I was asked to write a brief autobiography for the Citizenship Education Research Network Newsletter that will be published for its Winter 2022 issue. It will be edited for brevity, but (at the risk of being egoistic), I thought that the full version could be posed here.
Being a Bad Student
It has been a privilege to work with my CERN colleagues and an honor to be asked to write this for the newsletter.
My research and teaching interests have focused on critical and post-structural second language education, citizenship, policy development, inductive instructional approaches and equity. Before becoming an academic in 2007, I worked for over 20 years in public school districts, community colleges and immigrant serving agencies as an activist, teacher and administrator.
As I ask in the introduction to my upcoming book (Fleming, In press), what happens when equity meets the so-called “nice” field of second language education (SLE)? My book is a collection of previously published work and demonstrates how my colleagues and I have worked through these important concerns over the years. Putting it together has been a rare opportunity to reflect on a life’s work, as I begin to make a slow transition to retirement.
Although my book will be published mainly for the benefit of Second Language Education colleagues, graduate students and practitioners, I believe all those interested in how education can positively affect progressive change will find something of value when it comes out.
In it, I try to summarize what led me to drop my established career as a classroom teacher and how my subsequent experiences as a professor led to a deepening of my understanding of the themes of language and philosophy, second language policy, race, gender, decolonization and curriculum. In short, through the different pieces in this book, I attempt to lay out how a critical approach to second language education in Canada necessitates linking notions surrounding language, citizenship, race, gender, policy, decolonization and curriculum.
The first thing I should make clear is that I was (and probably still am to a certain degree) a bad student, constantly arguing and skipping class. In my day, schools in small town British Columbia were rough and tumble places where machismo, drugs, gossip, bullying, racism and sexism reigned supreme. These were the days of gangs, the strap, the open exploitation of students by staff and unconcealed contempt for intellectual life.
In this isolated coastal pulp and paper mill town, the strong socialist labor union tradition had devolved into an individualist and materialist culture. The history of environmental degradation of the surrounding forests and ocean continued, however. Ever since the town’s founding, First Nations/Native peoples in the area (those that survived the devastations associated with first contact) lived in conditions that amounted to apartheid. The status of women had progressed little past the 1940’s. Revealing a non-binary sexuality invited violence. Other minorities (Blacks, Asians, Jews, Francophones, Southern or Eastern Europeans) learned to be as assimilated (or as invisible) as possible.
Most male students were bound for manual labor, if not in the actual mill that dominated the town, then in places that were similar. These were the days when permanent well-paid jobs could be had with minimal education. Most female students were bound for marriage and homemaking labor. There were exceptions, of course. However, those who didn’t fit the mold were faced some significant challenges. At the outskirts of town, some “misfits” founded alternative communities or lived in isolation (best documented in Mark Vonnegut’s 1975 memoir Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity).
I became politically active as a senior high school student on environmental issues, a time that coincided with the 1974 Bremer Commission’s failed attempt at reforming the British Columbian educational system (Cocking, 1974, March). I still retain an ambivalence towards the NDP based on the way in which those reforms were sabotaged.
My subsequent undergraduate experiences as an English Lit major were deeply intertwined with my involvement with far-left organizations that had more than a passing resemblance to cults (in the sense that they relied on guilt as a means of control, the romanticization of individualistic heroics, charismatic leadership, dogma and sectarianism). Nonetheless, I did some good work in the unemployed labor movement in Canada in Victoria, in the anti-KKK movement in Vancouver and in the anti-poverty movement in the US in New Orleans (where I ended up after completing my undergraduate).
After a few years in New Orleans, I moved back to Canada and found work in Toronto, Ontario, as an ESL instructor, eventually climbing to a significant administrative and supervisory role within the Toronto School Board. My activism now found expression through my work, which emphasized organizing professional development opportunities focused on anti-racism and functional orientations towards curricula. I developed school sites, worked with a wide variety of refugee and immigrant students and took on “trouble-shooting” tasks for the ESL department at Bickford Centre, which at the time was the largest ESL Program in the country. It must be noted, my solace was that, at the Centre, I had some great, innovative and courageous colleagues.
