ask that no Afghan assist the US as an interpreter and no-one works with the NGO’s in teaching English in Afghanistan.

We return after somewhat of a break with hopefully a fresh approach to the issues facing teachers and students. One big decision we have made is to lift our self-imposed boycott on using resources from the BBC. We still recommend teachers refrain from using direct BBC language learning material in the classroom (in protest against their platforming of Nazis)   but to continue to deny ourselves and students access to news articles is only self-harming.

Another issue we have re-thought (many thanks to Alex Case for his comments and the comments of his readers for helping us reach this decision) is that we shall endeavour  a little more to be a Marxist perspective on ESL rather than an ESL perspective on Marxism, that whilst introductions/news on Marxists/Marxism  is of value, there is a more pressing need  to analyse, from a Marxist perspective, what is exactly going on in ESL and how we might bring about positive change..

We hope these changes will make our blog more relevant to the needs of teachers and students.

The great social justice activist and poet sadly passed away on 26^th December.

There will come a time
There will come a time we believe
When the shape of the planet
and the divisions of the land
Will be less important;
We will be caught in a glow of friendship
a red star of hope
will illuminate our lives
A star of hope
A star of joy
A star of freedom

(Read out by Dennis at the eighth meeting of the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defence of Humanity and the World Forum for Alternatives, Caracas, October 18, 2008).

For a moving tribute to this great man, we direct readers to Lee Sustar and Aisha Karim’s moving obituary in the American based Socialist Worker or Patrick Bond’s equally moving piece in Monthly Review.

To get a feel of this man’s inner vitality and commitment despite his declining physical health, see his Open Letter to the UN Climate Change Gathering in Copenhagen and an accompanying video of a “sickbed” interview in the Monthly Review.

At MTG we only wish to add that we saw that red star of hope in his eyes, in his poetry and in his actions. He will be sadly missed.

Short of ideas for Christmas presents or searching for a good Christmas read yourself? Well here at Marxist TEFL, we strongly recommend, John Perkins’ 2006 whistleblower, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. It’s hardly a new book but his story seems even more profound following the financial crash of 2008. Basically, corporations are keeping people in poor countries around the world enslaved in debt and insecurity. This is not an error in financial calculations, a minor wrinkle in the market to be ironed out at some later date, but a deliberate policy to ensure a huge transfer of the world’s resources into the hands of the few. The debts can always be rescheduled provided the country surrenders more of its resources and autonomy to the big corporations

This is the same system that, in the UK, through PFI (Private Finance Initiative) has ensured people pay 400% more than the actual equity value of the new hospitals and schools that have or are being built. The GMB (General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trade Union) estimate that taxpayers are paying 8,400 pounds each as a present to the finance companies responsible for engineering this disparity. Debt is just one more means of squeezing profits out of the worlds population.

For those wanting a preview of John Perkin’s book, they can watch an interview with him here:

In an alleged democracy, the image of the public sphere with its appeal to dialogue and shared responsibility has given way to the spectacle of unbridled intolerance, ignorance, seething private fears, unchecked anger, along with the decoupling of reason from freedom.

Giroux’s words apply as much to what happened last week on the TEFL Blogosphere as they do to current American politics. For those of you unaware of the debacle which took place, you can visit Jeremy Harmer’s or Jason Renshaw’s blog to “enlighten yourself further”. Here we merely wish to look at the wider questions underpinning the role of blogging and the TEFL community.

We firmly believe that we are in urgent need of decoupling the idea of community with the reality of a blog; to recognisee that the blogosphere is not a community; we may wish it to be but it is not. For us, many of the problems arose in last week’s unedifying exchanges from this basic misconception. We do not want to go into specifics because we do not wish to stir the same tidal wave of ill-feeling. However, we will say that the need as teachers to feel part of a larger community is very real and, to us, “natural”. We are not like the teachers in the various state systems, we do not enjoy the same organic links of solidarity (and certainly not the same security). We do not occupy such clearly manageable and more easily delineated spaces, we are, more often than not, “visitors” in “someone else’s” country.

We can not pretend, however, that a virtual space like a blog or a twitter is a safe community, where we can grow together through our daily interaction. This is not a classroom, it is not a group of friends, where we can see each other’s body language, where we have slowly built levels of solidarity and trust. This is a space devoid of easy context where words have often been misquoted and too often misunderstood. It is a space which lacks the caution and convention of academia, or the editorial/sub-editorial filters of the press. It is by its very nature, amateur. However, true communities are not amateurs but experts, people with enormous shared inter-personal knowledge and experience. We urgently need to decouple this idea of community from the realities of a blog or any other form of “social- networking”. We believe also that other decouplings are required, if we are ever to form effective communities as teachers. The link between native English speaker and most effective English teacher, the link between profit and language service provision, and the link between international progress and the spread of English. These are hard couplings to dispense with. Is it really possible to teach English without them?

