Can I get some English off the menu please? – Week # 4

Dedicated to Laurel Amtower, an inspiring professor, thinker, and intellectual.

Laurel Amtower
RIP

In my last entry, I shared my personal experience with the way English is commodified, “authentically” sold with a fixed market value. My mentor asked me, “Well...what isn’t commodified these days?” She always has valid points. Happiness is on sale. Redemption is sold in temples. Democracy is sold on the gallows. And freedom...I particularly remember these poignant lines from Ahmad Shamlu, “I fear dying in a land where the price of freedom is cheaper than the salary of its grave-diggers.” And thinking...I recently reviewed the works of an Iranian poet, Naanaam; he has an interesting perspective on the commidification of education and thought-processes, concepts that ought to sustain a healthy distance from the hard-core economic scene of our capitalistic world today.

Naanaam writes, “We live in a world where the act of thinking, knowledge, and vision have all been commodified. He asserts that by assigning a fixed economic value to books and ideas therein, thinking, as a creative and inquisitive process, has been reduced to pursuing a particular agenda: stabilizing and improving one’s social status. With respect to the status of independent thinking, Naanaam draws an interesting parallel to the way the fast food industry has changed people’s qualitative and quantitative eating habits: “McDonald’s only thinks about filling people up, it does not concern itself with the value of nutrition. I see this as a symbol, for me the act of thinking is akin to the value of nutrition, a reading process that is not accompanied by independent thinking means devouring, it means McDonald’s.”

I came to Mexico with grand ideas. I brought my euphoria, my love for English. I brought a small suitcase filled with classroom memories and experiences. I know my teaching abilities and weaknesses. I am well aware that a suitable learning environment is one that engages students with the material at hand, broadens their horizons, brings dynamism to class, and creates a small English community (in this instance) in which language learners feel secure and comfortable to produce language, make mistakes, and self-evaluate their progress. But already after three weeks of working for the Culturlingua institute, I find that I am “selling” English, not teaching it. I have no option but to stick to the book. No outside material is provided or paid for. Making photocopies is often not welcomed. Books are old and worn-out. They are in need of fundamental revision to sustain interest. The administrative staff seem apathetic to the progress of students. In short, it’s a business establishment. I have put my suitcase of euphoria back in the closet.

Nobody has learned a language from a book. Otherwise I would have been absolutely fluent in Arabic having studied it since sixth grade. In the next several months, this job will pose a massive challenge to me as a teacher. At worst, it will ignite a cold sense of frustration. And at best, it will force me to be more creative and resourceful. At the moment, my discontent aside, I have an ethical commitment to my students. That is all that matters. That is where my focus lies. They look up to me. I cannot let them down.

Aria