Cross Currents: Critical Pedagogy, ESP and Materials Writing
Neil Mcbeath, Oman
Neil McBeath served as a uniformed education officer in the Royal Air Force of Oman from 1981 to 2005. During that time, he took two Masters degrees and was awarded the Omani Distinguished Service Medal. Refusing to renew contract, he taught at the Technical Service Institute in Saudi Arabia for two years. He has now returned to Oman and is teaching at the Sultan Qaboos University.
E-mail: neilmcbeath@yahoo.com
Menu
Introduction
A.S. Neill
Duane and Mackenzie
Illich and Freire
English for Specific Purposes
Materials Development
Target
Sultan Qaboos University
Conclusions
References
Annex 1
Annex 2
The principal difficulty with critical pedagogy is that the concerns which drive the pedagogy soon cease to be so critical. Indeed, the more closely one looks at the literature, the more one is reminded of books on military history; of battles long since fought and won.
As part of the preparation for writing this paper, I read a book entitled “Summerhill- For and Against” (Hart; 1970) which reinforced my sense of revisiting old conflicts. In the 1960s and 1970s several such books appeared (Berg 1968; Illich 1970; Neill 1970; The School of Barbiana 1970; Freire 1974; Mackenzie 1975). All of these books were concerned with empowerment, which remains a central concern of materials writing, but much of what made them provocative has long since entered the realm of orthodoxy.
Neill never really recovered from his disastrous first post as a “schoolmaster” at Gretna Green in Scotland in 1914. Himself the son of a domineering, traditionalist Scottish headmaster, Neill soon recognised that his job had little to do with education, and far more to do with perpetuating an unfair system of class privilege. The children he taught were destined to leave school on their 13th birthdays. Until that time, Neill had to beat in enough rote learning, penmanship and (very) basic arithmetic to allow his charges to function as obedient agricultural labourers or domestic servants. He was answerable to both their parents – themselves semi-educated peasants who resented the loss of a child labourer’s wage – and to the joyless authority of the Church of Scotland, whose Calvinist orthodoxy held that any enjoyment was probably sinful.
Most teachers of the period accepted the status quo and simply followed the prevailing ethos without question. They were “successful” in the terms of the day and are now entirely forgotten. Neill, by contrast, was “unsuccessful” and was dismissed, leaving to found his own school, which currently flourishes.
The result of his experiences at Gretna Green, however, was that when Neill came to establish Summerhill, in 1920, his first priority was to insist that children should be allowed to be children. They should not take on adult responsibilities prematurely and they should be allowed to be happy. At the time, of course, there were other experimental schools, but Neill’s establishment of a co-educational boarding school, where there was no threat of corporal punishment and where pupils were free to attend lessons only if they wished was truly revolutionary. Boarding schools had ALWAYS been single sex. Corporal punishment had ALWAYS been used – particularly on boys. To suggest that these things were not fixed in the stars was to suggest that water could run uphill.
Yet Summerhill survived, and survived its critics. The American Max Rafferty (1970) then California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, famously stated that “I would as soon enrol a child of mine in a brothel as in Summerhill”. Attack is always an effective form of defence. Rafferty produced a good headline; one that guaranteed support from those for whom the concept of critical pedagogy was synonymous with a call for revolution. It also neatly distracted attention away from the fact that, however one played with the statistics, Rafferty’s California schools had high rates of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, illiteracy and teenage pregnancy. Summerhill had, at worst, one or two reluctant readers.
More recently, in 1999, Summerhill was threatened with closure by the British Secretary of State for Education, David Blunkett. This followed a damning report by the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED), but as with Rafferty, the school’s enemies grossly overstated their case. Neill’s daughter, Zoe Redhead, was able to prove OFSTED bias in the High Court, and the school was saved.
In 2007 Summerhill received a glowing report from OFSTED, suggesting that either the school is no longer as “progressive” as it was, or that mainstream education has finally admitted the value of Neill’s underlying philosophy.
Similarly, when one examines the campaigns waged against Michael Duane at Risinghill Comprehensive (Berg 1968) and against R.F. Mackenzie at Summerhill Academy in Aberdeen (Mackenzie 1975) one finds that the critics hone in on matters that were, at most, peripheral, and which are now uncontentious.
