Symbolic annihilation: processes influencing English language policy and teaching practice

ABSTRACT

Using a critical approach, I discuss the socioeconomic power impact of capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalization in the teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Colombia, described as a symbolic annihilation process. I argue how these three constructs have influenced language policy-decisions making processes and classroom practices by providing documentation from an 8-month critical ethnographic study. This research was interested in understanding participants’ experiences, as well as exposing the inequalities they faced in a marginalized context in which ‘death’ seems to be the norm. This article theorizes that a necropolitical process has been enacted not only on the human bodies of teachers and students but as a subtle source of political power that operates to eliminate, transform and dismantle the possibilities for teacher autonomy, employment possibilities and choice of languages to be learned. I conclude by describing how teachers counter this necropolitical power by responding to their school realities.

The power of the ‘new’ empire

The notion of imperialism is a complex issue that has gained importance in the discussion of global social issues in relation to what some have called new imperialism and new colonization (Fuchs, 2010; Tikly, 2004). Imperialism is a term that has been advanced by classical theories from different scholars. For example, Lenin (2010) argued that imperialism is the most complex of the different stages of mercantile, industrial, and financial capitalism. He explained how at this highest stage, the destructive power of capitalism becomes part of a vicious cycle in which imperialism, monopolies and colonialism enslave countries in (what has been called) the Global South with no choice but to obey the master.

Numerous conceptualizations of imperialism describe the actions of the Western world on governments abroad. On one hand, there are concepts referred to as colonial expansion that remained after World War I and II as part of the ultimate project of expansion to the docile African continent under the mandate of the Western doctrine abroad (Koebner & Schmidt, 1964). This notion of imperialism extends to the impact of Western regulations and governance over the Global South (Arendt, 1994; Borón, 2004; Veltmeyer et al., 2012). On the other hand, late imperialism (Foster, 2019), often known as the imperialism of global labor under generalized monopoly-finance capital, describes the current era of stagnation, waning American hegemony, and escalating international warfare – all of which are accompanied by mounting dangers to the natural foundations of civilization and life itself, climate change, widening gap between the rich elite and downward slide of low income etc. (Esty, 2002).

More recently, it has been argued that capitalism as a form of late imperialism is emblematic of the rigid hierarchical relationships that control the capitalist world economy of the twenty-first century, which is increasingly dominated by mega-multinational firms and a small number of nations at the heart of the global system (Foster, 2019). The implications of such expressions of capitalism, which according to Arendt (1994) share similarities with later totalitarianism, are marked by the crisis of nation-states requiring the ‘political emancipation’ of the elite to exercise their social-economic-political power. Schumpeter (1951) identified this group as one which creates the historical and social conditions and control of different values which determine differences in class structure prone to imperialism. This elite group becomes the carrier of economic development and imperialist ventures in the form of a machine that exploits, makes profits, (re)creates war and expands to territories; for some, this constitutes the darker side of modernity (Mignolo, 2011). This expansion to modernity requires an exercise of the central political ideas of imperialism and conquest to broaden mass industrial production and economic transactions to secure international positions and establish the roots of racial discrimination and nationalism.

These nationalist sentiments often overlap with imperialism translated into modern politics of mobility (Hobson, 2013). These consist of the migration to a vacant nation on foreign lands bringing citizenship and establishing local self-government in close conformity with their institutions as a project of genuine expansion of a territorial enlargement of their language and to have ultimate colonial control from the mother (British) land. According to Hobson (2013), this control translates into ‘colonial possessions’ that fall into three categories, 1) Crown colonies, where the Crown has the entire control of legislation; 2) colonies possessing representative institutions, but where the home government retains control of public affairs; 3) colonies possessing representative institutions and responsible government and where the home government has no control over any officer except the Governor. These categories are subsequently firmly established in the sociopolitical and economic control and power (mainly from the white upper elitist class) of the foreign lands to continue with colonial expansion and settlement in what has more recently been termed as the New Imperialist Era and further persistence of a Coloniality of Power (Quijano, 2000). That is, somehow it could be said that we are currently facing a wave of neo-imperialism that is not only translated into territorial conquests, but has consequences for socio-cultural, political and economic expansions that insidiously permeate societies of the Global South for the benefit of those developed countries in a never-ending process.

This Coloniality of Power mainly refers to the interrelated practices and legacies of European colonialism and economic hegemony that emerged during the modernist era. Whereas colonialism can be understood as the implementation of settlements on distant territories, imperialism seeks to militarily, politically, economically or culturally dominate other spaces (Said, 1994). Similarly, the incorporation of developing countries into a global economic system controlled by the Global North (whether by military force, political pressure or ideological influence) as a manifestation of New Imperialism reflects the rise and dawn of modernity (Mignolo, 2011). Additionally, Tikly (2004) has conceptualized this New Imperialism as emerging from the ideas of imperialism and colonialism, suggesting that Western discourses of ‘development’ and modernization to conceptualize and operationalize economies of the Global South reinforce the artificial, socially constructed binary dyad of ‘developed/underdeveloped’ that has traditionally been used as a mechanism to cement the unequal relationship between ‘North’ and ‘South.’

