This is the second part of our interview with Alberto Bruzos about labour conditions in language teaching. Part 1 can be read here.
Nobody seems satisfied with neoliberal structures of education (teachers, students, administrators, parents), why do you think they endure?
Nobody seems to be satisfied with our political and economic settlements as well, and yet they endure because of the force enjoyed by social institutions and also our inability to imagine alternatives. As Slavoj Žižek has said, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” If we see the language teaching industry as the fundamentally neoliberal enterprise that it is, we will understand why there are not obvious alternatives. Moreover, the way in which the structures of education seem to replicate the hegemonic values and ideologies of neoliberalism makes me think that we cannot realistically expect to effect changes in any particular domain (education, language teaching, etc.) unless they are rooted in deeper changes in social practices, ideological principles, and political agendas.
In your article, you mention that “for change to last it must be systemic”. What might that systemic change look like in your view?
In an earlier document, we advocated a new rationale for teaching languages centered on democratic values such as inclusion, social justice, critical awareness, antiracism, and civic engagement. In our view, this narrative should replace the dominant discourses of securitization (“foreign languages” as national security tools) and privatization (languages as human capital), both of which subordinate language teaching to pre-determined instrumental goals and, in doing so, leave little room for teacher agency.
While our statement was addressed to language teachers in institutions of higher education, for the majority of teachers who work in the private or semi-privatized sector (language schools, language centers, language tutoring platforms), the most pressing issue is the unfair distribution of profit. In times of intense market saturation, language teaching providers compete by lowering prices. For that business model to be sustainable, the value created by teachers must be squeezed out of their pockets by the proprietaries of schools, centers, and platforms and, arguably, also by institutions whose business is to develop and administer language tests and certificates, as well as publishing companies that contribute to the deskilling of teachers insofar as they control the production and ownership of the curriculum.
There is no easy exit from this arrangement. Language teaching cooperatives like Serveis Lingüístics de Barcelona, Cronopios Idiomas (Madrid, Spain), and La Guarida (Oaxaca, México) are one of the most promising alternatives. In the cooperative model, teachers “own the means of production”, thus managing to cut out intermediaries. They also can take control over the curriculum by producing their own materials, which in my opinion is a crucial step toward the validation of language teachers as producers of knowledge.
There are a number of grassroots organisations and movements working towards improving working conditions for language teachers around the world. How can we better work together?
The idiosyncrasies of each particular labor market make it difficult for teachers to cross local and institutional lines when organizing for better conditions. Not only language teachers are all over the world, but even when they are in the same country or in the same city, they work for diverse institutions (universities, language schools, online language platforms) and in very different conditions with regard to salary of occupation. For this reason, the collective of language teachers is composed by individuals with a wide variety of goals and expectations; for some, a part-time and seasonal occupation may be fine, while others would prefer a more stable job with opportunities for promotion. In such a fragmented and heterogenous sector, it is difficult to develop solidarity.
Moreover, because of the internet, even teachers working in very distant markets are in competition with each other. For instance, as Philip Kerr and Andrew Wickham have argued, “one of the principle drivers of the pressure on salaries is the rise of online training delivery through Skype and other online platforms, using offshore teachers in low-cost countries such as the Philippines.” This is something that we also point out in our Boston Review piece, drawing on an article published by Reuters in March 2013 about the rise of online platforms like 51Talk. This company sells English lessons for $6.36 per 25-minute session, while paying only $2.53 per hour to teachers, who for the main part are Filipino women. While it is easy to see those Filipino women as the reason for the depression of English teachers’ wages everywhere else, solidarity requires sympathizing with their plight and understanding their exploitation as part of the same dynamic that shifts the balance of power for the benefit of the propietary class and against labor.
Are you optimistic about the future?
One of the main narratives of Covid-19 conceives the pandemic as a crisis that, on the one hand, reveals and aggravates all sort of social problems, and, on the other hand, presents us with an opportunity to overcome them and build a different and hopefully more just order.
Not surprisingly, the catastrophic impact of the pandemic on tourism and mobility has exacerbated the vulnerability of language teachers. In Spain, for instance, the sector experienced massive cancellations. Following the stringent guidelines enforced by Spain’s government, schools had to close and temporarily layoff most of their workers. As the schools transitioned to online courses, it was the teachers who bore the responsibility of working the extra mile to adapt courses and create engaging videos and materials. Nevertheless, an open letter published by Profesión ELE, a professional association created in 2019 to organize Spanish language teachers, reported many irregularities in the layoffs, including lack of transparency, fraud, and salary theft. Although Spain reopened its borders to foreign tourists in July, the sector faces severe losses this year and for the duration of the pandemic.
While in the short-term it would be foolish to be optimistic about the future, perhaps in the long-term the crisis will result in imaginative alternatives to restructure the language teaching industry. In any case, as I have argued above, the changes in the field of language teaching will certainly be in synchrony with wider developments in ideological and political class struggle. This is the terrain in which we should probably focus our forces.
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