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PROMOTING THE POLITICAL PARIAHS
Beth Main OB 2007
Since my time at BGS I have accrued a colourful, and arguably controversial, set of visas and work permits in my passport – pages of Chinese, Taiwanese, Russian and Uzbek bureaucracy, which are equally as disturbing to passport control as they are attractive to me.
I am increasingly aware of this every time I see the news, as Putin’s war in Ukraine continues, and protests are repressed by the Chinese Communist Party.
I am always very careful as a teacher of Mandarin and Russian to be clear with pupils, colleagues and friends that the actions of a government are not those of its people and do not equate with the language and culture which we teach in our classrooms.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, my friends in Russia have been devastated – they are not only hurt that their numerous Ukrainian relatives are suffering, but also that they themselves have lost jobs, been conscripted, or fled the country. They are also heartbroken that Putin’s actions have caused the world to turn away from them, to reject them, when they were just becoming accepted, when they themselves do not support the war in any sense. They know that they are the Bond villain, and it hurts them.
My friends in China have been confined to their homes or hotels on and off since COVID broke out. A British friend is currently isolated in a hotel, where she was escorted by police, for having simply been in a bar close to the recent protests in Shanghai. I hear from them all less and less as the VPNs become less reliable to get them past the Great Internet Firewall of China.
I have been challenged recently on whether or not we should actually teach Russian and Mandarin given the political actions of the two countries – I am being asked why we teach languages. Is it for extrinsic reasons such as being able to communicate on holiday, to do business abroad, to be more effective diplomats, to spy? Is it for more intrinsic reasons such as the enjoyment, the accompanying sociocultural and historic knowledge, the broadened world view and increased empathy and tolerance? Is it for UCAS points?
Surely, if a country is politically powerful, economically influential, and seemingly more distanced from us than feels comfortable, this is more reason to learn the language – more reason to learn a non-European language.
I recently completed a Master of Teaching for which the topic of my final dissertation was “Eurocentrism, Assessment and Demotivation: The Treatment of Lesser Taught Languages”. I argued that despite the British Council annually identifying Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, and Urdu as key languages for Britain’s future, the Department for Education does little to support language learning beyond French, Spanish and German.
Languages in the UK are in crisis: they are not popular, perceived as too difficult, or not useful in an Anglophonic global system; the lack of a language at GCSE is the leading cause for not achieving the EBacc. For Lesser Taught Languages (alternatively called Community or Minority) resources are scarce, assessments are too difficult, and the ratios of native to non-native students make attaining highly difficult for even the exceptional student.
Take for example the A Level for Mandarin, which demands the same as for French – amongst other demands, to write critical essays in Mandarin about a target language book and film, and to discuss the social impact of the 1978 economic reforms in China on a changing contemporary society. I can just about manage with an MSc in Globalisation and Development, which informed me about macro and microeconomics, gender theory, migration trends etc. Most Mandarin teachers do not have that knowledge, have no textbook to guide them and only three past papers.
The same stands for teaching Hindi, Polish, Biblical Hebrew, Japanese and Turkish etc.
The education system is political, the languages the DfE focuses on is a political decision. In addition to the enriching and useful European languages, we should also be promoting and facilitating the study of Lesser
Taught Languages. To be proficient in Mandarin gives us smoother access to the provider of the highest number of non-EU university students to the UK (contributing around £2.5bn annually), our fifth largest trade partner, and the second largest world economy. The study of Mandarin includes the nuanced understanding of a country with a deep cultural history influenced by the hierarchies of Confucianism, the trauma of famine and the Cultural Revolution, and the whiplash of rapid economic development followed by renewed political repression.
I manage eight wonderful peripatetic language tutors (Cantonese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish), whose students are primarily native speakers taking an A Level to gain UCAS points (these help them get into university when their English skills might hold them back from attaining the top grades in other subjects). I encourage all students to give any extra language a go, for the world it might open for them. I want young people to think about why they learn languages, which languages they explore, what is included in the course and how we assess them.
The languages education I received at BGS, in particular from Dr Ransome and Mrs Swain, gifted me some of my best life experiences. I hope that my current beginner Korean lessons are going to do the same for me… Because, especially as an adult, you should never not be learning a language.
