Critical Approaches to TESOL

Critical approaches to almost anything in life are usually taken as a positive method for people to learn and make well rounded educated decisions. However, what if those people are not asking the right questions or even considering certain aspects of the domain in which they want to learn? While reading this article, I was taken aback by the amount of ‘issues’ that can be linked in some way or another to TESOL. For example, throughout my studies, I have most definitely considered the power and politics of English. I, however, never considered to what depth these issues could actually lie in regards to TESOL.  More specifically, I have always noted issues of race and gender, class and an overall inequality in almost any classroom, but after reading this article, I would agree the domains within TESOL lie even deeper. Such as, sexuality, ethnicity, cultural identity, or any group that could be considered an “other”. So here I am, as a pre-service teacher, hoping to learn the most I can about TESOL and what is best for my students, but where is the information I am asked to study coming from? It is most likely handed out in a top-down manner, from well-educated, even native English speaking people. I then find myself wondering, do these authors approaches to teaching TESOL really grasp the entire picture of TESOL? Can I trust that I will gain a more critical view of the social and political relations TESOL teachers best well understand? Are the culturally diverse social relations too varying for me to understand and know without simply conforming to my norms? Will I have to change some of my core beliefs to work in the future?

I wonder these sorts of things after reading the article because it gave so many real examples of times when a TESOL educator might need to know and understand certain aspects of other cultures. One example from the text that best sticks out in my mind is the African student who learns English in France, moves to the U.S., and doesn’t notice his “blackness” until then (p. 332). Why does this culture cause such a change in his own personal identity? What do I need to understand about my own culture in comparison to others to be able to genuinely change?

Then again, I find myself wondering if that is ever truly possible? The article points out on pg. 343 that a critical approach which claims to “emancipate people through a greater awareness of their own conditions is both arrogant and doomed to failure.” I think that, for now, I will stick by a semi-safe argument and say that educators, especially those of diverse populations, should be constantly reflecting on their work, themselves, and the society in which they live. They should also have a good understanding of their own presence within the classroom. Since the current global power is English, it effects almost all of the most crucial educational, cultural, and political issues of our time (pg. 346). Therefore, we, as TESOL educators c should develop promising critical approaches to our teaching.