The dramatic rise of authoritarian right-wing populism, the massive movement of immigrants and refugees across the globe, political unrest, the ongoing oppression, violence, and systemic racism against people of color; and the immiseration politics of capitalism are making up an explosive world scene. Xenophobia and racism have revived nativist sentiments; symbolic and material violence are on the rise against the most vulnerable strata of the population; and fear and insecurity about what lies ahead for humanity are looming.
This dystopian picture is forcing scholars and language educators to rethink our pedagogies, methodologies, and approaches. How are academics, and language educators, engaging with the social and political reality? How do we educate and raise educators' and students' critical consciousness, so that they will find themselves on the right side of history? Educators who want to invest in engaged scholarship that truly aims at improving the lives of students, their families, their communities, and our society, must be ready to talk about the workings of power and power asymmetries, the unequal distribution of wealth and power, racism, discrimination and the role of schooling (Pennycook, 2001; Canagarajah, 2006; Kumaravadivelu, 2006; Kubota & Austin, 2007).
My argument is that in the current juncture, welcoming politics into the language classroom is mandatory, as part of our understanding of what it means to be a critical educator. "Politics" here should be understood as a constant and ongoing critique of reality and of the self, as necessary for individuals to critically move into subject positions (Gounari 2020) as well as the ways educational systems are embedded in the political landscape where their goals, vision, mission, and curricula are shaped along specific ideologies, with teachers and students at the core as social agents.
Researchers and educators are compelled to address 'politics" and to discuss how languages (cultures, identities, lived experiences, and discourses) of subjugated and oppressed people can earn their space and get legitimacy in the language classroom. There is further a need to discuss the asymmetry in symbolic and economic power at play, while constructing a critical, de-colonial agenda for language education building on the critical turn in language studies (Kubota & Austin, 2007; Crookes, 2012). This presentation proposes a Critical Language Education agenda and a pedagogy that names, interrupts, challenges, critiques, and has a proposal for a different kind of language classrooms, curricula, schools, and communities.
Canagarajah, A. S. (2006). TESOL at forty: What are the issues? TESOL Quarterly40(1), 9–34.
Crookes, G. (2012). Critical pedagogy in language teaching. In L. Ortega (Ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics. Wiley/Blackwell.
Gounari, P. (2020). Teaching and Learning Language in Dangerous Times. Introduction to the Special Issue on Rethinking Critical Pedagogy in L2 Teaching and Learning. L2 Journal, 12 (2), 3-20.
Kubota, R., & Austin, T. (2007). Critical approaches to world language education in the United States: An introduction. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 4(2-3), 73-83.
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Understanding language teaching: From method to postmethod. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Pennycook, A. (2001). Critical applied linguistics: A critical introduction. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