The difference between these two poles is even more entrenched when it comes to the emergence of other forms of imperialism in the world and specifically in Latin American territories (Gandásegui, 2005). For example, on one hand, the Western nations brought a focus on efficiency to invade intellectual territory that was previously deemed to be outside of the colonial territory in order to construct rational individuals engaged in maximizing behavior – defined as economic imperialism (Lazear, 2000). On the other hand, the disintegration of colonies in Africa and Asia did not end other forms of colonialism. The structures of dependency remained intact and spread to other nations in the region. One example of such dependency is referred to as intellectual and academic imperialism in which education systems follow the curriculum of the colonial enterprise (Fals-Borda, 1970; Rivera Cusicanqui et al., 2016; Zeiny, 2019), promoted and perpetuated by the English language teaching industry across the world (Block et al., 2013; Motha, 2014) and Latin America (A. M. Escobar, 2012; Núñez-Pardo, 2020) (even at the present time), leading to a Necropolitical process (Lushetich, 2018; Mbembe, 2019) of erasing the languages and knowledges of those living in the conquered lands – known as epistemicide (de Sousa Santos, 2014).

Study and methodological processes

My research was interested in understanding participants’ teaching practices, as well as exposing the inequalities they faced. I sought ‘to establish the meaning of a phenomenon from the views of the participants [and] one of the key elements of collecting data in this way is to observe participants’ behaviors by engaging in their activities’ (Creswell, 2009, p. 16). To accomplish this, I sought to respond to two overarching questions: What sociopolitical and educational processes have guided teachers in their classroom practice? How have these helped teachers envision and enact such practices?

This project took place in a marginalized community in southwest Bogotá (the capital of Colombia) comprised of people displaced by war, farmers, Afro-Colombians, Indigenous peoples and recent immigrants from Venezuela most of whom struggle with high levels of poverty (Diazgranados & Valenzuela, 2020; Ortega, 2021). I worked for eight months (May to December 2018) with three English teachers (Hadasa, Sol and Camello) and their¹ students (grades 6 to 11 and ages 11–17). I conducted six interviews with individual teachers and six focus groups (three with students and three with teachers)², I analyzed government policy and curricular documents, and observed more than 80 classes and school interactions. I also conducted a thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998) of the data using axial coding in NVivo 11 and subsequently, I brought a grounded theory approach (Corbin & Strauss, 1994, 2008) to understand and make sense of the data to theorize.

The sections below describe this theorization in the form of the following themes: A symbolic and insidious system that engages death-making processes for language teaching and learning and 2) a symbolic counter-narrative to these processes which was executed by the teachers through their pedagogical practices.

Symbolic annihilation

One day while observing some interactions at the teachers’ lounge, I heard a commotion. I could not hold it and I asked some of the teachers what was happening and one of them told me that a former student of the school had been killed over the weekend. I was in shock for a moment, but one of the teachers asked me not to worry as this happens all the time. He said ‘we are destined to death around here’ but to me, this message was nothing other than the normalization of death among Colombians due to the history of violence (González González, 2014; Malaver, 2014). I immediately noticed that death was part of the lived experiences in this community in this school and the broader Colombian society. Therefore, I began theorizing how death permeated this context and specifically how it relates to the work teachers do, their pedagogical approaches and educational processes with a symbolic absence of representation (Gerbner & Gross, 1976).

My theorization draws on the notion that the normalization of the concept of death as a metaphor to indicate different forms of death and its representation in the educational system of Colombia are related. As a Colombian born and raised, I experienced the death of classmates and friends when I was younger. Teachers were and still are threatened by gangs that protect their members who sell drugs inside the schools, in a sense; death is all around the school. During my research work with teachers and students, I wondered how their work in the English class was related to other aspects of schooling, curriculum, education, and pedagogical practices. Based on the collected evidence, I found out that a system (Death Triumviratus, explained below) has been insidiously put in place to annihilate educational possibilities for teachers and students. In other words, a process of death-making has been enacted to eradicate the teaching opportunities, promises and chances to learn beyond the English language.