One incident stands out in hindsight as being instrumental in the development of my academic interests. While at a conference in Vancouver, my colleagues and I witnessed the launch by federal officials of the prototype of the Canadian Language Benchmarks Assessment (CLBA). On cue, two secondary school students popped out from behind the presentation screen to the announcement that the field-tested prototype was simple enough for anyone to administer. You can imagine our horror, as professionals with long-standing experience with the complexities of language assessment, at the simplistic nature of the plans presented by the federal officials.
In resistance to the simplistic nature of these plans, the Toronto School Board lobbied for more significant involvement. With other colleagues from several Ontario institutions with significant ESL programs, I was seconded to work on curriculum development projects that in many ways laid the further development of the CLBA and Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC).
At the same time, I started my Master’s Degree under the tutelage of Alister Cumming at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), from whom I learned to love empirical research. OISE was great. I rubbed shoulders with (among others) Patrick Allen, Meryl Swain, Alister Pennycook and Nuzhat Amin. My interest in philosophy returned, but this time in reference to the multitude of problems I saw (and still see) facing ESL education in Canada.
Alister Cumming encouraged me to move from a course-based masters to one that resulted in a thesis that focused on teacher autonomy and agency in curriculum decision making. This was subsequently published in 1998 in TESL Canada Journal (reprinted below in chapter 7), a piece in which I worked out my arguments that countered what I regarded as government attempts to restrict teacher professionalism in my field and made the case that teacher autonomy was essential for quality instruction.
My research focus stemmed directly out of my work experience. I was appalled at the potential detrimental effects of efforts to standardize second language education central to many of the proposals associated with the federally-funded program Language Instruction to Newcomers to Canada (LINC) and (later) the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB). In my estimation, standardization lay at the heart of “the stereotypical descriptions and definitions of Canadian identity and culture found within these documents and programs” (Fleming, 2003, 1).
Despite this fruitful and highly exciting work, I gave up my administrative ambitions in the face of the draconian budgetary cuts of the times and moved back to British Columba in 1999 to work as continuing education teacher for the Surrey School District. Some of my favorite teaching experiences involved assignments as a school librarian and in prison release, LINC, special needs, grade 12 literature and basic literacy from a wide variety of backgrounds while slowly getting (re)involved in curriculum development projects. Again, I had some great colleagues: incredibly generous in fact. I often miss their company.
A chance meeting with Ling Shi in Vancouver at the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) annual conference reignited my academic ambitions and I enrolled as a doctoral student under her joint tutelage with John Willinsky at the University of British Columbia (UBC). I knew Ling Shi from my time in Toronto and benefited greatly from her generosity and experience. John Willinsky helped me through his rigorous approach to argumentation and writing. At UBC, I worked extensively as a teaching assistance and sessional instructor and rubbed shoulders with (among others) Ena Lee, Bonny Norton, Lynne McGivern, Jeremie Seror and Joe Belanger.
The doctoral thesis that resulted focused on how the adult Punjabi-speaking students at my workplace interpreted citizenship. I contrasted their emphasis on the value of multiculturalism and active engagement with the much narrower definition of citizenship found embedded and implied within the Canadian Language Benchmarks. This led to a series of journal articles and book chapters in which I argued that second language learners are often racialized and infantilized in this and other associated documents. A summary of these arguments can be found in Broom, C., Di Mascio, A. & Fleming, D. (2016).
Upon completing my doctoral work, I applied for a tenure-track position at the University of Ottawa, where I now work as a full professor. I have been fortunate to work with many progressive colleagues too numerous to recount here on a full range of projects, both domestic and international. I have had the joy of working with talented graduate students and teaching subject matter on challenging topics connected to equity and diversity.
