INTRODUCTION: PETER’S STORY
Some years ago my friend Peter was teaching English to a senior class of Palestinian and Jordanian students in a college of education in Jordan. One of his students was uncooperative and unfriendly; despite both encouragement and warnings, he did little work and made hardly any progress. When the end of the year came, and following a dismal performance on the final examination, Peter did not hesitate to give this student a failing grade. After Peter had completed his grading, he met with the head of his department to go over the grades assigned. When the case of the weak student came up, there was a long silence. The head of department eventually said something like, “Well, if that’s the grade you’ve assigned….” There was another silence. Peter asked what he meant. The head of department explained, all the while asserting his respect for Peter’s decision, that a failing grade would mean that this student, a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank who had been away from his family for 4 years, would now have to
return to Israel and would not be allowed to leave the country again. His chances for employment would be severely affected. “However, this is your decision,” said the head
of department. Peter resolutely refused to change the grade, saying, rightly, that the student did not deserve a higher grade. A series of long, uncomfortable silences ensued. At no point did the head of department threaten or challenge Peter. In the end, however, Peter changed his mind and gave the student a passing grade. This story is an example of the centrality of values in second language teaching. I believe that every teacher will recognize in this story the elements of situations they themselves have experienced. In a literal sense, many of us have found ourselves giving a student a grade different from that which the student deserved. More generally, I believe that every one of us has experienced situations in which the values that we hold turn out
to be in conflict. (Incidentally, though I have changed Peter’s name, this story, and every other example given in this book, is taken from real life. I have not made up any examples for the purpose of illustrating a point—rather, I have taken the stories themselves as starting points.)
In this particular story, it seems to me that two of Peter’s most profoundly held beliefs are in conflict. On the one hand, he holds a professional belief (which I think many teachers will recognize and share) that it is right and good to give students a score or grade that accurately represents their level of achievement, and that it is morally wrong to give a student a grade (whether higher or lower) that he or she does not deserve. But another value that Peter holds dear (and which I would also want to claim for my own) is that, whether as a teacher or as a person, it is good to help others in whatever way one can, and it is bad to create problems for someone or cross his or her plans when one is in a position to be of assistance. In the story about the Palestinian student, these two values are in conflict; whatever the solution, Peter’s values will be denied in some way. In addition, of course, this rendering of the issue is grossly oversimplistic. In reality, Peter found himself dealing with a vast array of factors, including the personality of the student in question, his relations with his director, his relations with his other students, and the entire complexity of the social and political context.
For me, stories such as this one go to the very heart of the work of teaching. I am fascinated by this kind of story, and I have found that other teachers too find them compelling; they somehow capture a deeply meaningful aspect of what we do. Yet although many, many teachers I have spoken to remember incidents like this with extraordinary clarity and regard them as crucial in their own professional development, such stories, and the conflicts of values they raise, are never mentioned in books on language teaching methodology—for example, the kinds of books one reads and studies in methods courses during teacher education programs. These books show us good ways to encourage fluency in our students, teach us useful techniques for reading activities or how to use video, and help us think about motivating our learners, but they never address
the kinds of tough decision that Peter faced.
Part of the reason for this is that it is very hard to write or speak about such situations. They are highly complex and fraught with ambiguities; furthermore, unlike certain aspects of language pedagogy, it is impossible to produce generalized solutions—each individual situation has to be understood in its own terms. Moreover, in most situations of this kind the application of logic or of “scientific” knowledge is of limited use. To put it plainly, no amount of empirical research will ever answer the question of what Peter should have done. The solution has to be an individual one, dependent on this particular teacher in this particular context, and it rests ultimately not on logic or propositional knowledge but on belief: the teacher’s belief that he is doing the right thing in question, his relations with his director, his relations with his other students, and the entire complexity of the social and political context.
