My principal motivation for writing this book is the fact that, though many teachers I have spoken with acknowledge the profoundly moral nature of teaching, it has hardly ever been discussed in the professional literature of ELT. Rather, language learning has almost exclusively been treated as a matter of psycholinguistic acquisition, while language teaching is a matter of techniques, activities, and methods. Although recent changes in these approaches—for example, recognizing the sociopolitical dimension of language learning (see chap. 3) and the fact that language teaching is a much more individual, complex, and idiosyncratic process than the notion of “method” allows (Kumaravadivelu, 1994; Prabhu, 1990)—have made our understanding of our work richer and fuller, these developments still have not explicitly addressed the values underlying much of what we do and the morality that I believe inheres in our work as teachers. This book, then, articulates a view of ELT that sees it as fundamentally and primarily moral in nature. Though very little literature has addressed the morality of ELT in so many words, there have been the beginnings of such a discussion. This has mostly been couched in terms of ethics: the ethics of research (DuFon, 1993), of writing (Silva, 1997), and of testing (Hamp-Lyons, 1998; Shohamy, 1998), for example; see also Hafernik, Messerschmitt, and Vandrick’s (2002) exploration of ethical issues in ESL teaching generally in the light of social justice concerns. While this literature represents a step in the right direction, I believe that the use of the term ethics also leads us astray somewhat. Certainly writers have associated it with the conception of ethics mentioned earlier: that of a code of professional practice rather than anything relating directly to moral beliefs and values. The discussion still lacks a direct engagement with beliefs about what is good and right.
To my knowledge, other than my own research (e.g., B.Johnston et al. 1998; B.Johnston, Ruiz, & Juhász, 2002) which I discuss in chapter 2, the only piece of writing in the field that addresses this topic directly and in detail is Edge’s (1996a) article mentioned earlier, a written version of a plenary address Edge gave at the 1995 TESOL convention. In this article, which has been one of the most important and influential in my own professional development over the last few years, Edge (1996a) presented what he called three paradoxes (and what I might label moral dilemmas) of the field of TESOL. These are as follows:
• Paradox 1: Sociopolitical context—the clash between what Edge called TESOL culture and the inimical values of the broader national educational cultures in which it is situated.
• Paradox 2: Liberation and domination—the paradox that “to be involved in TESOL anywhere is to be involved in issues of liberation and domination everywhere” (p. 17).
• Paradox 3: Foundations and fundamentalism—the clash between the “respect for the right to be different” (p. 21) that our profession embraces and the intolerance that is sometimes a part of the views of our students that we have committed to respect.
In many ways, this article of Edge’s is the starting point for my own analyses in this book (chap. 3, e.g., constitutes an exploration of Paradox 2). I thank Edge unreservedly for giving me direction. Edge prefers the word values to morality; but the spirit of his (1996a) article is very much consonant with my thesis in this book, and I feel he would agree with me that values and morality refer to the same thing. What he writes supports the idea, confirmed by many, many teachers I have worked with and spoken to, that ELT teaching is indeed a profoundly moral undertaking. First, all that I wrote in the previous section about the moral dimensions of teaching in general education applies to language teaching. Like any form of teaching, ELT crucially involves relations between people, and relations, as explained earlier, are fundamentally moral in character: The intimate relationship among who we are, how others see us, and how we treat and are treated by those others, is above all a question of human values. Second, ELT involves efforts to change people; we assume that such change is meant to be for the better, and thus it is a moral endeavor. Last, as with any kind of teaching, our actions as teachers can only ever partially be derived from “objective” or “scientific” principles: What science (in our case, e.g., the scientific study of second language acquisition) can tell us is inadequate; it is of only limited help in the design of materials and none whatsoever in matters such as how to deal with unruly students, administrations who impose books and syllabi on us, or classrooms with furniture bolted to the floor. Inall these matters and many more, the courses of action we choose as teachers cannot be based in scientific knowledge but must spring from a sense that the materials we select for our students and the ways we interact with them are right and good.
To my knowledge, other than my own research (e.g., B.Johnston et al. 1998; B.Johnston, Ruiz, & Juhász, 2002) which I discuss in chapter 2, the only piece of writing in the field that addresses this topic directly and in detail is Edge’s (1996a) article mentioned earlier, a written version of a plenary address Edge gave at the 1995 TESOL convention. In this article, which has been one of the most important and influential in my own professional development over the last few years, Edge (1996a) presented what he called three paradoxes (and what I might label moral dilemmas) of the field of TESOL. These are as follows:
• Paradox 1: Sociopolitical context—the clash between what Edge called TESOL culture and the inimical values of the broader national educational cultures in which it is situated.
• Paradox 2: Liberation and domination—the paradox that “to be involved in TESOL anywhere is to be involved in issues of liberation and domination everywhere” (p. 17).
• Paradox 3: Foundations and fundamentalism—the clash between the “respect for the right to be different” (p. 21) that our profession embraces and the intolerance that is sometimes a part of the views of our students that we have committed to respect.
In many ways, this article of Edge’s is the starting point for my own analyses in this book (chap. 3, e.g., constitutes an exploration of Paradox 2). I thank Edge unreservedly for giving me direction. Edge prefers the word values to morality; but the spirit of his (1996a) article is very much consonant with my thesis in this book, and I feel he would agree with me that values and morality refer to the same thing. What he writes supports the idea, confirmed by many, many teachers I have worked with and spoken to, that ELT teaching is indeed a profoundly moral undertaking. First, all that I wrote in the previous section about the moral dimensions of teaching in general education applies to language teaching. Like any form of teaching, ELT crucially involves relations between people, and relations, as explained earlier, are fundamentally moral in character: The intimate relationship among who we are, how others see us, and how we treat and are treated by those others, is above all a question of human values. Second, ELT involves efforts to change people; we assume that such change is meant to be for the better, and thus it is a moral endeavor. Last, as with any kind of teaching, our actions as teachers can only ever partially be derived from “objective” or “scientific” principles: What science (in our case, e.g., the scientific study of second language acquisition) can tell us is inadequate; it is of only limited help in the design of materials and none whatsoever in matters such as how to deal with unruly students, administrations who impose books and syllabi on us, or classrooms with furniture bolted to the floor. Inall these matters and many more, the courses of action we choose as teachers cannot be based in scientific knowledge but must spring from a sense that the materials we select for our students and the ways we interact with them are right and good.
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