Introduction to the Special Issue on Critical Pedagogies

Abstract

“Language is a ‘war zone’,” Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o powerfully notes (Inani,2018, para.17). In trying to conceptualize and define Critical Pedagogy in the current historical moment for the teaching and learning of languages, this seems the most appropriate definition. After all, language teaching and learning are neither politically neutral, nor ahistorical, nor free of ideological considerations. On the contrary, language as a site of power, ideological tensions, political and financial interests, hierarchies, and symbolic and material violence, is most definitely a war zone. War is being waged over which languages have more “value” or are “worth learning;” which languages are at the core and the periphery and how they got there; what the goals of language learning should be; what counts as knowledge and what should be taught; in what ways particular theoretical, curricular, methodological and other choices marginalize and oppress certain languages, their speakers, and their interests, reproducing racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and so forth; and how language learning is connected to political economy, to name just a few of the “battlefields.”

Keywords

• critical pedagogy