For me, stories such as this one go to the very heart of the work of teaching. I am fascinated by this kind of story, and I have found that other teachers too find them compelling; they somehow capture a deeply meaningful aspect of what we do. Yet although many, many teachers I have spoken to remember incidents like this with extraordinary clarity and regard them as crucial in their own professional development, such stories, and the conflicts of values they raise, are never mentioned in books on language teaching methodology—for example, the kinds of books one reads and studies in methods courses during teacher education programs. These books show us good ways to encourage fluency in our students, teach us useful techniques for reading activities or how to use video, and help us think about motivating our learners, but they never address
the kinds of tough decision that Peter faced. Part of the reason for this is that it is very hard to write or speak about such situations. They are highly complex and fraught with ambiguities; furthermore, unlike certain aspects of language pedagogy, it is impossible to produce generalized solutions—each individual situation has to be understood in its own terms. Moreover, in most situations of this kind the application of logic or of “scientific” knowledge is of limited use. To put it plainly, no amount of empirical research will ever answer the question of what Peter should have done. The solution has to be an individual one, dependent on this particular teacher in this particular context, and it rests ultimately not on logic or propositional knowledge but on belief: the teacher’s belief that he is doing the right thing
I believe that this kind of story is in fact central to language teaching and to the lives of teachers. Important as teaching methods are, teaching is not ultimately just about methods or the efficient psycholinguistic learning of the language by students. Rather, as Peter’s story suggests, it is about our relation with our students as people, with the way we treat them. I have been a teacher myself for twenty years now; the more I teach, and the more I work with teachers and talk with them, the more firmly I have come to the conviction that what we do in classrooms (and outside of them) is fundamentally rooted in the values we hold and in the relation we have with our students.
In this book, then, I aim to explore this dimension of language teaching, which is central to our work but has gone largely ignored until now. I look at the ways in which values, and clashes of values, inhere in everything we do as teachers. I try to provide a language with which to talk about these values and these clashes. And I will encourage you, the reader, to become aware of the values implicit in your own work and to examine these values critically in light of your teaching situation. The topics I raise in this book are very difficult and very personal; they are likely, as the phrase has it, to push some buttons. I make no apology for this, because I believe that, although these are difficult and controversial issues, they are also essential for a full
understanding of our work as language teachers. I believe that a significant part of professional growth comes from the courage to tackle difficult topics, for these are of-ten also the topics that are most important to us. This book is my attempt to sustain such an engagement and to share it with fellow professionals.
At the same time, I acknowledge that my own take on these matters—for example, on situations such as Peter’s dilemma, or the many other stories I tell in this book—is highly personal. I want to state clearly that I do not have an agenda in terms of specific values; I do not write from a particular religious or ethical standpoint. I simply believe that these matters are worth talking about. My agenda, then, is to open up aspects of our work to discussion that I believe have been ignored until now in the professional discourse of ELT. In this book I suggest many aspects of language teaching that I believe you ought to think about, but I will not tell you what to think about them. In doing so I also wish to try to reclaim the use of the term moral by those of us who think in moral terms yet do not necessarily align ourselves with particular religious or political factions. My goal is to reveal the value-laden nature of our work in the language classroom and to provide tools for analyzing that work. It is my firm belief that each individual teacher must face her own moral dilemmas in her own way. By the same token, I am not recommending or
arguing for any particular teaching methodology but for a way of seeing the classroom. Whether change follows as a result of this different way of seeing is a matter for the individual teacher to know. To state my basic case very briefly, language teaching, like all other teaching, is fundamentally moral, that is, value laden, in at least three crucial ways. First, teaching is
rooted in relation, above all the relation between teacher and student; and relation, in turn—the nature of our interactions with our fellow humans—is essentially moral in character. This was seen clearly in Peter’s dilemma. Second, all teaching aims to change people; any attempt to change another person has to be done with the assumption, usually implicit, that the change will be for the better.
Matters of what is good and bad, better or
worse, are moral matters. Third, although “science” in the form of research in various disciplines (second language acquisition, education, sociology, etc.) can give us some pointers, in the overwhelming majority of cases it cannot tell us exactly how to run our class. Thus, the decisions we make as teachers—what homework to assign, how to grade student writing, what to do about the disruptive student in the back row—ultimately also have to be based on moral rather than objective or scientific principles: That is, they have to based on what we believe is right and good—for each student, for the whole class, and sometimes for ourselves. I elaborate on each of these arguments in the course of the book; each, I believe, applies to teaching in general. In addition, as I explain later, language teaching in particular has its own characteristic moral issues with which to deal.