Since the data collected and its corresponding analysis was carried out through the lens of grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Lee, 2016), I started to theorize around the lines of this death-making process and the three forces that I have called Death Triumviratus. Triumviratus, from Latin, means a rank of three; from a political perspective, a triumvirate is a political regime ruled or dominated by three powerful individuals known as triumvirs (Lintott, 1999). Historically, this refers to an official group of three people, especially a ruling council of three men, particularly in Roman history (Stambaugh, 1988). Death Triumviratus encompasses a group of three systemic sociopolitical forces that perniciously exercise a death-making process to reduce people’s freedom and autonomy. As such, they have been appointed to oversee, rule, command, and control, for the purposes of establishing and sustaining colonies in territories to exercise power and dominate (Lushetich, 2018; Mbembe, 2019). I extrapolate these ideas and explain how this triumvirate has long been established by capitalism, neoliberalism and globalization as hegemonic forces that work as gears for dehumanization (see Figure 1). In the section below, I discuss these concepts in light of collected data and how they have influenced teachers’ pedagogical practices.

Figure 1. Death Triumviratus: A capitalist, global and neoliberal death-making system.

The death triumviratus

Capitalism

Capitalism as a global platform has become an economic system based on selling goods for profit from private ownership (Gilpin, 2018; Jenks, 1998). It has been argued that capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals own and control property according to their interests and where supply and demand freely determine market pricing in a way that can best benefit society (Wood, 2016).

Adam Smith (1822) observed that the essential feature of capitalism is the motive to make a profit. He argued that capitalism is rooted in exchange transactions that benefit both parties – the seller and the buyer – each seeking maximum reward in terms of the acquisition of goods and services, as well as monetary benefits. Capitalism relies on a market system within which interactions between buyers and sellers set prices in a decentralized way; prices, in turn, serve to allocate resources (Coates, 2015).

During one of our interviews, Camello equated himself to being a seller and his students the purchasers of his product. Indeed, Camello saw himself and his students as producers/consumers of the English language. Here, it became evident the applicability of capitalism to Camello’s comments about the commodification of education as services and he being a cog in a (metaphorical) industrial machine.

He also described having a very structured, tight schedule (see Figure 2 for an image of Camello’s class schedule), and on numerous occasions, he shared with me how tiring it was to clock in and clock out for the sake of his capitalistic production. Moreover, Camello seemed to feel that his job as an English teacher had been branded and constructed as a commodity, and idea that is congruent with the values and practices of new capitalism (Gee et al., 2019). His distress about his work is reflected in an increasingly common idea associating language education with economic benefits in terms of employability in which there are ‘producers’ and ‘consumers,’ and having less to do with learning and communication (Duchêne & Heller, 2012). In other words, looked at through the lens of capitalism, during our various interviews, it became evident that Camello saw himself as a pawn of the system and that the educational context that he works in is dehumanizing because it separates students from their lived realities and boxes teachers into a monotonous, rigid and industrialized form of education (Giroux, 2004) as depicted in his tight schedule with little to no breaks during the school day, similar to the steel bars of a jail forming a grid pattern as Camello puts it and questions why he always feels he is in prison.

Figure 2. Camello’s weekly schedule.

In response to Camello’s sentiments, Klees (2016) argues that education within capitalism often reproduces social and economic inequalities shielded behind consumerist, individualistic and material ideology and greed. It almost seems like a capitalist agenda places priority on efficiency and progress while aiming to boost the perception of prosperity and happiness as the basis of social equality under an equal-rights society granted to all individual members. According to the data collected, the teachers in the study seemed to agree that English would be the great equalizer for all, because if all their students have English, then all would have equal opportunities to find employment after graduation. This is true for Camello whose classes are geared toward providing the necessary English skills to enhance his students’ future job and income prospects.

My goal is to provide the best English opportunities, so they [students] can find a better jobs and they can sustain their families. I want them to be proud of this country and they can be ambassadors to use English when tourists arrive.

(Camello, Interview August 12, 2018)

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism has become a central guiding principle of economic thought and management for nation-states. It can be defined as a political ideology associated with the idea of moving the goods of capitalism across free markets, which ultimately influences and reforms government policies that, in turn, seek to control economies and cultures (Eagleton-Pierce, 2016). Neoliberalism as a mutation of capitalism (Dardot & Laval, 2014) has spread across the globe with shock and awe through wars rewarded for the benefit of corporations and through belligerent exploitation of people to advance market-oriented reform policies and monopolies (Klein, 2014). Theories of neoliberalism also accord free markets as the most effective way to allocate resources. Indeed, according to Harvey (2007), neoliberalism privileges the free movement of commerce and capital, and continued economic growth as the best way to advance humankind.

For a long time, neoliberalism has been used as a tool to shape the future of education which ‘is increasingly dominated by individualistic goals and extrinsic benefits in which students are consumers of an educational product’ (Saunders, 2007, p. 4). Chomsky (1999) explains how neoliberal policies and practices in which the private interests of a few people are at play seek to control social life for the personal maximization of profits. In education, ‘The shift from pedagogical to market values has been widely commented on as involving a fundamental shift in educational philosophy: the abandonment of the social and cooperative ethic in favor of individualist and competitive business models.’ (Block et al., 2013, p. 6).

