Education Inequalities Created By The Global Spread Of English

The global spread of English has created or perpetuated educational inequalities.

By Beatriz

Abstract

The foundations of globalisation as we currently know it were already laid by the mid-20th century. It was clear by then that the English language would be the lingua franca of global communication, commerce, and scientific and technological exchange. From then onwards, it has played the role of the unifying and instrumental language of the neoliberal expansion which came hand in hand with the globalisation (Seargeant, 2012, pp. 5-45). In this essay, we will discuss the impact of the global spread of the English language on linguistically diverse contexts and its effects on the educational policies and how its role as the instrumental lingua franca of neoliberal policies has widened socio-economic breaches.

The English tongue was enthusiastically praised by the ex-British PM Gordon Brown in 2008 (Seargeant, 2012, pp. 9,10) as a pathway to global access to knowledge ( ) a bridge across borders and cultures and a gift that Britain was offering to the world. That gift was a sort of poisoned apple that Sutherland and some other linguists, labelled as a language killer : English as the responsible for the death of thousands of languages and for creating a bland global monoculture , the Coca-Colonization of the world (Seargeant, 2012, pp. 11,12). In his speech, Brown also pointed out a basic inequality created by the fact that those millions who did not speak English were prevented from enjoying many of the benefits of the internet, commerce and culture , which meant that native users of English from the Inner Circle of the model devised by Kachru (mainly USA and the UK) (Kachru, 1992 in Seargeant, 2012, pp. 29-31) would have a competitive advantage over the rest of the world, where English was a second or a foreign language.

Over the years, the basic inequality which represented the English supremacy to the detriment of other languages also gave room to a series of social, economic, geographical and political disparities. Particularly important are the inequalities that derived from the choice of English as the medium of instruction at schools and universities where the official languages spoken by the population were different. That was the case of some of the countries which achieved their independence from the British rule around the mid-20th century. In Malaysia, the linguistic planners chose Malay, the vernacular language, to replace English as the medium of instruction in the classrooms. However, the pressure exerted by the elite minorities that had been schooled with the English language and the Chinese and Indian communities opposed the idea of changing completely into Malay, which they perceived as unimportant. The social pressure to give the English language a more prominent curricular position in the classroom unchained a series of erratic changes in their language policy, fluctuating between vernacular and English, which affected mainly the students from the poor layers of society and those from the rural environment who did not understand English and had to code-switch as a safe common practice. (Martin P. (2005), in Hewings A. (2012) pp.125-127).

According to Phillipson (Martin P. (2005), in Hewings A.,2012, p.126), the monolingual approach in a linguistically diverse context is to be blamed for the high rate of educational failure in different countries. He tagged it the monolingual fallacy , the idea that practices such as code-switching are perceived as a substandard form of communication in the classroom A good example of this inequality is the case of a school in South Africa with an English only policy as described in Clip 18.5, where no code-switching is allowed but only 10% of the pupils speak English at home. So, the English language is confined to the classroom which does not help them to make progress with the language and due to lack of fluency pupils tend not to participate in class. Their levels of English, which are much lower than what is expected for their age, hamper their progress in other school subjects (clip 18.5 in Seargeant, Unit 1 (2012).

The linguist Brutt-Griffler introduces an interesting view about the spread of English to the detriment of local languages (Seargeant, 2012, p.24). She suggests that the British colonial policies regarding language were to limit the teaching of English to a small administrative elite . That way, the spread of English was a by-product of anti-colonial struggles . She mentions the cases of Ghana, Kenia and Malawi, where English paradoxically, was used as a means of bringing together linguistically and ethnically diverse communities in a united front against the British Empire (Ferguson (2006) in Seargeant,2012, p24). A similar process occurred in India, where the medium of instruction was a controversial issue within a multilingual nation, so English is accepted in the education system today and envisaged as a means to reduce poverty and improve prospects for better-paid employment (Seargeant, 2012, pp.19-20)

Due to the high impact of migrations over the last 70 years, classrooms in the receiving countries have seen children of all ages speaking two or more languages and having English as L2 in places where English only is the classroom policy, an approach dubbed subtractive bilingualism (Monaghan F. (2012), in Hewings A. (2012) p.130), which will have as a consequence the progressive replacement of any other language different than English. And this could be tagged as an inequality created by a monolinguistic educational policy. As Cummins states in Monaghan s essay. (p.134-136) bilingualism has positive effects but they can be easily lost if other languages are not allowed in the classrooms. Moreover, the rejection of a child s mother tongue in the school creates feelings of rejection in the student and harms their development. In the attempt to sort out this problem, the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) from England issued a document in 2007(Monaghan F. (2012), in Hewings A. (2012) p.130), where they specified that newly arrived migrant students could use their mother tongues to support the learning of English. An approach called additive bilingualism which has also been criticized since the child s mother tongue would be merely instrumental to the learning of English and would progressively disappear from the classroom in parallel to the child s progress in the acquisition of the English language.

