Sometimes I publish comments as articles. I do so because I think that sometimes we miss comments that are important. So this comment-turned-article is from Mark Knowles, Director of the Anderson Language and Technology Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder. We have been working with Mark over recent years and will be working with him even more this year, so if you want to read more just click on the Mark Knowles category on the right side of this page. Why is this important? Because besides Dr. Robert Patrick in Atlanta, who teaches both in Gwinnett County Schools and also at the University of Georgia, as well as Birsen Tutunis at Istanbul Aydin Üniversitesi and only a handful of others (we need a list), we have precious few scholars worldwide who embrace what we do. In his comments, Mark addresses this and other topics:
Hi Ben and company!
Thank you very much for all the undeserved attention and compliments! Let me write that article first before we get too carried away! Ben is correct that in the coming months, I would be humbled if I were able to hear from you about your own “coming-to-CI” stories. I might start out by saying that I grew into teaching in the 198o’s when the Natural Approach was creating quite the stir. At the time, I felt there was a different ACTFL than the one we have today, and it seemed to me that it was fully concerned with this thing called fossilization (ever hear about that?) and appropriate correction techniques of student output. My grad program at Illinois felt like it was at the vortex of an epic battle between the major advocates of inductive versus deductive learning, or use versus usage. As you might guess, the conventional teaching favored deductive learning and usage, and if you spoke up in favor of things like Sandra Savignon’s version of the Communicative Approach or Terrell and Krashen’s Natural Approach, you could easily be labeled as an anything-goes, hippie teacher. Remember this was at the height of the Culture Wars in education led by none other than (my favorite vice-president ever) Dick Cheney’s significant other Lynne, so it could be a real career-killer to find yourself on the wrong side of that issue when going in for a job interview. I’m actually not sure those Culture Wars have really subsided. The standardized testing movement got its big liftoff back then, and, rather than slowing or falling down, they seem to be racing to the top at breakneck speed, thanks to another idol of mine, Arne Duncan.
So here’s a form of disclosure about me and this is important. For those of you who don’t know me, I am not one to mince words and sometimes I express my opinions (which I also attempt to back up with something called evidence rather than simply faith). Since I brought up the word idol here, my biggest hometown idol is a fellow by the name of James Hansen, to whom some have credited the invention of the term “global warming.” Hansen is a NASA scientist and Columbia University professor who has been arrested more than once protesting coal-fired electrical plants because, as a grandfather, he wants his grandkids and great grandkids to inherit something other than a burned out slag heap for a planet. He is a scientist, but he is not one who embraces some image of a cool and detached white-coated technician who professes some kind of professional purity during the time that the thing which nurtures and sustains him and the rest of us wastes away before his very eyes. He speaks his mind – forcefully. Admittedly, the realm of language learning or even the educational realm might not be quite as big a deal as global warming, but I’m actually not so sure about that. I refuse to comply with a system that wears down our kids’ spirits rather than builds them up, and one of the first things that caught my attention on the Ben Slavic blog was this theme of how TPRS and CI are the language approaches for the rest of us and not just for the 4%.
I had the good fortune of having Sandra Savignon as a member of my doctoral committee, and one of her greatest passions was to democratize language learning. If we contribute nothing other than second voices to that lifelong pursuit of hers, I think that our contributions will be more than satisfactory. A big theme of my research will therefore center around whether CI and TPRS connect to the Minority Majority world we are moving into. I know I’ve heard a lot along those lines from Diana Noonan and from Ben and Joseph Dziedzic, and I’ve also heard it from Sabrina Janczak’s adult learners at CU-Boulder. I had a very nice chat with John Piazza at the iFLT along these same lines. I would love to hear what you guys think about this point. Do CI and TPRS speak to a greater range of the overall student population than conventional language learning approaches, and if so, how and why? Would you be willing to chat with me at length about these points, either anonymously or not, and would you be willing to give me permission to include your thoughts in my study? And, of course, I just want to learn about who you are and how you came into the CI/TPRS fold.