Furthermore, Bori and Canale (2022) have already theorized to understand the effects of neoliberalism in the form of discourses related to language as skill, standardization and profit, and devaluing education. When I spoke with the teachers about the benefits and advantages of learning English, teachers seemed to be in favor of English as the language for profit, they considered that this was necessary as an option in life to function in a capitalist system. During my interview with Hadasa, she explained how she was able to convince her students that English as an option for life may provide opportunities for labor in the near future.

We are a country in which we do not need to speak a foreign language, they can survive without English, but it depends, for example in the city of Cartagena, English is projected to be taught for tourism, same as in San Andrés. In cities like Medellin, bilingualism is very strong, more than us here in the capital, then it [English] becomes an option for life, they [students] say English works, so I am going to speak English because this helps me to eat.

(Hadasa, Interview, August 12, 2018)

In this interview passage, we can see the sentiment of hopelessness felt by Hadasa, it seems that without English students will not live. From this perspective, it appears that English has become an essential good for survival in some contexts and perhaps the only and most suitable way to achieve academic and personal success. Likewise, several students confirmed that they see English as an open door to improve their lives in hopes of improving their social mobility after graduation.

I think it [English language] is important at this moment and indeed it will improve my quality of life. After all, I hope to go to undergrad school and travel abroad or also the fact that there are work opportunities here because people come from other countries and that is the language that is mostly used, and it will open doors to get a better job as it would give me more income to have a better life.

(Alicia, student focus group, September 27, 2018)

Alicia provided one of the many examples I found during my work with the students and teachers. For her, English is a key that opens the opportunity door and, as such, it is something most of the students seek to secure a future for themselves and their families. I remember Alicia telling me that she was sure that if she learned English, she would get ahead of her peers and find a job in a call center or as a tourist guide so she could find the love of her life and move out of the country.

In order to achieve this kind of security, mobility, and other personal goals students typically have to work hard at school. I witnessed how students needed to do homework, prepare assignments and study for the English standardized test so at some point in their future they ‘would be better’ than their parents, get a job and bring a piece of bread to the table. It almost seems that on one hand students sought the key to getting out of poverty and on the other hand, teachers provided the necessary skills to accomplish that goal. To do so, teachers need to train their students for the Colombian English standardized test, carry out bureaucratic tasks and be accountable for administrative demands. In other words, throughout my observations, I learned that the teachers’ and students’ bettering of their current lot in life is mainly located at the nexus of neoliberalism and capitalism in the sense that their work is mainly targeted at the selling and buying of labor-power to supply a world business model (Hill & Kumar, 2012).

Globalization

At its simplest, globalization refers to the deepening interconnectedness of economies (exports/imports), cultures, and people throughout the world as a result of technological advancements, cross-border commerce, and the movement of capital, labor, and information (Helpman, 2018). Bartelson (2000) argues that the idea of globalization is ambiguous:

It stands in a double and paradoxical relation to this world of international relations. On the one hand, the concept of globalization seems to presuppose a stratification and compartmentalization of the world in order to be theoretically meaningful. On the other hand, the concept of globalization seems to transgress this stratification and compartmentalization.

(p.183)

In other words, the concept of globalization is ontologically mutating and gradually adapting as new economies emerge. As a multifaceted and complex phenomenon in line with capitalism and neoliberalism, globalization has become a symbol that leads nations to a state of postmodernity in which these new dimensions of socioeconomic stratification have emerged with implications on equity and equality for educational opportunities (Zajda, 2010). These opportunities are created for new markets based on neoliberal ideas for the distribution of educational resources under free tax agreements and individual self-interests, thus commodifying goods and resources (Banya, 2010).

During my fieldwork and in my observations, there were many instances where students commented on how they see English as the key to social mobility, job stability and economic safety in an uncertain future. The commodification of language and its influence on policies and practice is not isolated to Colombia. Similar data from dual language education in the USA reinforces the notion of bilingual education (with language as the commodity) as a discursive form of gentrification propelled by English-hegemonic and neoliberal forces that historically benefit white English-privileged students (Freire et al., 2022). The insidious effect of this kind of thinking results in a language learning policy that put young Latinx students in the position of commodifying their languages (Spanish and English) to enable them to participate in the advancement of capitalism by being efficient and productive in the global economy (Valdez et al., 2016; Valdez, 2014).

As evidenced by my own focus groups data, I vividly remember one of the students (see excerpt below) who mentioned that he would like to have a decent job in his future after high school and argued that English seemed to be one secure avenue to obtain that goal.