It is perhaps an indication of how meaningful my work has been that a federal official accused me of being inaccurate and misleading in my criticism of the CLB. He disliked my arguments in terms of the hidden curriculum within the CLB and my contention that the CLB’s infantilization of second language immigrants, in effect, denied them full citizenship. As I argued “the subsequent email exchange we had revolved around my contention that he was using the prestige of his position to put pressure on a scholar to suppress work he found threatening” (Fleming, 2017,1).
As I argue in one of my recent lectures, many second-language educators still think of ourselves as so many Professor Higgins’ from the famous Hollywood film, My Fair Lady. Through our superior knowledge of ‘the majesty and grandeur of the English language’ (to quote the professor), we aim at uplifting the Eliza Doolittles in our classrooms from their poverty-stricken lives to sanctified middle-class existence.
We may not be as unenlightened in the current communicative age as to suppose that repeated drills will do the trick as it did for Professor Higgins, but I believe that most of us operate as if our primary task is to promote learner success through a mastery of high-status standard English. Of course, we find ourselves in the dilemma of knowing that our students need to gain a mastery over English for greater material success in our society. However, too often we do not question the ideological assumptions we make in that regard.
During this lecture, I go through and deconstruct various clips from the film while praising the set, direction, casting, acting and (especially) music. The film contains examples of antiquated (and comical) second language methods (from the days of the audio-lingual approach) and fully illustrates how a standardized notion of language is used as a weapon against the marginalized. In short, Professor Higgins is a sexist monster, the poor are depicted stereotypically, the plot deviates from the original George Bernard Shaw play despicably, the "ethnicism" is clear and the upper social class given ridiculous roles that make them appear harmless (they are far from that, of course). It is old-time Hollywood after all. I encourage my students to note how Higgins uses descriptive phonetics to justify language prescription and critically assess his convoluted belief that “cleaning up” the language of the poor will automatically result in their uplifting within society.
My lecture is a critical examination of the film as a perfect example of how popular media perpetuates false and destructive notions around language. Even the film remains one of my favorite movies from my childhood (under the influence of my own Cockney grandmother), I recognize it as containing multiple classist, racist, sexist, and homophobic elements.
My critical treatment of My Fair Lady is a fair summary of my overall aim as a professor. While acknowledging the complexities and contradictions in our work as second language educators, our goal should be to move away from standardized notions of language that are too often used to dominate and subjugate minoritized people, whether they be women, racialized, “lingualized”, or marginalized in terms of ethnicity, ability, non-binary sexuality or social class.
So, what does happen when equity meets the so-called nice field of second language education (SLE)?
I believe it creates an opportunity in regards to engaging the complexity of the interlocking systems related to power, privilege, citizenship; race; gender, ethnicity, colonization and other forms of minoritalization that pervades our work as second language educators. In short, a serious engagement with these interlocking systems is how we, as academics and practitioners, engage with meaningful issues related to the daily struggles of our students and colleagues.
Doug
Douglas Fleming, PhD (he/lui/él/他 )
Professor, Tenured
Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
http://douglasfleming.weebly.com
Éducation et langues secondes
Second Language Education
Membre du groupe de recherche EducLang
Member of the Research group EducLang
References
Broom, C., Di Mascio, A. & Fleming, D. (2016). Citizenship education in Canada: Past and present. In C. Broom (Ed.), Youth civic engagement in a globalized world: Citizen education in comparative perspectives (pp.15-36). New York: Palgrave, MacMillan.
Cocking, C. (1974, March). BC flunks is headmaster of schools. Macleans. Retrieved from https://archive.macleans.ca/.../bc-flunks-its-headmaster....
Fleming, D. (In press). Critical Second Language Education in Canada: Intersecting Language, Citizenship, Race, Gender, Policy, Decolonization and Curriculum. DIO Press, New York, NY.
Fleming, D. (2017). Talking back to second language education curriculum control: From nouns to verbs. In Herbert, C., Fook, N., Ibrahim, A. & Smith, A (Eds.), Internationalizing curriculum studies: Histories, environments and critiques (IAACS Manifesto Edited Edition) (pp.69-82). New Delhi: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fleming, D. (2003). Building personal and nation-state identities: Research and practice. TESL Canada Journal, 20/2, pp. 65-79.