Both Duane and Mackenzie were operating within a system where working class children deemed “unacademic” left school at 15 with no formal qualifications. The General Certificate of Education (GCE) “O” Levels, like the later Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE), could only be taken by pupils who were 16 years old.
This was a neat way of ensuring that the selection process of the Eleven Plus Examination could never be challenged, but it was grossly unfair. It penalised late developers, and any pupils who showed aptitude for those subjects only offered at Secondary level – Modern Languages, the sciences and technical subjects. It also meant that for many pupils, secondary school was a period of futility and alienation, when they waited to become old enough to work.
At the same time, both Duane and Mackenzie wished to curtail the use of corporal punishment, and on this issue they were both opposed by teachers on their own staff. In 1945, an emergency teacher training scheme had been introduced, whereby senior Non-Commissioned Officers could be fast-tracked into teaching. NCOs were chosen because it was believed that they “would keep the boys in order” – please note, there was no mention of their actually being able to assist in the learning process. Whatever the merits of the emergency scheme in 1945 (when there was an undoubted shortage of teachers), by the 1960s these men had become a liability. They tended to be, at best, authoritarian. At worst, they were downright reactionary. They were also frequently embittered. Having entered teaching with few qualifications, they resented younger, better educated, staff being promoted over their heads, and they had little sympathy for the aspirations of children and teenagers in the 1960s.
Duane also believed that schools should prepare their pupils for adult life by offering sex education. Mackenzie saw no reason why girls in the North East of Scotland should not be allowed to wear trousers to school in winter. He argued that the boys were, theoretically, allowed to wear kilts – this being Scottish national dress. These beliefs, together with campaigns orchestrated from the staffroom, led to both men forfeiting the support of their respective education authorities, and both were effectively prevented from working as teachers.
Today, in Britain, sex education is an integral part of the National Curriculum. The issue of girls wearing trousers is completely uncontentious and is strongly endorsed by parents from the Muslim community. Corporal punishment in schools has been outlawed. It is officially classed as child abuse. The school leaving age has been raised to 16, and “successful” schools are now those where the majority of the pupils achieve 5 General Certificate of Education (GCSE) passes at Grades A to C.
Away from Britain, similar developments have occurred. Illich’s (1970) idea of replacing formal schooling with “webs of learning” appears far less radical in the age of the World Wide Web. Distance Learning and Blended Learning courses obviously depend on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and even print sources now refer students to supplementary web materials (c.f. Baber 2007).
The spread of computer literacy has created learning opportunities that were hitherto only dreamed of, and has shifted power “from the adults to the kids, the true cognoscenti of the new computer technologies” (Davis 2002; 53)
These “kids” are themselves the children of The School of Barbiana (1970), the Italian children whose parents had been peasants born in the Fascist era. That generation had difficulty believing that social circumstances could change. They
subscribed to what Freire (1974) describes as the “banking” notion of education; the belief that knowledge was finite. The new technologies have empowered their grandchildren. A visit to an internet café, or access to a mobile phone with internet connections, can in part obviate the lack of physical access to a library or a centre of continuing education.
And yet… When we consider those who are learning English for Specific Purposes, we are not really concerned with critical pedagogy. Students of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), English for Business Purposes (EBP); English for Military Purposes (EMP) and English for Science and Technology (EST) are generally content to remain within the remit of “traditional education” – however that is defined.
ESP students are almost exclusively adults, or young adults, who believe that formal instruction in a class setting, delivered by an expert in the field, is probably as efficient a way of learning as has yet been devised. They will accept the use of audio-visual aids, of interactive whiteboards and of ICT, but they want to learn, they do not want to be entertained.
Unfortunately, however, entertainment is almost an appropriate description of what passes for instruction on many “general English” courses. Rinvolucri (1999; 14) has been bitterly critical of mainstream courses “the EFL world avoids the shadow side of life with no reference to death, poverty or war” adding that “ambition, rage, jealousy, destiny, greed, fear and other Shakespearean themes are far from the soft, fudgy, sub-journalistic, women’s magaziney world of EFLese course materials.”
