John Lewis has said that when you see something wrong, you not only need to say something about it, but you also need to DO something about it. Over my own lifetime in language education, I have seen and said a lot about the abject state of language instruction in the United States over the years. But now, it’s time to act. Now we need to DO something so that we can overcome:
1. The ancient and really quite ugly obsession with grading and the resultant everyday shaming of too many students.
2. The truly boring instruction and the resultant lack of student engagement that in the new online setting has reached epidemic proportions.
3. The lack of aligning our language instruction with the research, even after so many years of knowing that traditional textbook and TPRS language instruction have failed precisely because they have not aligned with the either the Communication Standard or research.
4. The embarrassing curricular capitulation to administrators and many department chairs who simply do not know how languages are acquired and do not therefore know about how they should be taught.
5. The colleagues who have constantly refused to change even and who now, being confronted with the truth about their failed teaching, still refuse to embrace the new and work for change, because don’t know how.
6. The continued lauding of the few and the ignoring of the many in our online and physical classroom, and this in spite of the fact that everyone and anyone can learn a language.