Rachel Upholzer, EAD 850, 1/27/2014
Introduction
As an international teacher, I encounter children from all over the world that come from many
cultures and speak many languages. But during the day, they are expected to speak only English
and learn only the American curriculum. According to Willinsky (1998) and Hall (1997), by
limiting our students to only being instructed in a language not their own, my school is teaching
in an idealistic type of way in which attempts to close off meaning and as a result promotes
foreign superiority. In order to attempt to understand this impact, I analyzed the effects of
language used in education discussed by Willinksy (1998) and draw from Hall’s (1997) theory of
language being the catalyst of meaning. I have also analyzed the impact of foreign authority in
the classroom and how that impacts the identity of the students. From this analysis, I have
concluded that foreign children in English, post-colonial schools are losing their native identity
due to being educated in a foreign language and the value that is placed on foreign norms and
culture over that of their own as determined by foreign powers.
Impact of Language on Identity
Imagine sitting in a classroom where everyone in the room speaks another language than you.
All the posters around the room, the writing on the board, and your textbook are all written in a
foreign language. This is a daily occurrence with ESL students around the world, particularly in
Canada and United States. As teachers begin to educate these young minds in a new language,
these children begin to not only lose a piece of themselves, but also begin to inherit fixed ideas
and meanings that were not their own. Stuart Hall (1997) makes the argument that language is
key to representation and meaning. What Hall means by this is that language is how ideas and
meaning are communicated to others and eventually throughout the world. If language did not
exist, “meaning could not be exchanged in the world” (Hall, 1997, p. 12). Therefore, not only
does language itself become extremely crucial to the process of developing meaning, but it is
also the type of language used that can determine meaning. When a child is being taught in
another language and also punished when speaking in their native tongue, that child is being
taught that the majority language is superior to their minority one (Willinsky, 1998, p. 190). It is
now safe to say that this child has now acquired the meaning that English language and culture
should be valued more than their own. The impact of this is indescribable in its significance to
that child’s future. The more they are surrounded by foreign values, the less they will be able to
hold on to their own values. Gordon Peters, the vice-chief of the Assembly of First Nations,
described growing up only speaking English when the native language of his family was
Delaware. He spoke of his father’s struggles to find a job because of his inability to speak
English and how his mother attempted to “render his nativeness invisible so that he would not
have to suffer this identity” (Willinsky, 1998, p. 189).
Foreign Power
Going back to Hall’s theory on language, one must consider not only the language in which
children are being taught but also the ideas being sent out through language and by whom. Hall
describes foreign power and the practice of using language to instill precise meaning as ideology
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(Hall, 1997, p. 19). Children in foreign schools are being taught curriculum where the meaning
has been decided by foreign powers. It is frequent that ideas that do not match the native culture
are still impressed upon these young, developing minds and they are being programmed to
believe this is what is true and this is the only meaning possible. As Hall says, “that is what
ideology tries to do, that’s what power in signification is intended to do; to close language, to
close meaning” (Hall, 1997, p. 19). By only educating our children in the colonial language and
academic system, we are closing off our students’ ability to use their own language and values to
determine a meaning of their own. Instead, meaning becomes fixed by what the foreign power
wants and again, the minority are beginning to lose a bit of their identity. Edward Said, a
Palestinian Arab professor and theorist of post-Colonialism, described his education in the
British system as leaving him with a “tremendous spiritual wound…because of the sustained
presence in our midst of domineering foreigners who taught us to respect distant norms and clues
more than our own” (Willinsky, 1998, p. 90). This is a great fear of mine when looking at my
students and analyzing how I educate them and whether I am playing a part in their loss of true
identity. When looking at my students, I see them dressed in Spanish soccer jerseys, discussing
their latest trip to America and how they can’t wait to leave Kuwait and live there someday. I am
slowly beginning to see their identity shift towards that of an American child and not of the
native Kuwaiti that they are. Our students are becoming so accustomed to the ways of American
values and the English language that the information being presented to them that it “naturalizes
the representation to the point where you cannot see that anybody ever produced it” (Hall, 1997,
p. 21). What my students, and students in all foreign ran schools, are being taught on a daily
basis becomes so natural that they do not realize the ideas being presented to them are not their
own but of a foreign power attempting to create one fixed representation of information.
Because of this, they are slowly beginning to value the identity being taught to them at school
rather than their own native identity.
Conclusion
As teachers, we go into the job knowing that we will make an impact on our students. However,
we often see this impact as an educational and positive impact and fail to recognize the potential
negative and ideological impact we also have. Hall (1997) explains how language is the reason
for meaning. Language also happens to be a teachers most used tool in our practice. What we see
as the use of our language as teaching our students to read, write, and understand concepts of
math and history; has an equal use of presenting meaning and placing value on information,
norms and cultures. Each day that a child is educated in a school that is not taught in their native
tongue, using a curriculum designed by their culture’s powers, they begin to lose a piece of their
native identity and start being a reflection of the foreign power that is doing the educating.
Teachers are both the foreign power and user of the language that begins to define who our
students are and what they believe. As the foreign power, we provide our students with a fixed
meaning of the information being taught and they carry that understanding with them throughout
their school life and beyond. Because they have learned this meaning from a foreign source, it
does not reflect the meanings that would be derived from a strictly native upbringing. Therefore,
it is with the language we speak in the classroom and the education system created by a foreign
power that our students are being stripped of their native identity. (e.g. [1,240])
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References
Hall, S. (1997). Representation & the Media [lecture transcript]. Retrieved from Media
Education Foundation Website: http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/409/transcript_409.pdf
Willinsky, J. (1998). Learning to divide the world: Education at empire’s end. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press
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