The slow shift from real adult leadership to adult children being in charge of our schools and much of our government is underway. There seems to be no mechanism in place to prevent this takeover of confusing and divisive leadership.
The result is that our schools are now more than ever being led by unqualified people, many of whom display heavy narcissistic traits. Trump has left his stain everywhere, it seems.
In our field of foreign language education, we need a massive dialogue, one that lasts as long as it takes, to oust the imposters.
What is an imposter in WL education? It is a person who twists the research and the standards to fit their own usually limited knowledge of how people most easily learn languages. This kind of twisting allows them to gain control over the minds of many teachers in a way that resembles what is happening in politics these days – a jumble!
Most typically this big block of educators who fall sway to this new breed of (unfortunately covert) narcissist are those who then won’t release their clutch on 1950s style language education – worksheets, etc. – you know the drill. The result is a diminishing of the research and a train wreck version of the real research being advertised and sold online to unsuspecting teachers who just want out of Worksheet World. The cult of personality in the CI world plays on, grossly underqualified leaders emerge and the actual research gets pushed into the gutter by amateurs.
Confusing CI training results, gets mixed in with the textbook, and nothing changes for the kids in terms of tangible and visible results and what they experience in the classroom. That’s what has been out there now for decades and, in spite of the recent brief period of about fifteen to twenty years of interest in CI, the profession continues to mislead far too many younger teachers and generally stink itself up like it always has.
Teachers just aren’t changing in spite of the obviously miserable state of the profession and the shining sun that the CI researchers have handed us after the past 50 years of brilliant spade work into finding out how people actually acquire languages.
We allow it, so we deserve what we get. The kids suffer and the beat goes on.