I think, it [the English language] is very important and I believe it can improve my quality of life because most of the jobs require us to have a second language, but English is the most required and that allows us to travel abroad and communicate with people and learn about other cultures, much better than if we did not have a second language.

(Daniel, student focus group, September 27, 2018)

Daniel’s comment above not only evokes the sentiment of other students in the class, but how others feel in the school as experienced during my daily walks and chats with students in the hallways. He said that he intended to travel abroad at some point in his life, either to gain cultural experiences or find a job to support his family. Like Daniel, many others have described English as a tool to connect with and learn from other cultures (Ferrão Candau, 2019; Guilherme & Souza, 2019), however, his comment also raises the idea of a globalized world. Indeed, according to the Colombian Ministry of Education, the linguistic policies, curriculum, lesson plans and some suggested pedagogical approaches in Colombia Bilingüe, the bilingual educational program (Ministerio de Educación Nacional de Colombia, 2016) framing Daniel’s learning are pitched toward manufacturing a globalized citizen who can understand the world not only culturally but economically (Gilpin, 2018).

Indeed, the rhetoric of this policy which assumes that learning English will improve the lives of students, manifests in how the teachers and students describe their participation and desired outcomes of English language learning. In particular, the teachers frame their contribution as purveyors of a commodity, and students as the consumers so they can participate in a global market. These depictions show the triumvirate of capitalism, neoliberalism and globalization converging at the nexus of a perpetuating structure that purports to provide the resources to sustain and improve livelihoods under the auspices of social mobility as a desired outcome in an uncertain future.

From a theoretical perspective, I argue that unfortunately students and teachers (myself included) have (un)consciously become pawns of a system in which a necropolitical process is carried out. A capitalist, neoliberal and globalized system that acts as an illusion because our actions have been invisibilized. The notions contained in the Death Triumviratus, not only work in tandem but interdependently to perpetuate a neo-imperialist and neo-colonial system (Quijano, 2000). This one destroys humanity for the sake of efficiency, rationality, and progress (Borón, 2004) in a death-making process of massive intellectual, academic and personal genocide (de Souza Santos, 2014) affecting teachers’ autonomy, future employment opportunities for students, and options of learning other languages than English. In the next section, I detail how these three constructs (Capitalism, Neoliberalism, and Globalization) have trickled down into a necropolitical process in every social, cultural, educational, and economic aspect affecting teachers and students alike.

Necropolitical processes

Thus far, I have described the insidious forces of the Death Triumviratus that have permeated the education system while drawing on empirical data from my research. I argue that this intrusion also houses some necropolitical elements, whereby the idea of death and power is not only enacted on the human bodies of teachers and students, but it also constitutes a subtle and devious source of political power that operates to eliminate, transform and dismantle the possibilities for humanization (Emerson, 2019). In other words, a death-making process that nonetheless makes possible contemporary regimes of neoliberal governmentality by enforcing agendas to further capitalism while disbanding other possible alternatives (Alphin & Debrix, 2019). It almost seems that sovereignty is primarily about the right to exterminate and exercise political power as a prerogative to dispose of human subjects and bodies (and the intellect) (Mbembe, 2019).

Mbembe (2019) argues that Necropolitics, as a complex and multi-faceted concept, is often used as a tool of colonial domination and oppression, particularly against people of color and other marginalized groups. Death-making processes are enacted in Necropolitics as a theory of power where the state decides (literally or metaphorically) on the life and death of individuals, cultures, and languages through political powers, ideologies, policies, media, and other forms of state-sanctioned violence and control. We see these processes inscribed in modern states, functioning as a form of governance in which gradual, and at times imperceptible, necropolitical processes are enacted so teachers and students become the living dead of the system.

Below, I attempt to show how this premise is observed by stakeholders’ death-making decisions that are mainly geared toward 1) eliminating the teachers’ autonomy in the classroom, 2) limiting the prospects for a decent job after graduation if students do not learn English, and 3) capping the opportunities for learning other foreign languages or even Indigenous languages.

Teachers’ autonomy

Teacher autonomy has been in decline for a while (Malkus, 2015) and Colombian teachers are no exception as they are constrained by the suggested curricular guidelines that are geared toward training students to serve the capitalist mentality portrayed in Colombia Bilingüe policy (Ministerio de Educación Nacional de Colombia, 2016). Teachers (like others in the country) in this study have battled with everyday time constraints. They have to choose between teaching their students meaningful linguistic content and training them for standardized testing. Unfortunately, according to what Sol stated in her interview, academic coordinators in schools constantly pressure teachers to use most of their teaching time making use of the locally produced government booklets to train their students to learn the skills to pass the Prueba Saber examinations.