Obviously at Marxist TEFL we believe it is and that’s why we continue to argue for our ideas on the blogosphere, despite all its imperfections. The blogosphere is an arena for ideas, like academia or the press. In the final analysis, however, if those ideas do not serve the building of better lives for all, then they degenerate into self-interest and an orgy of narcissism.

That was the week that was, let the weeks that come be better ones.

Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, and the service and sacrifice of our grandparents, our country has borne a special burden in global affairs. We have spilled American blood in many countries on multiple continents. We have spent our revenue to help others rebuild from rubble and develop their own economies. We have joined with others to develop an architecture of institutions – from the United Nations to NATO to the World Bank – that provide for the common security and prosperity of human beings.

We have not always been thanked for these efforts, and we have at times made mistakes. But more than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades – a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty.

Obama’s Speech to West Point cadets

Take up the White Man’s burden–
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”

Rudyard Kipling

So, Barak Obama receives the Nobel peace prize. It really is difficult to get more Orwellian than that. The man committing more and more troops to the bloody occupation of Afghanistan, the man responsible for spreading war to Pakistan and the man promising to spread the war to wherever America sees fit. There are many who will already have grown disappointed by his decisions in office but there are others who see it as all too predictable.

His recent speeches, both at the Noble Peace Prize ceremony and to the West Point cadets are redolent with themes of America’s burden. It is still deemed debateable (for we here at Marxist TEFL not so) whether Kipling’s poem, The White Man’s Burden, written in connection with America’s seizure of the Phillipines, was satire or not. For readers wishing to read a uncompromisingly critical and satirical version of imperialism, we recommend, Henry Labouchère’s, The Brown Man’s Burden. What is clear, however, from Obama’s speech is that no satire was intended. Here you have a black man, proclaiming to be in the tradition of Martin Luther King, extolling the virtues of the white man’s burden. As we said earlier, you can’t get more Orwellian than that.

For those interested in a sparkling analysis of the relevance of Barak Obama’s election we strongly recommend this marvellous talk given by the Pakistani political commentator and novelist, Tariq Ali:

There is a fabulous discussion over at Critical Mass ELT relating to the question of standard and non-standard Englishes. Apparently, the students’ seemingly contradictory comments posted on the university wiki prompted Sara to raise this crucial issue on the TEFL blogosphere. Our thanks to Sara, the students who inspired her with their comments, and the contributors for an excellent discussion and recommend readers participate with their experiences and ideas

From our perspective, we believe both students ( both non-native English speakers) are entirely correct in their positions. Student A is correctly prescriptive about logic, intelligibility and style:

Languages all over the world are changing at an insane pace to match our increasing demand for brevity, yet they often sacrifice logic in their formulation of abbreviations and ignorance of syntax structures. This is not an evolution towards a more Spartan and elegant speech but rather a devolution that I personally find less than aesthetically pleasing

And Student B is correct in asserting that a particular formal language is not necessary for scientific papers:

Should it be therefore desirable, the incorporation of a more non- formal language ? Would the use of other than standard English compromise the reliability and the validity of scientific scripts that are written distinctively? After all, language is just a code which provide the means for a successful communication

We reach this conclusion by the use of the Marxist method, which is well-outlined in Marnie Holborow’s generally excellent, Politics of English Language. She argues that language cannot be separated from the social relations of production, languages must be understood, therefore, historically, and, viewed in this manner, language is seen to be a site of intense political struggle. Indeed, what we see as Standard English is but the triumph of one English over others and attempts to devalue those which fall outside the accepted norm, are done from a political perspective and not necessarily a linguistic one. She is following Labov here, who demonstrates, quite categorically, that there is no language deficit in the Afro-American street language, rather it is as rich, if not richer, than it’s accepted WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) standard college English cousin. This would accord with Student B’s call for diversity in expression.

We would disagree with Holborow, however, in her treatment of Orwell’s prescriptive approach to the English Language. At first she praises Orwell for his attempts to bring more aspects of spoken language into written language but then we believe she diverges from the Marxist method when she claims:

His understandable criticism of unthinking style of contemporary communist leaflets (which h equates with the officialese of the BBC) should have been made on a political basis rather than a superficial stylistic one, especially for one so identified with socialist ideas.