Nor is Rinvolucri alone. Brown (1990), Pulverness (2000), Thornbury (2000) have all commented adversely on the lack of serious content in best-selling EFL coursebooks. More recently, Bell (2005; 355) referred to remarks by Alan Maley, stating that “few would disagree with his contention that the content of coursebooks is frequently trivial.” This is less powerful than Rinvolucri’s statement, but it suggests a consensus view.
Best sellers are increasingly marketed to westernised “young adult” (i.e. late teenage) learners and it has been suggested that, as a genre, they assume “a materialistic set of values, in which international travel, not being bored, being positively entertained, having leisure and, above all, spending money casually and without consideration for the sums involved in the pursuit of these aims is the norm” (Brown 1990; 13)
Reda’s (2003) study analysed the content of several textbooks, concluding that all of them “were based on a limited number (24) of ‘general interest’ topics” (P. 262). She also discovered that everyday lexis frequently appeared only in the latter stages of some “general English” courses, and she endorsed Bell and Gower’s (1998; 117) criticism that “the language presented in many coursebooks bears little relation to real language use and more to coursebook convention.” She cites, among other things, the fact that “safety belt”; “minus”; “plus”; “decimal” and “ambulance” only appear at Level Four of the New Cambridge English Course (Swan and Walter 1990-1993). She concludes by suggesting that “general English” should more accurately be described as English for Limited Purposes.
More recently, Brennan (2007; 72) offered a further critical appraisal. “the Contents page for this book go for the same usual suspects that we see in elementary and pre-intermediate coursebooks. In fact, the contents look pretty damn similar to the first two books I taught from Streamline Departures (Oxford 1978) and Open Strategies (Longman 1982) and virtually every other coursebook published since then. Teachers are used to this default syllabus because that’s what the authors always have in books. The authors put it in because their editors insist that’s what the learners want. The learners accept it because that’s what teachers have always taught. Is anyone noticing a trend here?”
Brennan is correct. We are caught in a vicious circle, where English for Limited Purposes is passed off as a one-size-fits-all solution. The answer to this problem is to return to quintessential ESP; to develop materials which have a high face validity and which are designed for a single purpose, and use with one class, once.
What I have just said is a restatement of a second publication (Brennan 2008; 32) “what tends to work best…is home made material that engages as many of these …punters as possible, making them happy and satisfied because at the end of the day, language learning is hugely affected by feeling (or the Affective Filter if you want to be posh.) Happy people get more motivated, are more likely to stay in courses and come back for courses. People who have been engaged and entertained but also challenged with something that they can just about do have, I think, been usefully stretched. Take them to where they are stimulated but uncertain, at the limits of their communicative ability; this is where learning takes places.”
What Brennan says is not particularly new. It is in the spirit that underlies much of the work of those in the Materials Development Association, and can be found in several collections of academic papers (Tomlinson 1998; 2003; 2008) Several contributors at the 7th Annual Sultan Qaboos University English Language Teaching Conference made particular reference to the importance of producing materials that are relevant to students’ lives and which will engage their interest (c.f. Ignatius 2007/ 2008; Ommen 2007/2008; Naddabi 2007/2008).
Even so, it is depressingly obvious that some materials writers lack even the ability to activate students’ existing knowledge to frame a schema (Rumelhart 1980; Bell 2004) and produce materials that are professionally appropriate. One particularly atrocious example of this comes from the Royal Air Force of Oman, where a so-called Materials Development Cell of three expatriate civilians whiled away the years 2001 to 2006 producing a three-volume coursebook entitled Target; The Sultan’s Armed Forces General English Course.
I have criticised this course on several occasions (McBeath 2006a; 2006b; 2007; 2008) so three examples will suffice.
In Target, Level 1, Student’s Book (P. 131) we find this example – “He is a storeman. He looks after supplies.” At the same time, the Level 1 Workbook (P. 79) informs us that “She is a doctor. She works in a hospital. She looks after patients.”
This is doubly confusing. If we accept the Macmillan (2002) dictionary definition that “look after” means “to take care of someone or something and make sure that they have everything they need” (P 845), then it is clearly arguable that a nurse is more likely to fulfil this role than a doctor.
Certainly, military storemen do not “look after” supplies in this way. They “look after” their wives, their children, sometimes even domestic animals, but in their working lives they:
- receive items from central supply
- issue items to the end user
- demand items on behalf of the end user
- hasten the demands, depending on priority
- maintain items while in the stores
- check items to ensure they are not life expired
- record the receipt and issue of items
- ensure items are kept in the appropriate locations and atmosphere.