Prueba Saber (Ministerio de Educación Nacional de Colombia, 2014) is a standardized test that students have to take at different stages during their schooling trajectories in Colombia; Prueba Saber 11 is the examination taken at the end of high school. According to Decreto 869 [Bylaw 869] (Ministerio de Educación Nacional de Colombia, 2010), the main aim of this test is to demonstrate the level of the skills students have acquired to navigate life after graduation; this includes 45 questions in English. In August 2018, one of the teachers (Sol) was given the booklet named ‘Know your skills, prepare for life’ (Secretaría de Educación del Distrito, 2018) with preparation questions for Prueba Saber 11 in English. Teachers understood this as a direct threat to their autonomous decisions about what to teach students and how to teach it, thus, removing opportunities for the teachers to diagnose and respond to students’ academic and emotional needs. For teachers, their work in the direction of education for liberation becomes a fallacy and an ideal under the neoliberal label of productivity (Shapiro, 2010), in other words, training their students for the sake of producing goods at the expense of students’ emotional wellbeing and the death of teachers’ independent modes of teaching. The test preparation booklet that the local government suggested and the constant pressure from the academic coordinators means nothing other than the death of teachers’ autonomy to teach classes according to what the students and their community need.

Employment possibilities

During the interviews, teachers agreed that English provides opportunities for employment as it opens many social and economic doors. The following excerpt explains this: ‘I have been telling them [the students] to study English because it is necessary to find a job and to be somebody in their future lives (Hadasa, interview, August 31, 2018).

However, this belief reduces the possibility of finding jobs if students do not have English in their academic curriculum. On many occasions, students told me, in the focus group, that if they do not know English, they will not have the chance to get a ‘decent’ job or any job at all, regardless of whether the work they do is in English or not. Students learn English because they fear they will not get a sustainable job so they can feed their families in the future. One of the students said to me ‘no English, no job, no food, we die’ (Alberto, focus group, August 18, 2018). Although it is not a bilingual country (Spanish/English), Colombian educational policies promote English learning as if it were the only way to move socially (British Council, 2015; Ministerio de Educación Nacional de Colombia, 2016), be successful and survive economically and professionally, whereas those who do not learn English perish economically.

Furthermore, students consistently provided examples of friends and relatives who were rejected after applying for positions, as they did not have any certification in English. In addition, focus groups carried out with the students revealed how they saw the need to learn English solely to gain access to jobs and advance their professional careers but not necessarily for their personal purposes.

English is very important, it is good to learn it because, after high school, it can give us a better chance for employment, more economic stability, and the possibility of traveling abroad and it helps our personal life to get a job in business or if I want to study elsewhere.

(Carlos, student focus group, August 18, 2018)

Students consistently agreed that if they do not learn English today, they may not secure a job after graduation, or it may be harder to compete with others who have studied English. As one of the students said, ‘I am destined to be a cleaner or a drug dealer here in Colombia if I do not have English’ (Alberto, focus group, August 18, 2018). What this means for students in marginalized conditions is no other than the death of multiple possibilities for employment without English, therefore forcing everyone to learn the language.

Additionally, teachers commented on the reasons why their job is ‘respected’ at school and elsewhere; saying that this is because English has given them status among their peers. They also argued that if it were not for English, it would be hard to find a job as a teacher in any other subject, as English is in such high demand in the country, as can be seen in the comments below.

Look, here at school everyone dislikes us because we have English and with it, we can find jobs anywhere. They may not like us because English gives lots of possibilities whereas being a social studies teacher or a history teacher in Spanish is not in high demand, so they have to settle with what they have.

(Sol, interview, November 1, 2018)

For some, English can be a great tool for communication, but it has been demonstrated that it can be a weapon to destroy students’ and teachers’ lives. If you do not have this tool, your possibilities of finding a job to survive are scarce, leading students to precarious jobs and teachers to be at the margins of education like their counterparts who teach other subject matters. Employment might be the key to social development (OECD, 2017) but if it does not provide the basic needs, ultimately, it leads to the ongoing precarious living of marginalized peoples and eventually death.

Language choice

Based on classroom observations and several interviews with teachers and students’ focus groups, I learned of this constant feeling of ‘having’ to learn English. In one particular focus group interview with students, when I asked them if they wanted to learn a different language, they said that they would love to learn Portuguese or French, for example, but that the reality was that without English they would not get a job. Therefore, what I understood was that a restricted language policy that openly foregrounds English as the foreign language to be learned in public schools greatly restricts the possibilities of languages available to be learned. Colombia Bilingüe policy refers to bilingualism (Spanish/English) only and nowhere acknowledges the learning of foreign languages or any Indigenous language from the country. In fact, teachers mentioned several times that they would like to introduce Indigenous languages in the classroom, but they were afraid this would divert attention from learning something that would be ‘useful’ for the students’ future after graduation. Even Indigenous peoples in Colombia are coerced to learn Spanish as a first language and English as a foreign language, thus, making them forget or dislike their Indigenous languages (Usma et al., 2018). This is true for some Indigenous students who were in the school I conducted the research. They were displaced by the internal war and told me that they have lost their language and the only choice they had at school is to continue learning Spanish as a medium of instruction and a few classes of English.