Even the briefest of readings of the piece from which Holborow draws, Politics and the English Language, however, shows Orwell simply following his particular political philosophies. Namely, his hatred of elites who subvert the thinking process  (most extensively developed in 1984 and his concept of doublethink) and his belief that socialism has been taken hostage by a new elite of technocrats (developed in both 1984 and Animal Farm). Orwell would have despised Alistair Pennycook (we are sure of that) not for the fact that ..the theoretical tools of post-modernism and Foucault tie Pennycook’s willing hand, but because  such writing from Pennycook, as below, is so unacceptably elitist and anti-worker:

It has also been suggested that sustainable development has become something of an unquestioned given, a notion so linked to the moral discourses of enviromentalism that it is hard to question its practices. Adams(1995) suggests that in spite of the multiple meanings of the notion, sustainable development has “colonized academic discussion of development”, and is rarely given any careful scrutiny or critical analysis (p.87). The discourse of sustainable development, he argues, has its origins not so much in development theory as in “Northern environmentalism” (p.88), and thus it is tied more to a form of environmental moralising than to more direct concerns for local participation in local based projects for improvement of different conditions. Looking at the ways in which sustainable development derives from “technocentrist environmentalism”, Adams argues that it “shares the dominant industrialist and modernist ideology of …developmentalism”, based as it is on rational capitalist planning models (pp. 89-90). Thus, sustainable development may be seen “as simply one more transient label on the trickle of capital flows of aid donors from the industrialized North, and something that allowed ‘business as usual’ by international capital” (p.99).

This passage is an exercise in the elitism which Orwell despised, the empty repetition of fixed phrases

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They  will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

That Holborow does not challenge Pennycook for his obtuseness (it should be noted that she writes so well herself, except when attempting to take Pennycook on using his own linguistic jargon) is down to the fact her book ultimately exists on an academic and not a political level. We are not saying that Holborow does not suggest any political consequences of the theory she develops but she is ultimately concerned with general theory and not political action as was Orwell in his writing. Here she writes as a member of the academic community, (her own willing hands tied). Indeed, we know here at Marxist TEFL, we should attend to some of our writing in the spirit Orwell suggests. We would not, however, suggest that Orwell’s approach to these issues is non-political and purely a matter of style.  Orwell’s pamphlet is, in fact, equivalent to sloganeering. He is attempting to raise clear politic goals in a definite political period as opposed to an excericse in outlining genral thoretical standpoints. It is Orwell who is the Leninist of language and not Holborow.

We would reiterate our claim, therefore, along with  Orwell, that both Student A and Student B are correct in their approach to standard English. We need to make the language more real and everyday without sacrificing the intelligibility, logic and simple aesthetics of expression. The two students are raising clear political questions, unfortunately so many in the teaching profession are trailing behind them.  The students have shown a lead, let’s follow them.

The remains of Chilean musician, singer, poet, theatre director , Victor Jara have finally “been laid to rest” today, some 36 years after his murder. Victor Jara was tortured and murdered, after the CIA backed coup, September 11^th 1973, which ousted democratically elected, Salvador Allende.  Jara’s body had been exhumed in order to establish exactly how Jara died. It was known he had been shot many times and also that he had been tortured but an autopsy was requested to establish who actually pumped the bullets into his body. For many Chileans this is part of a reconciliation with the past and  a desire to see justice done. Here at Marxist TEFL, we believe justice will only be done when Victor’s dream of a free egalitarian society where people do not want for food, shelter, or dignity is finally realised .

Here is Victor singing one of his inspiring songs:

Here is a moving tribute from Irish folk singer Christy Moore:

We note the continuing attack on the concept of bilingual education in Australia, and are concerned by this latest news item. We would also remind readers that Henderson, the politician featured in the article, who is supposedly so concerned with Aboriginal rights to a good education, has managed to allow essential funding earmarked for indigenous housing needs to be spent instead on the non-indigenous population. It is vital that education is given over to the needs of the community and not judged by abstract criteria devised by those in positions of privilege. Yes, indigenous people deserve good housing, good jobs and good leisure opportunities but this will not be achieved by cutting bilingual education.

We stumbled across this interesting collection of stories of identity, culture and language and were particularly taken by the piece on Occitan Rock. What is clear from these stories is that language is far more than an instrument, an economic unit.  Language is both a history of the movement of people as well as their laying down of roots , of exchange and solidarity, and, ultimately, it is an expression of who people are, have been and will be. Of course, the decisions and actions of individuals are tiny but over time, through their interactions, they come to form linguistic currents, streams and oceans. In class societies, especially bourgeois dominated capitalist society, language needs to be controlled , access to language needs to be demarcated and certain languages promoted over others. This control is none other than the accumulation of surplus in military and economic competition with others.

Of course, languages are subversive, they refuse to fall neatly in to the territorial lines that have been drawn by the nation state, and they can threaten the very unity of those states. Here at Marxist TEFL, we want to celebrate the subversive quality of language and to say that language needs to retain its human quality and not become the appendage of reified capital accumulation (as Orwell warned against in his discussion of Newspeak). Ultimately, local languages and dialects can only truly prosper when the artificial barriers of nation and class are broken by the triumph of international solidarity amongst working people. Free linguistic expression is bound up with the self-determination of the working-class.