http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=some-40000-foreign-teachers-to-be-assigned-2011-03-27
Mahfuz Yalçınkaya, the press consultant for Eğitim Bir-Sen, another Turkish education union, said his group was not sure whether the foreign teachers would bring a secret agenda along with their language skills to the elementary schools and kindergartens of Turkey.
“There could be missionaries among the teachers, or they may have other goals like promoting their own culture,” he added.
Even though it wouldn't be surprising if some teachers went to Turkey intending to spread the gospel, I'm not convinced that it in itself poses a threat to Turkish culture. Neither probably does teachers talking about their own or other cultures, but the fact is that a far larger percentage of teachers will probably do that, making the impact much bigger than that of religious proselytizing. Many of the native-speaker English teachers in Korea consider it part of their job to explain Western , and more specifically their own, culture to students, and it would probably be the same in Turkey.
The questions posed by the Turkish education union mentioned above are thus valid, if a bit hyperbolic. As teachers hired to help students improve their English, can it be considered an abuse of our position of power if we use it as an opportunity to explain our cultural viewpoints? Do we really broaden horizons, or are we expounding "broad horizons" according to our culture-specific definition?
You make some fantastic points here. The whole notion that teachers are meant to represent their respective cultures and 'teach' the natives about their cultures is definitely problematic. I remember my first year in Japan and almost cringe when I think of all the sweeping generalizations I made about "American" culture and the ways that it differs from "Eastern" cultures.
답글삭제My problem is that I feel that I'm often passing on cultural 'lessons' unconsciously. I see the textbooks that I've used, the pictures of middle class American life, with drawings of middle class American houses used in order to teach vocabulary and feel that there are extremely covert ways that certain cultural norms are being passed on. My own response has been, at least to some degree, to make the deconstruction of these 'norms' an essential part of my language teaching. To very mixed results, of course.... Great post