One of the ideas in WWGD is that the days of the middle man are drawing to a rapid close. So many examples no need to even bother providing any. What no one has pointed out is that teachers are the ultimate middle man.
I heard recently about several districts cutting world language programs due to budget constraints. The cuts are being made with great regret, the administrators really don’t want to do it, but the bottom line is still the bottom line and they are required to balance their budgets.
They are cutting access to certified language programs, but they certainly cannot cut access for anyone of any age to learn a language. Not anymore. It’s not 1980 anymore.
See where I’m going with this? Could be any of several directions. What I would love to see is a parent group sometime that said: “Fine, you won’t provide a teacher and a program, so be it, but WE now have the power to help our kids learn and our kids no longer need you!”
Now that brings up a slightly tougher question where I’m afraid the profession has provided leadership in the wrong direction. Why do students take a language in school? Is it to learn the language or to get a language credit? I’m afraid that we have placed much greater importance on getting the credit than anything else. As I’ve mentioned, we’ve made “that” the valued commodity. Sort of an “emperor’s new clothes” situation. A bit embarrassing for all of us. Earlier realities started us on a good route, but we didn’t change when that country road was replaced by the Interstate. We are the old village store on a seldom-used road, but we get excited by every ad agency that calls on us because they tell us that their new (and expensive) ad campaign can bring back our former dominance in the horseless carriage market. Put up a new billboard, but the interstate is still miles away (ok, make that the Internet superhighway)
Well, the jig is just about up on that. It’s already possible in places like KY for kids to both learn a language AND receive credit without relying on the teacher as middle man. (See earlier comment about “We don’t need you!”
For our profession, I think we have to examine the basic question of “What is our real job?” If we insist that it’s providing credits (which, we must admit at least anonymously in the dark is not tied to proficiency in any true sense of the word, but instead tied to fulfillment of individual teachers’ requirements at a level they individually determine with unbelievable variation from class to class, year to year, teacher to teacher, school to school state to state and country to country), then we fight tooth and nail to protect our positions and programs as they are, and we lament every time one of them bites the dust because that increases mass vulnerability.
HOWEVER, IF we as a profession understood that our true raison d’etre was to help individuals learn language, then we would be able to reorganize for 21st century realities and move forward in new and exciting directions.
