This is the time when things are reversed. Teachers teach falsified history, views of science are constantly overturned, false versions of language are presented as language but only explore its mechanical aspects. Children have grown weary of such false things in schools and cease to engage.
Classrooms have become tombs. The heart quality in things is not there. Schools have become prisons which hide the true nature of mankind, his potential, except for the efforts of some brave teachers who labor under a weight that, were they to feel and acknowledge it, would knock them to the ground right in front of their classes in an instant. But they go in every day and do it again because they carry in their hearts courage and faith and a kind of inner knowledge that what they are doing carries some degree of good to suffering children.
What teachers do when they make the brave decision to wrench themselves out of the stupor that has overtaken our schools, and teach with joy for joy in ways that let light into the tombs, is a threat to those who have accepted the school darkness as normal. Those who have confused light with darkness, who have confused the life of the mind for the life of the heart, see that light in the classroom down the hallway and react to it in the only way that they know, from their mind. They react from their mind against something that is not of the mind. They have to, to protect themselves and their miserable dried-up old mental teaching worlds.
Of course those who oppose TPRS/CI don’t do it on purpose. It’s probably the same for those who run Monsanto and who, to discredit the solid research that exists against what they are doing, buy off scientists to support what they are doing. They are not bad people. They just don’t see clearly and are blinded in their case by greed, in our case by intellectual pride.
All of this was perfectly expressed by Ben Lev once here on the PLC. I have always wondered why we are so opposed, but now I know for certain because I was able to read why in one elegant paragraph from this veteran teacher and bike rider in Sebastopol, CA. This in my view is the best explanation ever for the now thirty-year-old schism between us and ACTFL and just about every other language teacher on the planet – no blame – and for the professional ignorance of those who attack us and discredit Krashen. Read Ben’s explanation:
…our understanding of CI is very nuanced, compared to most FL teachers who are stuck in grammar-land, suffering the textbook and hating their jobs. They have no idea. They peek over the fence at what we are doing, and they are blinded; it’s gotta be overwhelming. I’m guessing they turn away, it’s too much to take in….