What I learned from these students and the ongoing mentality through the Colombian policy is nothing but a subtle attempt to ignore the linguistic diversity of different ethnic groups in the country. In the end, bringing English to the forefront of Colombian public education means the death of opportunities to choose from an array of languages that are available to be learned or even to revitalize the Indigenous languages.

Symbolic counter-narrative

One might ask how this symbolical annihilation might be contested, challenged, and problematized. Evidence from the findings suggested that a symbolic counter-narrative emerged as a response to the neoliberal, capitalist and global narrative envisioned by the Colombian linguistic policy. Teachers, with their practice geared toward humanization, attempted to send a message that offers a positive alternative to deconstruct or delegitimize the market-driven agenda set by the government. This counter-narrative resulted, for teachers and students, in one of the many avenues that can lead to transformative action for educational equity, especially for those in marginalized contexts who constantly battle against the grain to counter the stories of the privileged that are considered normal and neutral (Miller et al., 2020).

In this sense, this research project demonstrated how teachers continue to respond to school realities typical of Colombian public schools (Miranda & Valencia Giraldo, 2019; Valencia Giraldo, 2006) in two ways. First, the policy about not following the ‘English-only’ ideology and thus allowing students to use Spanish whenever possible helped students to feel more comfortable during classroom tasks. It was clear that students were motivated and engaged in their English learning when the teachers provided a safe space for them to use Spanish as a scaffolding device. Teachers in the study reclaimed the right for their micro policies to set the rules when it comes to the use of English and Spanish in pedagogical tasks. In a sense, speaking in Spanish became a breather of life; I noticed how students felt relief when allowed to use their home language in an English class. Second, the policy laid down by the government and adopted by the institution vis-a-vis the curriculum became a flexible policy in which teachers adapted whatever was necessary to the students’ needs to pursue a humanizing goal while welcoming ideas and feedback for lesson planning.

The teachers’ approaches to enabling student success are in line with Menken and García’s (2010) recommendations that a school should consider local needs and play a role in determining language policy instead of solely drawing on government-mandated policy. In this scenario, educators are placed at the epicenter of the school system’s language policy and empowered to interpret, negotiate, resist and recreate classroom practices based on their own needs and the needs of their students. Based on my observations, the classroom practices of the teachers in this study, resisting government policy, allowed students to use Spanish as a measure to support their learning during classroom activities which normally would have required them to use English. According to, Menken and García (2010), such micro-actions (tiny practices in the classroom) may have consequences on macro actions (school/state level) in ways that can affect not only language policy but students’ lived experiences. In other words, some of the classroom practices refer to some of the desires expressed by the students that the consequences can be far-reaching beyond the short-term lived experience, but economically, socially, culturally, and mental health in the long term.

I, therefore, proposed that local language policies (both at the school and classroom level) should be promoted, thus establishing policymaking by teachers at the school level with the support of Colombian scholars, researchers, and the language teaching community. It is important that in the context of necropolitical decisions to eliminate the possibilities of learning any Indigenous languages and other foreign languages, freedom and agency must be given to teachers and school administration to give life to other languages other than English.

It was evident that a policy counter-narrative that focuses on students in opposition to (perceived) dominant and powerful master-narratives, is necessary to truly foster a socially just world. As an example of this, Sol offers her thoughts about humanizing teaching in education.

Although we are not all in the same boat, we are clear that we want excellent citizens. Peaceful co-existence and citizenship are fundamental because we spend time with students at school, time that is not given by parents at home; the family is the one who is supposed to give citizenship values to children, respect to others, respect to oneself, respect to nature, respect to one’s sexuality, responsibility. Because the academic work has not been good, we are together to implement different strategies to mitigate the problems by creating projects to fill in the gaps that students have at a personal and human level.

(Sol, teacher, individual interview, August 12, 2018)

I observed several other examples of teachers countering master narratives. Hadasa, for example, was concerned about the bullying taking place over the way students looked, the clothes they wore, or where they live. In one interview conversation, she told me that she was appalled by the level of violence this kind of bullying generates and she wanted to do something about this. One day she asked her students to look at one classmate and write in English two things they liked about them or that they felt proud about them. She collected the notebooks, made some grammar corrections and then asked the students to put the notes on a card and embellish them with drawings before handing them to their classmates. She argues that tiny actions like this should help her students see each other as humans and not objects. Similarly, Camello wanted to address his students’ capitalistic views of English learning by encouraging them to appreciate the local culture. He created a project with his students to highlight local landmarks, such as rivers, markets, popular streets and local food and music. The students created bilingual brochures (in English and Spanish) as a way to practice their writing skills, which they then distributed at school to create cultural awareness among their schoolmates.

