From Where We Sit





The Politics of Language

     English as a second language, like many offerings in the nebulous humanities sector of American colleges and universities, has become as difficult to define as the ubiquitous "basic skills" curriculum found at most community colleges. Basic skills, for those of you who are outside the education perimeter, is edu-speak for literacy.

     Like the basic skills courses, esl courses have no shortage of takers (in part because many schools require foreign students to take them), and the profit margins are impressive--it costs a pittance to hire an esl teacher, and most overseas students pay full freight for the university experience. Hence, many esl institutes are cash generators. Many of them are housed in trailers or old, rarely used buildings,  so overhead is low, and the teachers often work on semester contracts with few or no benefits (See Adjunct Nation).

     The situation invites comparisons to slum landlords in large cities or multinationals using sweatshop labor in third world countries. The irony (irony #1) is that the people behind these esl programs are the same people who lead protests against slum landlords in New York and Nike sweatshops in Asia.

     In the old days, a foreign national had to be fluent in English to get into an American university, then the requirements were lowered to a 550 TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) score, then to a 500 TOEFL score, then...well, you get the picture. Today it's not uncommon to see overseas students wandering around college campuses with little or no understanding of the conversations going on around them. Irony #2 is that these students really don't need to bounce around esl institutes for a year or two before enrolling in the "real university." Just being in a second language setting often benefits learners as much as formal courses do, and while students here in China often need and request a traditional English course, one year on the streets of San Francisco is enough to bring them close to a 600 on TOEFL. A better idea would be to have their admissions contingent on meeting advanced  English criteria in all four skills. This, however, would effectively rupture a cash pipeline for the school, a pipeline that also serves as the employer of last resort for marginalized or redundant academic and political elites.

     Currently, many esl institutes are simply make-work operations for non-classified faculty. The more progressive elements in the academy envision an autonomous institute serving the general language needs of the community at large as well as acting as a service program for various university departments. Part of this independence would necessitate a director who has real discretion over budgets, not just an offshore banker. At their best, English as a second language institutes have evolved into financially sustainable, outreach programs, and are useful educational resources for both foreign students and the community. At their worst, they are simply scams, surtaxes on international students already burdened by high tuition charges.


Fall, 2003 in Xiamen, China
© Schackne Online