A critical evaluation of the social justice implications of the Colombian government’s English-Spanish bilingualism policies

ABSTRACT

The National Bilingual Programme was launched in order to promote English learning in Colombia. The failure of this programme and subsequent iterations is well-documented, and research has also examined some of its negative effects for different societal groups. However, a comprehensive study of the social justice implications of Colombia’s national bilingual programmes has not been carried out. Using Young’s framework ‘the five faces of oppression’, the current paper shows how different groups experience different forms of injustice as a result of the implementation of Colombia’s national bilingual programmes and their focus on language as a means to the end of economic development. It is argued that the the Colombian government’s policy approach instrumentalises foreign language learning and diminishes the importance of the other purposes of learning a foreign language. Furthermore, this study shows how a lack of consideration of contextual factors from a social justice perspective can lead to shortcomings in policy implementation and the neglect of social justice issues. The conclusion suggests that bilingual policies need not be oppressive and outlines ways to ensure socially just English-Spanish bilingual education in Colombia.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingualism
• Colombia
• English language
• oppression
• social justice

Acknowledgements

I would like to express thanks to Dr. Jan McArthur and the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on draft versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Lee Mackenzie was born and educated in the U.K. He currently works as a Business English Lecturer at the Universidad del Norte, Colombia. His research interests are teacher reflection, social justice, and English language teaching.

Notes

1. The ‘National Bilingual Programme’ in English.

2. Cronquist and Fiszbein point out that, ‘Colombia’s national English programs have undergone four name changes in the past decade. However, there is substantive continuity among the programs’ (2017, p. 52). Similarly, Bonilla and Tejada-Sánchez comment that there are ‘no clear distinctions’ between Colombia’s bilingual programmes (2016, p. 195). Indeed, these name changes have been confusing for scholars and stakeholders (Bonilla & Tejada-Sánchez, 2016).

3. Saber 11 is taken by high school students in the eleventh grade prior to entering higher education (ICFES, 2019).