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Abstract
Recent and not-so-recent critiques of teaching English as a second or other language (TESOL) have explored the relationship between English language teaching and colonialism. Consequently, native speaker and non-native speaker practitioners have started to question their pedagogies and to re/consider their roles in relation not only to minority languages and local knowledges but also to one another. Adding to this discussion, this article raises a different perspective on teaching English in a postcolonial present, asserting that English is, for some Indigenous peoples and local knowledge holders, a decolonizing agent that “trumps” immediate oppressor languages. To become agents or assistants in decolonizing in contexts such as this, the role for native English speaking (foreigner) language teachers and for many non-native English speaking language teachers (Japanese) may not be to continue developing more critical (and possibly more intrusive) pedagogies but rather to allow themselves to be used to the ends of the Other.
Notes
1Hideaki Uemura, a professor at Keisen University in Tokyo, was cited in English as critiquing the June 6, 2008, resolution for this failure in a Japan Times article written by Masami Ito, and can be found at http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080607a1.html