Vonnegut, M. (1975) Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity. Penguin: New York.
Being a Bad Student
It has been a privilege to work with my CERN colleagues and an honor to be asked to write this for the newsletter.
My research and teaching interests have focused on critical and post-structural second language education, citizenship, policy development, inductive instructional approaches and equity. Before becoming an academic in 2007, I worked for over 20 years in public school districts, community colleges and immigrant serving agencies as an activist, teacher and administrator.
As I ask in the introduction to my upcoming book (Fleming, In press), what happens when equity meets the so-called “nice” field of second language education (SLE)? My book is a collection of previously published work and demonstrates how my colleagues and I have worked through these important concerns over the years. Putting it together has been a rare opportunity to reflect on a life’s work, as I begin to make a slow transition to retirement.
Although my book will be published mainly for the benefit of Second Language Education colleagues, graduate students and practitioners, I believe all those interested in how education can positively affect progressive change will find something of value when it comes out.
In it, I try to summarize what led me to drop my established career as a classroom teacher and how my subsequent experiences as a professor led to a deepening of my understanding of the themes of language and philosophy, second language policy, race, gender, decolonization and curriculum. In short, through the different pieces in this book, I attempt to lay out how a critical approach to second language education in Canada necessitates linking notions surrounding language, citizenship, race, gender, policy, decolonization and curriculum.
The first thing I should make clear is that I was (and probably still am to a certain degree) a bad student, constantly arguing and skipping class. In my day, schools in small town British Columbia were rough and tumble places where machismo, drugs, gossip, bullying, racism and sexism reigned supreme. These were the days of gangs, the strap, the open exploitation of students by staff and unconcealed contempt for intellectual life.
In this isolated coastal pulp and paper mill town, the strong socialist labor union tradition had devolved into an individualist and materialist culture. The history of environmental degradation of the surrounding forests and ocean continued, however. Ever since the town’s founding, First Nations/Native peoples in the area (those that survived the devastations associated with first contact) lived in conditions that amounted to apartheid. The status of women had progressed little past the 1940’s. Revealing a non-binary sexuality invited violence. Other minorities (Blacks, Asians, Jews, Francophones, Southern or Eastern Europeans) learned to be as assimilated (or as invisible) as possible.
Most male students were bound for manual labor, if not in the actual mill that dominated the town, then in places that were similar. These were the days when permanent well-paid jobs could be had with minimal education. Most female students were bound for marriage and homemaking labor. There were exceptions, of course. However, those who didn’t fit the mold were faced some significant challenges. At the outskirts of town, some “misfits” founded alternative communities or lived in isolation (best documented in Mark Vonnegut’s 1975 memoir Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity).
I became politically active as a senior high school student on environmental issues, a time that coincided with the 1974 Bremer Commission’s failed attempt at reforming the British Columbian educational system (Cocking, 1974, March). I still retain an ambivalence towards the NDP based on the way in which those reforms were sabotaged.
My subsequent undergraduate experiences as an English Lit major were deeply intertwined with my involvement with far-left organizations that had more than a passing resemblance to cults (in the sense that they relied on guilt as a means of control, the romanticization of individualistic heroics, charismatic leadership, dogma and sectarianism). Nonetheless, I did some good work in the unemployed labor movement in Canada in Victoria, in the anti-KKK movement in Vancouver and in the anti-poverty movement in the US in New Orleans (where I ended up after completing my undergraduate).
After a few years in New Orleans, I moved back to Canada and found work in Toronto, Ontario, as an ESL instructor, eventually climbing to a significant administrative and supervisory role within the Toronto School Board. My activism now found expression through my work, which emphasized organizing professional development opportunities focused on anti-racism and functional orientations towards curricula. I developed school sites, worked with a wide variety of refugee and immigrant students and took on “trouble-shooting” tasks for the ESL department at Bickford Centre, which at the time was the largest ESL Program in the country. It must be noted, my solace was that, at the Centre, I had some great, innovative and courageous colleagues.