The pedagogical approaches these teachers brought to their classrooms suggest steps closer to decolonizing the students’ perceptions of each other and their community as well as how education can find creative forms of resistance and re-existence in order to find arguments for dignity and life against death, destruction, and civilizational despair (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). It is important to recognize the humanizing aspects the teachers brought as an ethic to underpin their goals for a better and more inclusive world through the classroom activities they deployed to decolonize and open minds to other possibilities and ways of viewing. In a sense, it looks like these inherent decolonizing approaches such as these are effective first steps toward epistemic reconstruction of pedagogies that confront modern challenges through practical actions for social change in a non-distant future (Nigam, 2021).

Certainly, while it was evident that an insidious and deviant form of annihilation has been perpetuated at a systemic level, teachers working on the ground with their pedagogical approaches have been countering sociopolitical and economic views of what it means to teach English. I remain hopeful that in a new post-pandemic future, more teachers work toward a more radical but humanizing agenda against systemic oppression. One that implements alternatives to neoliberalism, capitalism and globalization because paraphrasing Sol’s words, we cannot afford individualistic ideologies, we need to put all our effort toward a problem-solving and humanizing education for all.

Concluding thoughts

Throughout this article, I have attempted to explain a symbolic process of death-making of teachers’ autonomy, the employment possibilities, and the options of learning languages other than English, thus removing the opportunities of reclaiming, learning and revitalizing Indigenous languages. It almost seems that the onus is on teachers and researchers who intrinsically know this process is happening, yet the Death Triumviratus as a systematic death process remains rooted in educational practices and governmental political decision-making.

From a pedagogical perspective, this critical research study demonstrates the value of teachers and students working collaboratively to create projects that respond to community needs and shift the dominant narrative away from discussing social problems to attempting to solve them (Bucholtz, 2021). As such, the promotion of culturally sustaining pedagogies for justice (Paris & Alim, 2017) within the context of an evolving and ever-changing world become increasingly necessary in times of crisis. While the teachers in this study continue teaching English, they are also embracing techniques and processes to foster respect for different cultural ways of knowing and being. This extends to teaching their students to persevere and be resilient, and to empowering them to accept and honor their cultural backgrounds not only as Colombians, but as citizens of the world. They have encouraged their students to use English in meaningful ways that allow them to practice their communication skills such as writing blog posts, recording videos for social media, making murals in the school, doing comics, writing poems and bilingual hip-hop lyrics of their experiences of injustice and violence in the neighborhood.

From a research perspective, it is important to welcome and acknowledge the contributions of the participants in the data collection and data analysis. Therefore, I advocate continuing work using collaborative and participatory action research (Fals-Borda, 1987, 1999; Kemmis et al., 2014; Ortega, 2020), community-based research (Comber & Comber, 2018; Janzen et al., 2017) and other Decolonial and Indigenous methodologies (Archibald et al., 2019; Smith et al., 2018; Wilson, 2008) needed in classroom research to advance social research in English language teaching (W. Escobar, 2013). This might help practitioners move beyond the school, the community and the world. Ongoing efforts in Colombia have demonstrated that other forms of research and practice are possible and necessary in a post-conflict era for the country (Arias-Cepeda, 2020; Granados-Beltrán, 2018; Núñez-Pardo, 2020; Usma et al., 2018).

Finally, countering death-making processes might be necessary for both education and research in which human feelings, memories, and thoughts capture the essence of what participants experience. The lived experiences and knowledge of teachers and students in the research project presented in this article may serve as examples of affirming identities and transforming humanity while challenging systems of inequality (Paris & Winn, 2014). In the work that I did with my participants, it was evident that training students to succeed in a global capitalist paradigm is not enough. While the modification of classroom practices is a minuscule example of how to dismantle the Death Triumviratus, they bring us one step closer to transforming research and practice in the field of English language teaching, especially in Colombia.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the teachers and students involved in the research process for all the work they do to address issues of social injustice in a country like Colombia, especially in the English as a foreign language class. I would like to thank the reviewers for their important insights into my work. This research was supported by The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the International Research Foundation for English Language Teaching (TIRF).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Pseudonyms.

2. Interviews with students and teachers were carried out in Spanish, except the ones carried out with Camello which were done in English. Translations into English were done by me and peer-reviewed by a professional interpreter.