Storekeeping is a military trade. Like all trades it has its own specialist terminology, and nothing is gained when materials writers fail to research the language needs that are specific to certain jobs. The research for the above list took five minutes, and was conducted with a RAFO Supply officer at RAFO Masirah. It is unthinkable that the Target development team could not have conducted similar research at RAFO Ghallah.
Similarly, Target Students’ book, Level 2 (Pp. 72-74) offers a story about a man who claims to be sick, but who is then seen by his employer, on television, in a crowd of people at a football match.
This story raises two problems. Firstly, it is plagiarized. The whole idea has been taken, without permission or acknowledgement, from Hartley and Viney (1979; 21). This behaviour is, at best, unethical. It is also illegal, as the Sultanate of Oman has laws that safeguard intellectual property rights (Rutherford 2007/2008)
Most importantly, however, in the Omani context, this is a schema that makes little or no sense. In Europe football matches are played in the afternoon. In Oman, important matches are played in floodlit stadia, after the sun has set, to avoid the heat of the day. There is no need for football fans to take time off work. In this instance, the Materials Development Cell has neither developed the materials nor considered whether their plagiarized concept is appropriate for the students.
Finally, Target Students’ Book 3 (Pp. 149-150) offers an activity based around Michael Schumacher and Formula 1 motor racing in Bahrain. It has to be said that this is a topic that has virtually no interest for Omani servicemen. Bahrain is one and a half hour’s flying time from Oman. Driving to Bahrain takes at least twelve hours and involves crossing three international borders. Even in Bahrain, moreover, Formula 1 motor racing is much touted by government agencies, but has little appeal for the majority of the population.
Secondly, Student’s Book 3 was printed on 2006, which was the same year that Michael Schumacher announced his retirement from motor sport. That could be regarded as an unfortunate coincidence, were it not for the fact that the Target course had already been overtaken by other events. The whole development process too such an inordinate length of time that the Royal Navy of Oman had changed the design of its uniform before the Target books appeared in print, while the Sultan of Oman’s Armour had changed the Brigade insignia. As a result, every illustration of a sailor, or of a soldier from the Armour Brigade, is incorrect, and this inevitably undermines the authority of the course materials.
Most EFL teachers remember the week in 1997 when the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Mother Teresa of Calcutta suddenly shortened the shelf life of courses that relied on those two icons for their “Do you recognise any of these famous people?” activity. Most materials writers learnt from that experience, and learnt to avoid the cult of celebrity. The Target team, however, do not appear to have looked critically at their own work.
By contrast, I now offer an examination of two activities, developed at the Sultan Qaboos University, and designed as supplementary material for Oshima and Hogue’s (2007) introduction to academic Writing (Third Edition). The Second edition of this text was in use at SQU until early 2008, and was used with Foundation Year students on the Intensive English Language programme (IELP). Unfortunately, the Second Edition was not entirely satisfactory, as the publishers had issued two slightly different versions, and this frequently confused students, particularly in pairwork activities.
The Third Edition was so thoroughly revised that it is almost a completely new book, but there is currently a debate concerning the extent to academic essays can be divided into particular types, and those types taught to a rubric (Davidson and Spring 2007/2008; Palmer 2008). The decision was accordingly taken to create a bank of exercises that would supplement the core text, chapter by chapter, and which could be used at teachers’ discretion.
The timeframe for this development was fairly rigorous. I was given, in total, 96 hours of release time, and a deadline by which to submit the work. Two examples are appended at Annex A and Annex B.
Annex A is quite clearly a narrative, and it makes a fairly basic demand on the students. The very simple style of the narrative, however, matches an avoidance strategy adopted by some SQU IELP students on their arrival at the university. The majority of students are more ambitious in their writing, and try to go well beyond their true competence, but the more cautious have learnt from school that they can achieve high marks by making very few errors. Reversion to a series of (very) simple sentences, however, is inappropriate in tertiary education.
