Readers of Harry’s Place whose first language isn’t English might, after reading the following, want to stick to skimming blogs to improve their English comprehension instead of shelling out for a series of more formal lessons.
Why? Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) has been infiltrated by hilariously pretentious and po-faced pseudo-Marxists.
How else to explain the following from the first post on their blog?
Here in the Marxist TEFL group we believe English, in itself, is not imperialism and that learning another language can and should be an option for all. Not surprisingly, however, as the dominant ideas in every epoch are the dominant ideas of the ruling class, TEFL has become an instrument of subjugation and inequality. A justification for class society and imperial conquest.
Speaking as someone who has at various times in the past taught English to non-native speakers I like to think I wasn’t subjugating entire ethnic groups, promoting wage inequality, justifying social stratification and/or bloodstained imperial conquest merely by standing in front of a class of teenagers and persuading them to conjugate a few verbs, but who knows? Perhaps I was suffering from a particularly glaring case of false-consciousness.
Maybe.
File under further evidence that Anglophone Marxist grouplets can’t get the staff these days.
Hat tip: Socialist Unity’s round-up of far left blogs.
