Students who come from privilege – in language classrooms and in all American classrooms – continue to be trained in schools for their roles as leaders.
Via our instruction, via our assessment, via almost every aspect of the way we teach, we silently indoctrinate the underprivileged into their roles as “less than” in our society, while at the same time giving tacit permission to the privileged kids to assume, by the way we teach, their future controlling roles in society.
It is an insidious system, and the book on how we teach to promote the chances of the privileged over the chances of the underprivileged hasn’t been written yet. The problem hasn’t even been addressed in our schools.
Administrators call for reform but have no idea what that entails, which is a complete toppling of the old grammar/translation methods in favor of a truly democratic and fair playing field for all language students in America that is firmly based in community building and comprehensible input, because that is how people learn languages.
The assumption that certain children who happen to be of a different skin color or economic background than others get to one day run the American ship is alive and well in WL classrooms from coast to coast.
What will we do in our classrooms as American patriots to change that?