Some years ago my friend Peter was teaching English to a senior class of Palestinian and Jordanian students in a college of education in Jordan. One of his students was uncooperative and unfriendly; despite both encouragement and warnings, he did little work and made hardly any progress. When the end of the year came, and following a dismal performance on the final examination, Peter did not hesitate to give this student a failing grade. After Peter had completed his grading, he met with the head of his department to go over the grades assigned. When the case of the weak student came up, there was a long silence. The head of department eventually said something like, “Well, if that’s the grade you’ve assigned….” There was another silence. Peter asked what he meant. The head of department explained, all the while asserting his respect for Peter’s decision, that a failing grade would mean that this student, a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank who had been away from his family for 4 years, would now have to
return to Israel and would not be allowed to leave the country again. His chances for employment would be severely affected. “However, this is your decision,” said the head
of department. Peter resolutely refused to change the grade, saying, rightly, that the student did not deserve a higher grade. A series of long, uncomfortable silences ensued. At no point did the head of department threaten or challenge Peter. In the end, however, Peter changed his mind and gave the student a passing grade. This story is an example of the centrality of values in second language teaching. I believe that every teacher will recognize in this story the elements of situations they themselves have experienced. In a literal sense, many of us have found ourselves giving a student a grade different from that which the student deserved. More generally, I believe that every one of us has experienced situations in which the values that we hold turn out
to be in conflict. (Incidentally, though I have changed Peter’s name, this story, and every other example given in this book, is taken from real life. I have not made up any examples for the purpose of illustrating a point—rather, I have taken the stories themselves as starting points.)
In this particular story, it seems to me that two of Peter’s most profoundly held beliefs are in conflict. On the one hand, he holds a professional belief (which I think many teachers will recognize and share) that it is right and good to give students a score or grade that accurately represents their level of achievement, and that it is morally wrong to give a student a grade (whether higher or lower) that he or she does not deserve. But another value that Peter holds dear (and which I would also want to claim for my own) is that, whether as a teacher or as a person, it is good to help others in whatever way one can, and it is bad to create problems for someone or cross his or her plans when one is in a position to be of assistance. In the story about the Palestinian student, these two values are in conflict; whatever the solution, Peter’s values will be denied in some way. In addition, of course, this rendering of the issue is grossly oversimplistic. In reality, Peter found himself dealing with a vast array of factors, including the personality of the student in question, his relations with his director, his relations with his other students, and the entire complexity of the social and political context.
For me, stories such as this one go to the very heart of the work of teaching. I am fascinated by this kind of story, and I have found that other teachers too find them compelling; they somehow capture a deeply meaningful aspect of what we do. Yet although many, many teachers I have spoken to remember incidents like this with extraordinary clarity and regard them as crucial in their own professional development, such stories, and the conflicts of values they raise, are never mentioned in books on language teaching methodology—for example, the kinds of books one reads and studies in methods courses during teacher education programs. These books show us good ways to encourage fluency in our students, teach us useful techniques for reading activities or how to use video, and help us think about motivating our learners, but they never address
the kinds of tough decision that Peter faced.
Part of the reason for this is that it is very hard to write or speak about such situations. They are highly complex and fraught with ambiguities; furthermore, unlike certain aspects of language pedagogy, it is impossible to produce generalized solutions—each individual situation has to be understood in its own terms. Moreover, in most situations of this kind the application of logic or of “scientific” knowledge is of limited use. To put it plainly, no amount of empirical research will ever answer the question of what Peter should have done. The solution has to be an individual one, dependent on this particular teacher in this particular context, and it rests ultimately not on logic or propositional knowledge but on belief: the teacher’s belief that he is doing the right thing in question, his relations with his director, his relations with his other students, and the entire complexity of the social and political context.