One incident stands out in hindsight as being instrumental in the development of my academic interests. While at a conference in Vancouver, my colleagues and I witnessed the launch by federal officials of the prototype of the Canadian Language Benchmarks Assessment (CLBA). On cue, two secondary school students popped out from behind the presentation screen to the announcement that the field-tested prototype was simple enough for anyone to administer. You can imagine our horror, as professionals with long-standing experience with the complexities of language assessment, at the simplistic nature of the plans presented by the federal officials.
In resistance to the simplistic nature of these plans, the Toronto School Board lobbied for more significant involvement. With other colleagues from several Ontario institutions with significant ESL programs, I was seconded to work on curriculum development projects that in many ways laid the further development of the CLBA and Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC).
At the same time, I started my Master’s Degree under the tutelage of Alister Cumming at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), from whom I learned to love empirical research. OISE was great. I rubbed shoulders with (among others) Patrick Allen, Meryl Swain, Alister Pennycook and Nuzhat Amin. My interest in philosophy returned, but this time in reference to the multitude of problems I saw (and still see) facing ESL education in Canada.
Alister Cumming encouraged me to move from a course-based masters to one that resulted in a thesis that focused on teacher autonomy and agency in curriculum decision making. This was subsequently published in 1998 in TESL Canada Journal (reprinted below in chapter 7), a piece in which I worked out my arguments that countered what I regarded as government attempts to restrict teacher professionalism in my field and made the case that teacher autonomy was essential for quality instruction.
My research focus stemmed directly out of my work experience. I was appalled at the potential detrimental effects of efforts to standardize second language education central to many of the proposals associated with the federally-funded program Language Instruction to Newcomers to Canada (LINC) and (later) the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB). In my estimation, standardization lay at the heart of “the stereotypical descriptions and definitions of Canadian identity and culture found within these documents and programs” (Fleming, 2003, 1).
Despite this fruitful and highly exciting work, I gave up my administrative ambitions in the face of the draconian budgetary cuts of the times and moved back to British Columba in 1999 to work as continuing education teacher for the Surrey School District. Some of my favorite teaching experiences involved assignments as a school librarian and in prison release, LINC, special needs, grade 12 literature and basic literacy from a wide variety of backgrounds while slowly getting (re)involved in curriculum development projects. Again, I had some great colleagues: incredibly generous in fact. I often miss their company.
A chance meeting with Ling Shi in Vancouver at the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) annual conference reignited my academic ambitions and I enrolled as a doctoral student under her joint tutelage with John Willinsky at the University of British Columbia (UBC). I knew Ling Shi from my time in Toronto and benefited greatly from her generosity and experience. John Willinsky helped me through his rigorous approach to argumentation and writing. At UBC, I worked extensively as a teaching assistance and sessional instructor and rubbed shoulders with (among others) Ena Lee, Bonny Norton, Lynne McGivern, Jeremie Seror and Joe Belanger.
The doctoral thesis that resulted focused on how the adult Punjabi-speaking students at my workplace interpreted citizenship. I contrasted their emphasis on the value of multiculturalism and active engagement with the much narrower definition of citizenship found embedded and implied within the Canadian Language Benchmarks. This led to a series of journal articles and book chapters in which I argued that second language learners are often racialized and infantilized in this and other associated documents. A summary of these arguments can be found in Broom, C., Di Mascio, A. & Fleming, D. (2016).
Upon completing my doctoral work, I applied for a tenure-track position at the University of Ottawa, where I now work as a full professor. I have been fortunate to work with many progressive colleagues too numerous to recount here on a full range of projects, both domestic and international. I have had the joy of working with talented graduate students and teaching subject matter on challenging topics connected to equity and diversity.
It is perhaps an indication of how meaningful my work has been that a federal official accused me of being inaccurate and misleading in my criticism of the CLB. He disliked my arguments in terms of the hidden curriculum within the CLB and my contention that the CLB’s infantilization of second language immigrants, in effect, denied them full citizenship. As I argued “the subsequent email exchange we had revolved around my contention that he was using the prestige of his position to put pressure on a scholar to suppress work he found threatening” (Fleming, 2017,1).
