Crash and Burn

Linking Language and Content: ESL and Art History by Deborah Raphan & Janet Moser (1993-94) is yet another article we have been assigned to read that is specific to education in the United States! Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against the article or the United States. My beef has to do with the homework assignment itself. The fact of the matter is that we are in Québec, Canada, and our situation is quite different from the one in the United States. Speaking of interdisciplinary teaching, I would like to have fewer articles about the United States, and more articles about Canada, and specifically Québec! It would be nice to link the specific language and content that we are living here in Québec to our teaching practices, seeing as most of us want to teach English as a second language (ESL) in Québec.

Furthermore, I am Canadian, and last time I checked, I was still living in my own country. I find it offensive that the culture from another country should be such a large part of my pre-service teacher-training. For example, I find the following statement difficult to understand: “[m]any students come from cultures in which the typical give-and-take between teacher and student is totally absent […]” (Raphan & Moser, 1993/94, p. 17). The writer is an American citizen talking to an American audience, so how am I, as a bilingual Canadian Anglophone supposed to relate to this type of discourse? What is meant by typical give-and-take? Typical compared to what and for whom? Where am I in all this? More importantly, where are my future students? Is Québec not a socialist society? That is what the guy at the medicare told me. It is also a bilingual society situated within a bilingual country. Our national anthem is sung in two languages! Generally speaking, we are all humans. However, I would like to focus in on our situation here in Québec. My question is: “What has what is going on in the United States have to do with what is specifically going on here in Québec?” Teaching English as a foreign language in the United States is quite different from teaching English as a second language in Québec. Our culture is different, the variation of English is different, our history is different, and the way we approach multiculturalism is different. So what is the big idea? Are all these American articles a pre-brain washing to the final American take-over of Canada? What gives? Are we all asleep at the wheel, or should I drink more coffee?



Todd