For me, stories such as this one go to the very heart of the work of teaching. I am fascinated by this kind of story, and I have found that other teachers too find them compelling; they somehow capture a deeply meaningful aspect of what we do. Yet although many, many teachers I have spoken to remember incidents like this with extraordinary clarity and regard them as crucial in their own professional development, such stories, and the conflicts of values they raise, are never mentioned in books on language teaching methodology—for example, the kinds of books one reads and studies in methods courses during teacher education programs. These books show us good ways to encourage fluency in our students, teach us useful techniques for reading activities or how to use video, and help us think about motivating our learners, but they never address
the kinds of tough decision that Peter faced. Part of the reason for this is that it is very hard to write or speak about such situations. They are highly complex and fraught with ambiguities; furthermore, unlike certain aspects of language pedagogy, it is impossible to produce generalized solutions—each individual situation has to be understood in its own terms. Moreover, in most situations of this kind the application of logic or of “scientific” knowledge is of limited use. To put it plainly, no amount of empirical research will ever answer the question of what Peter should have done. The solution has to be an individual one, dependent on this particular teacher in this particular context, and it rests ultimately not on logic or propositional knowledge but on belief: the teacher’s belief that he is doing the right thing
I believe that this kind of story is in fact central to language teaching and to the lives of teachers. Important as teaching methods are, teaching is not ultimately just about methods or the efficient psycholinguistic learning of the language by students. Rather, as Peter’s story suggests, it is about our relation with our students as people, with the way we treat them. I have been a teacher myself for twenty years now; the more I teach, and the more I work with teachers and talk with them, the more firmly I have come to the conviction that what we do in classrooms (and outside of them) is fundamentally rooted in the values we hold and in the relation we have with our students.
In this book, then, I aim to explore this dimension of language teaching, which is central to our work but has gone largely ignored until now. I look at the ways in which values, and clashes of values, inhere in everything we do as teachers. I try to provide a language with which to talk about these values and these clashes. And I will encourage you, the reader, to become aware of the values implicit in your own work and to examine these values critically in light of your teaching situation. The topics I raise in this book are very difficult and very personal; they are likely, as the phrase has it, to push some buttons. I make no apology for this, because I believe that, although these are difficult and controversial issues, they are also essential for a full
understanding of our work as language teachers. I believe that a significant part of professional growth comes from the courage to tackle difficult topics, for these are of-ten also the topics that are most important to us. This book is my attempt to sustain such an engagement and to share it with fellow professionals.
At the same time, I acknowledge that my own take on these matters—for example, on situations such as Peter’s dilemma, or the many other stories I tell in this book—is highly personal. I want to state clearly that I do not have an agenda in terms of specific values; I do not write from a particular religious or ethical standpoint. I simply believe that these matters are worth talking about. My agenda, then, is to open up aspects of our work to discussion that I believe have been ignored until now in the professional discourse of ELT. In this book I suggest many aspects of language teaching that I believe you ought to think about, but I will not tell you what to think about them. In doing so I also wish to try to reclaim the use of the term moral by those of us who think in moral terms yet do not necessarily align ourselves with particular religious or political factions. My goal is to reveal the value-laden nature of our work in the language classroom and to provide tools for analyzing that work. It is my firm belief that each individual teacher must face her own moral dilemmas in her own way. By the same token, I am not recommending or
arguing for any particular teaching methodology but for a way of seeing the classroom. Whether change follows as a result of this different way of seeing is a matter for the individual teacher to know. To state my basic case very briefly, language teaching, like all other teaching, is fundamentally moral, that is, value laden, in at least three crucial ways. First, teaching is
rooted in relation, above all the relation between teacher and student; and relation, in turn—the nature of our interactions with our fellow humans—is essentially moral in character. This was seen clearly in Peter’s dilemma. Second, all teaching aims to change people; any attempt to change another person has to be done with the assumption, usually implicit, that the change will be for the better.
Matters of what is good and bad, better or
worse, are moral matters. Third, although “science” in the form of research in various disciplines (second language acquisition, education, sociology, etc.) can give us some pointers, in the overwhelming majority of cases it cannot tell us exactly how to run our class. Thus, the decisions we make as teachers—what homework to assign, how to grade student writing, what to do about the disruptive student in the back row—ultimately also have to be based on moral rather than objective or scientific principles: That is, they have to based on what we believe is right and good—for each student, for the whole class, and sometimes for ourselves. I elaborate on each of these arguments in the course of the book; each, I believe, applies to teaching in general. In addition, as I explain later, language teaching in particular has its own characteristic moral issues with which to deal.
This is very interesting