The story of Yahya is genuine. It is an exaggerated version of the difficulties faced by one of my Omani friends, a young man who I have known since he was a child. The appropriateness of the story, however, goes far deeper than I had imagined at the time that it was developed. In June 2008, after these materials had been trialled, I was informed by a student that he had never ever taken a taxi until his first day at SQU. Until that day, he had been driven by his father and/or older brothers.
Annex B is an attempt to kill two birds with one stone. Like the previous passage, it is based on Eco’s (2000; 126) concept that “any phenomenon, for it to be understood as a sign of something else, and from a certain point of view, must first be perceived.” In other words, we are concerned here with “noticing”, but in this instance the focus is on time order signals, rather than the role played by conjunctions.
Secondly, students enter the IELP with radically disparate levels of computer literacy. A very few are expert users, already in possession of their International Computer driving License. Others may be complete novices. Despite this, every student is required to research and present an original project at every level of study. This passage is therefore an attempt to assist the less experienced computer users by giving them what is, effectively, a brief study tip.
I do not wish to claim too much for these supplementary materials, but I would suggest that they share the concern for the learners that is at the heart of critical pedagogy. “General English” syllabi force learners into programmes of study which may, or may not, be relevant to their wants and needs. ESP materials, by contrast, make an attempt to establish those wants and needs, and take that as the starting point.
The RAFO Target course fails because as “The Sultan’s Armed Forces General English Course” it attempts to be all things to all people. “General English” for military purposes is a contradiction in terms, and those responsible for Target’s creation should have realised that fact. The people currently attempting to teach the course HAVE realised it, but it is now too late to do more than attempt some surface revisions.
In the final analysis, critical pedagogy challenges the status quo. As time passes, that status quo alters – for any one of a number of economic, social or technological factors. As this paper has indicated, what were revolutionary theories in the Britain of the 1920s and the 1960s have become mainstream educational thought. In the 35 years that I have been teaching EFL I have seen every aspect of the profession alter. Teachers are now better qualified; materials are far less Anglocentric; examinations are more practical; ICT has moved from the periphery to the centre. But there is still room for progress. If we take away any lesson from critical pedagogy it is that we must remain CRITICAL; we must never become complacent, and we must always place the individual learner’s needs at the centre of our pedagogy.
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Introduction to Academic English – Chapter 2.
Supplementary Exercise 6.
Read the following story.
Then rewrite the story using compound sentences.
Use the coordinating conjunctions and, but and so.
Yahya is nineteen years old. He lives in Suwaiq. He goes to school. He doesn’t have a car.
Last week Yahya wanted to visit a friend in Muscat. He went to a neighbour’s house, because the neighbour has a car. The neighbour told Yahya that he would take him to Muscat on Thursday morning.
At seven o’clock Yahya went to the house. “I’m sorry, Yahya,” said the neighbour. “My father has taken the car. We can’t go to Muscat.”
After that, Yahya decided to go to Muscat on his own. He walked to the Batinah Highway. He got a taxi. The taxi driver said he was only going to Barka.
When they got to Barka, Yahya got out of the taxi. He waited for another taxi. Nothing came. Finally, a minibus came along. It had a puncture near Seeb. Yahya had to help to change the wheel.
When he got to his friend’s house, Yahya was very tired. He was also hungry and dirty.
“What happened to you?” asked his friend.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said Yahya.
Introduction to Academic Writing – Chapter 6
Supplementary Exercise 18.
Read the following paragraphs.
Then underline the time order signals.
Using the Web for Research
Before you start a research project, it is important to find a good search engine on the Internet. There are many good search engines, like Altavista, Ask Jeeves, Google and Yahoo, but some of them are more efficient than others.
When you have found your search engine, narrow your search down to a specific topic. Then type in the key word or words for the search. Now make sure that your spelling is correct. Check to see that you have used capital or lower case letters correctly. If you spell words incorrectly, you will not get relevant results.
When the VDU displays the list of websites, the first step is to scan the list. Some researchers choose websites almost at random. Other researchers think that the first five websites are usually the best. Neither method is foolproof. You may have to look at a lot of websites before you find exactly what you want.
Next, open the sites that you have chosen and then skim through them to find out if they give you the information that you need. After that, download the websites that give you the important information, but remember that you have to use your own words when you are writing your report. Finally, remember to include all the website addresses in your bibliography.
Please check the CLIL - Teaching Other Subject Through English course at Pilgrims website.
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