Other linguists -Ofelia Garcia among them- oppose the idea of perceiving a language as a possession but as something which is being done permanently. They coined the term languaging to describe this creation of acts of speech where the speakers mix elements of different tongues (Monaghan F. (2012), in Hewings A. (2012) p.131). Garcia describes a positive experience of interaction of Spanish and English in a primary school of New York, which makes her state that bilingual education should be the only option to teach all children in the 21^st century in an equitable way . However, we think that the experience described by Garcia would work well in situations where there are only two or three languages in the classroom. And that is not the case in a huge number of places all over the world, starting from the schools in the UK where there are about 300 different languages spoken by the pupils.

We have a first-hand experience teaching Spanish to year 10 and 11 in a school located in the borough of Lambeth, in the south of London. The students came from a remarkably diverse ethnic and cultural background with nearly 30 different languages spoken besides English. Garcia s approach would not have been viable in this school. The fact that English was not spoken at most homes plus a series of socio-economic issues were damaging the performance of these students, who had a high failure rate. My groups were also preparing to sit their GCSE s exams in the English language. However, although most of them had been schooled through the medium of English for some years, they were still in a disadvantaged position regarding other students who had English as their mother tongue.

By the second half of the 20th century, the overwhelming idea that the English language was the key to open doors to personal development and social and economic success had gained full strength all over the world. The English language and particularly one of its prestigious variety, such as the British or American standards was already perceived by then as a skill which could be traded in the professional market as a commodity, a linguistic capital, as was described by Pierre Bordieu (Seargeant P. , 2012, p.20). And a multimillion profiting language industry took control of the market, mainly through the private sector in three big interdependent areas: English language teaching, testing and publishing (Gray J.,2012, p 137-163). Privately run English language schools flourished everywhere, particularly in the countries of the expanding circle, where English was taught as a foreign language with no roots to the former British Empire. This also created another educational inequality as the English Language offered by the estate schools was generally poor, particularly in the eastern block after the collapse of the Soviet Union, where people threw themselves into learning English and how to behave in the newly discovered capitalist world, as mentioned by Prendergast in her research about Slovakia (Prendergast C., 2008, in Seargeant P., 2012, pp.33 - 45). However, learning the English language to a level of proficiency and fluency which can put an English L2 individual at a competitive level to a native user when, for instance, applying for a job, implies a huge investment in terms of money and time. Only those who can afford lessons, academic printed resources and high-stakes tests over a considerable number of years to acquire enough proficiency and fluency and to validate it will benefit from the acquisition of the English language. Once again, Gordon Brown s gift comes at a very high price.

Once the Soviet un ion disappeared, there is no other economic system to live in apart from capitalism. Whether you want it or not, that is a boat that is advisable not to miss. Society has already legitimised the right to power of the ruling class embodied in the globalised neoliberal corporations and the governments which favour them. Following Antonio Gramsci s concept of cultural hegemony, we may say that the English language exerts a linguistic hegemony in today s world as an instrument of power. It exerts linguistic imperialism, according to Robert Phillipson (Seargeant, 2012, pp. 11,12) an instrument used by the USA and the UK to impose their supremacy over the poorer and developing countries. As a derivation of this hegemony, the most significant inequality created by the spread of English is probably the loss of thousands of vernacular languages. According to David Crystal, about 5,500 of the current 6.000 languages will have disappeared by the end of the century.

But, is the English language to blame for all these educational failures and breach widening between rich and poor, urban and rural, migrant and local students? The answer is no , according to Neville Alexander (clip 16.1 in Seargeant, Unit 1 (2012), who campaigned for language rights in South Africa, where there are eleven languages officially recognised nowadays. Alexander acknowledged the importance of English as a means for the political and economic empowerment of people, but he also learned from his experience that the dominant position of English benefited only the elite. As a result, most of the population who only spoke vernacular languages would never get access to the administration or better-paid jobs. He did not blame the English language for the social inequalities but previous language policies that banished from the classrooms an essential characteristic of the South Africans: their multilingualism. This experience can be extrapolated to other parts of the world, particularly the countries from the inner circle. If those countries had given to their vernacular languages a more relevant position in education, with professionally trained teachers and investment in academic resources, another world would have been possible. But perhaps it is already too late.

Word count: 1987

Reference List

Kachru (1992) in Seargent P. (2012) The Three Circles of English in Seargeant P. and Swann J. (eds) (2012) Worlds of English, English in the World, History, Diversity, Change, Routledge and The Open University, pp. 29-31)

Gray J. (2012), Unit 4: English the industry in Hewings A. and Tagg C. (eds) (2012) Worlds of English The Politics of English, Conflict, Competition, Co-existence. Routledge and The Open University, pp.137-163

Martin P. (2005) Reading A: Tensions between language policy and practice in Malaysia in Hewings A. and Tagg C. (eds) (2012) Worlds of English The Politics of English, Conflict, Competition, Co-existence. Routledge and The Open University, pp. 5-45

Monaghan F. (2012), Reading B: English lessens in Hewings A. and Tagg C. (eds) (2012) Worlds of English The Politics of English, Conflict, Competition, Co-existence. Routledge and The Open University, pp. 129-139

Prendergast C. (2008), Reading A: English and ambivalence in a new capitalist state in Hewings A. and Tagg C. (eds) (2012) Worlds of English The Politics of English, Conflict, Competition, Co-existence. Routledge and The Open University, pp. 33-45