On travel and teaching English

[inulro]

There was an interesting article in the Guardian today about whether young people on "gap year" packages that include charity work in the developing world are the new colonialists. I was particularly struck by the bloke who'd been teaching English in Ecuador quesioning the rationale of teaching English in the developing world in the first place. I have similar reservations. English, French and Spanish may have made worldwide communication easier, but they've wiped out an awful lot of indigenous languages and cultures. It may be easier to travel around the world now that you can always find someone who speaks English, but it's a lot less interesting, and a lot harder to work on the language of wherever you are visiting (and I'm only trying to improve my French & Spanish, not learn an actually difficult language).

This was interesting to me for a practical reason as well as on a philosophical level. My latest, and actually less than stupid, idea is to take a TEFL course and teach English part time and write or do voluntary work for aid/ development agencies until such time as one of them wants to pay me to work for them or do another masters in international development issues. Because of my health I would mostly be looking at teaching English here, but I could take short contracts abroad. Unlike most of the teaching-English world[1], I have no desire to go to the Far East, but to Eastern Europe and Latin America. Or France, but I don't think they need English teachers.

Which gets into issues of it may be a good way to earn money while travelling, but do I really want to be furthing the cause of anglo-american cultural imperialism? Particularly in South America, a place whose culture I've been fascinated by since I was 8 years old. On the other hand, it's a good way to learn about the countries that I'd eventually want to come back here (or Canada) and get involved in development policy for.[2][3]

If I want to work in Europe, I'm going to have to get off my arse and get UK citizenship.

It really is a less than stupid idea - one of the "proper" qualifications (ie the two month rather than two week or two day course) is available in Bristol and doesn't cost as much as I thought it did. Unfortunately, I think most of the money in teaching English in the UK is to foreigners who come here for intensive language classes rather than to recent immigrants, which is what I want to do. Maybe I could put a sign in the window of the Polish grocery store in the neighbourhood.

I've been looking into it, and there's a bewildering variety of opportunities available, from jobs that aim to rip off young people travelling to quite cushy numbers indeed. Because I have a masters' degree and my work in my English degree was as much on language as on literature, I should be in a good position to do something interesting and, one hopes, useful.

[1] Sorry, mindme, I avidly read your stories of life in Korea, but it's Not My Thing.

[2] Least articulate sentence ever. I'm tired & can't explain it better just now.

[3] Because I don't earn little enough money as it is, obviously.

Comments

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

To (probably mis-) quote Nietsche, when you look into the Abyss, the Abyss also looks into you. While I don't condone colonialism, I don't despise it either; it made me. Hell, it made you, too. And people are always going to travel, and because they come from one culture, they're going to take a little of that culture with them. It's unavoidable. You will bring some of another culture back with you, though. I eat curry. In Calcutta, Anglo-Indian people go to church. It's a swap. Both cultures have been changed*. They're on better or worse for it, just different.

Cultures that exist in a vaccuum die. As we rub up against other nations, we acquire bits of them and they of us. Those latin American cultures will change, with or without you. They'll become something different, just as every culture changes. Don't feel bad about it. Go, enrich and be enriched!

(I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you want to do it, you should do it without feeling bad.)

*Whether you want to argue the Anglo-Indians are part of India or not is up to you. They're not really either Anglo or Indian, they're a people in their own right now, but I think they're definitely one of the peoples of India.