As I argue in one of my recent lectures, many second-language educators still think of ourselves as so many Professor Higgins’ from the famous Hollywood film, My Fair Lady. Through our superior knowledge of ‘the majesty and grandeur of the English language’ (to quote the professor), we aim at uplifting the Eliza Doolittles in our classrooms from their poverty-stricken lives to sanctified middle-class existence.
We may not be as unenlightened in the current communicative age as to suppose that repeated drills will do the trick as it did for Professor Higgins, but I believe that most of us operate as if our primary task is to promote learner success through a mastery of high-status standard English. Of course, we find ourselves in the dilemma of knowing that our students need to gain a mastery over English for greater material success in our society. However, too often we do not question the ideological assumptions we make in that regard.
During this lecture, I go through and deconstruct various clips from the film while praising the set, direction, casting, acting and (especially) music. The film contains examples of antiquated (and comical) second language methods (from the days of the audio-lingual approach) and fully illustrates how a standardized notion of language is used as a weapon against the marginalized. In short, Professor Higgins is a sexist monster, the poor are depicted stereotypically, the plot deviates from the original George Bernard Shaw play despicably, the "ethnicism" is clear and the upper social class given ridiculous roles that make them appear harmless (they are far from that, of course). It is old-time Hollywood after all. I encourage my students to note how Higgins uses descriptive phonetics to justify language prescription and critically assess his convoluted belief that “cleaning up” the language of the poor will automatically result in their uplifting within society.
My lecture is a critical examination of the film as a perfect example of how popular media perpetuates false and destructive notions around language. Even the film remains one of my favorite movies from my childhood (under the influence of my own Cockney grandmother), I recognize it as containing multiple classist, racist, sexist, and homophobic elements.
My critical treatment of My Fair Lady is a fair summary of my overall aim as a professor. While acknowledging the complexities and contradictions in our work as second language educators, our goal should be to move away from standardized notions of language that are too often used to dominate and subjugate minoritized people, whether they be women, racialized, “lingualized”, or marginalized in terms of ethnicity, ability, non-binary sexuality or social class.
So, what does happen when equity meets the so-called nice field of second language education (SLE)?
I believe it creates an opportunity in regards to engaging the complexity of the interlocking systems related to power, privilege, citizenship; race; gender, ethnicity, colonization and other forms of minoritalization that pervades our work as second language educators. In short, a serious engagement with these interlocking systems is how we, as academics and practitioners, engage with meaningful issues related to the daily struggles of our students and colleagues.
Doug
Douglas Fleming, PhD (he/lui/él/他 )
Professor, Tenured
Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
http://douglasfleming.weebly.com
Éducation et langues secondes
Second Language Education
Membre du groupe de recherche EducLang
Member of the Research group EducLang
References
Broom, C., Di Mascio, A. & Fleming, D. (2016). Citizenship education in Canada: Past and present. In C. Broom (Ed.), Youth civic engagement in a globalized world: Citizen education in comparative perspectives (pp.15-36). New York: Palgrave, MacMillan.
Cocking, C. (1974, March). BC flunks is headmaster of schools. Macleans. Retrieved from https://archive.macleans.ca/.../bc-flunks-its-headmaster....
Fleming, D. (In press). Critical Second Language Education in Canada: Intersecting Language, Citizenship, Race, Gender, Policy, Decolonization and Curriculum. DIO Press, New York, NY.
Fleming, D. (2017). Talking back to second language education curriculum control: From nouns to verbs. In Herbert, C., Fook, N., Ibrahim, A. & Smith, A (Eds.), Internationalizing curriculum studies: Histories, environments and critiques (IAACS Manifesto Edited Edition) (pp.69-82). New Delhi: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fleming, D. (2003). Building personal and nation-state identities: Research and practice. TESL Canada Journal, 20/2, pp. 65-79.
Vonnegut, M. (1975) Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity. Penguin: New York.