Schooling the World and Social Justice

The documentary Schooling the World revealed to me a number of issues when it comes

to the dominance of Western ways of thinking and the subsequent destruction of traditional

ways of life. However, it is the issue of social justice that in collaboration with the issues

raised by the video that also need to be addressed. There were issues that I witnessed in my

ESL teaching career and I think it is useful to reflect on what I experienced during my time

living and working in Georgia and South Asia. Prior to joining the course at VIU I taught ESL

in Italy, Georgia, Vietnam, England and China. For the most part, living and working in these

countries was a fantastic experience which has changed my worldview permanently.

However, some of these experiences have made me very cynical about Western culture,

and in particular the idea that it the most superior culture. For me now, the perpetration that

roduces is fundamentally
the Western model of education is the most effective because it p

wrong. The question here is: what is it really producing and who for?

As a teacher in training, my experiences overseas have made me acutely aware of social

justice issues involving the commercial and sexual exploitation of students/domestic

nationals. Sadly, as in the case of the former, due to pervasive and dominant ideas of the

financial paradigm inherent in my culture (we accept going to the supermarket despite how

alienating and deeply unnatural the process feels, we accept going to the mall, we accept

the ubiquitous presence of corporations in our lives as we mindlessly check our I-Phones for

Facebook updates), an alternative for the majority of people is unimaginable. Without this

sense of an alternative, a particular concept of social justice based on ethics which are not

subject to sublimation and/or manipulation by negative forces is difficult to create. The latter

issue is not just unique to overseas, but it was something I was exposed to on a daily basis

whilst working abroad. On a side note: baring witness to the behaviour of white male
Western nationals is an issue that affected me to the extent that it has made me feel

ashamed of my gender.

As an educator it is my moral and ethical duty to try give students the abilities not to

accept life as it is, but to challenge injustices through the development of a critical mindset. I

accept that I will not make drastic or revolutionary changes, but if one student pauses to

consider why they are doing something they have previously doing without consideration for

the wider effects of their actions, then I regard that as a success because it has the p
otential

for change. As indicated at the start of this reflection, it is my experiences abroad that make

me believe that things must be better because the logic of the alternative is unimaginable.

In 2012, I went to teach in the country of Georgia. It was for a non-profit organisation

called TLG (Teach and Learn in Georgia). This was an American-funded organisation that

sought to give school children from the ages of 4 - 12 English language instruction by

teachers from the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK. I was sent to work in a

school that was remote and profoundly underdeveloped part of the country; employment was

about 40% and farming was subsistence-based. However, when I started working in the

school I realised that the children were being manipulated. From what I know of American

politics, the corporations are an integral part of how various administrations have come to

important decisions. In other words, American administrations both Republican and

Democrat and the corporations effectively run American policy both domestic and foreign.

The American governments involvement in other countries, and in this instance Georgia,

sought to exploit the country by funding the teaching of English to Georgian children. In

essence it was soft power because the policy sought to colonise childrens minds so they

identified and so therefore sympathised with American culture via understanding the

language. Furthermore during the training sessions prior to moving to the countryside, the

instructors insisted that we mention as much as possible the Western way of life, and in

particular America. As I mentioned in my application to the university, my experience in

Georgia was one of the main reasons why I decided to become a teacher. The way in which

the children were being manipulated to sympathise with America was evident from my first

day at the school. Due to funding, the materials for the English lessons were both abundant

and modern because the charity, and I use this word loosely, wanted to give them the best

English language education possible. However, when I went to look around the rest of the

school it was clear to me that there was very little funding for other subjects. A couple of

examples included a science lesson in which there was one book for 5 students and music

lessons were the piano was out of tune. I found it astonishing that the rest of the school was

so profoundly underfunded. Even if the students became experts in the English language

their lives could not improve. Georgia is an impoverished country where many families are

barely surviving and can not even begin to dream of sending their children to an English

language university. With good English they could get a job in capital, but they would not be

as doctors but instead as hotel receptionists. But Georgia is difficult to get to, difficult to get

round due to a lack of infrastructure (you can literally feel when the money ran out when the

quality of the road changes about ten miles out of the capital) and therefore off most except

the most intrepid explorers lists, even these kind of jobs would be extremely limited. Without

being taught other subjects in English and with the same amount of funding, there will be

next to no improvement to the country. Post-Georgia my research confirmed this. Two

compelling pieces of evidence clearly illustrated to me that Americas involvement was for

political ends which one can assume involved corporate interests. The first was that the TLG

program was funded by the State Department, and the second was that an oil pipeline

needed to go from Azerbaijan via Georgia to circumvent Russian influence over energy

prices in NATO aligned states. In regards to social justice, I left Georgia because I felt that

my role was unethical. There was no attempt to improve these childrens lives, and at no

point would TLG ever be held accountable for their actions.

 Before becoming a teacher, I needed to make some money. While I am firm believer in

education taking precedent over profit, I am also pragmatic. It was this pragmatism that

resulted in me choosing to work for Wall Street English in Guangzhou, China. They are a

corporation that provide English language instruction. While I recognised that many of the

students had faith in the system that could provide them with better employment

opportunities, there were many aspects of the company that were morally and ethically

reprehensible. The most damning example was the conduct of some of the the employees

whom were all white middle aged males. After a few weeks, it was clear to me that these

damaged men had moved to China for one reason alone: to find a Chinese girlfriend. Living

in China to them was not an opportunity to experience a fascinating culture, to meet people

with different worldviews and learn another language (or at least try), it was a desperate and

tragic last chance saloon. This was in such stark contrast to my experiences teaching in

Vietnam with just Vietnamese people. I rarely came into contact with other Westerners and

so wasnt exposed to it.

Therefore, the effect was one of profound shock when I started working with men who

would loudly comment upon the attractiveness of a woman. I knew of several people who

made sexual advances towards students and Chinese members of staff. However, rather

than being fired (as outlined in the contract) they were moved to a different location. When I

asked my boss why these people had not been fired, his response was that firing people

made Wall Street English look bad. In other words, in the paramount interests of profit the

safety and dignity of the students was effectively irrelevant. Again, as with Georgia, there

existed no system of accountability for administering social justice. The overall effect of this

was a creation of a culture within the company in which individuals whose prime motive was

sexual in nature could act with near absolute impunity.

Both these situations, while unique, make it explicitly clear that without social justice in an

education system, be it ESL or Canadian public schools there can be no hope of being able
to change the current situation as it stands. It is an absolute and non-negotiable aspect that

supersedes the interests of profit and corporations. During my practice and my knowledge of

the schooling system, it is clear to me that there is social justice, transparency and

accountability within schools in at least district 68. However, that does not mean that the

lessons I learnt and things I witnessed are rendered irrelevant, on the contrary they have

served to highlight the importance of having these systems in place to project the students

within our schools.