Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Language (NECTFL) Goes Full Woke for 2021

A foreign language teacher's role (and any teacher's role, for that matter) is to teach the relevant subject matter, not to politically indoctrinate students. Fair enough?

Did you take a foreign language class while you were in school? If so, I assume that your classroom experience was a lot like mine. We intensely studied words, phrases, idioms, grammar and other language conventions to prepare us to communicate with other speakers of that foreign language.

Did you know that foreign language instructors have their own organizations? One of those organizations is the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NECTFL), which “serves educators in all languages (including classical, less commonly taught, and ENL), at all levels from kindergarten through university, in both public and private settings.” This is from a webpage titled “Learn More about NECTFL.”

The NECTFL Bylaws confirm that the purpose of NECTFL is to assist in the teaching of foreign languages:

Section 2. Purpose. The Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages is a not-for-profit proactive regional organization that serves a broad constituency including language learners, educators and the larger community and is dedicated to the belief that all Americans must have the opportunity to learn and use English and at least one other language.
According to these bylaws, the teaching of foreign languages should be geared to the “larger community.” NECTFL purports to offer foreign language instructions to “all Americans.”

The Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Language will hold its big annual conference April 22-May 1, 2021. For many years, the theme of the NECTFL conference has been focused on the teaching of foreign language. The conference themes for the past five years reflect this:

2020: Languages for All: Envisioning Language Learning Opportunities for Every Learner 2019: Authentic Language, Authentic Learning 2018: Unleashing the POWer of Profiency [SIC] 2017: Strengthening World Language Education: Standards for Success 2016: Developing Intercultural Competence through World Languages

This year, the NECTFL conference theme is strikingly different: “Finding our Voice: World Language for Social Justice.” Instead of focusing on the pedagogy of teaching foreign languages, NECTFL has decided to aggressively push a particular political position. Based on the sessions to be offered this Spring (see below), NECTFL is doing something dramatic and new: trying to impose a controversial political ideology upon its members (and their members’ students). Even more disturbing, this year’s conference theme has nothing to do with NECTFL’s Mission Statement: 

What is the mission statement of the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages? • offer both established and innovative professional development in support of language teachers and learners; and • provide opportunities for collegial interchange on issues critical to the profession; and • anticipate, explore, respond to and advocate for constituent needs.

NECTFL’s Mission Statement page describes a mission of helping language teachers to teach foreign languages to their students. Not one word of NECTFL’s Mission Statement suggests that NECTFL should be advocating any particular use of any foreign language for any particular political end. Therefore, this year’s conference theme is no more in keeping with NECTFL's Mission Statement than “Teaching Students to speak Foreign Languages to Advocate for the Abolition of Gun Control” or “Helping Students Use Foreign Languages to protest abortions.”

Here are the titles and descriptions of some of the “Featured Sessions” for NECTFL’s upcoming (April 2021) conference (from the NECTFL 2021 conference website):

108. Talking Social Justice: Conversations That Matter Saturday, April 24, 2021, 12:30 PM–1:30 PM Teachers don’t have to be afraid of controversial topics in our classrooms. We can engage students in collaborative discussions using thoughtful protocols and help them deepen their understanding of history, develop literacy skills, and build social and emotional competencies at the same time. In this session, participants will explore structures for facilitating class discussions on complex, controversial texts and topics; participate in a collaborative discussion; and plan for how to incorporate these techniques into their own curricula. (Best for grades 6-12.)

111. Becoming Agents of Change: The Work BEFORE the Work! Saturday, April 24, 2021, 2:00 PM–3:00 PM WHAT? You want students to be agents of change. SO WHAT? You want to teach through a social justice lense! [sic] NOW WHAT? Come explore two critical building blocks for effective social justice work: emotional literacy and perspective taking. Gain practical tools that help your students wash away the seeds of assumption and fear. Instead, plant seeds of curiosity and wonder that will be nourished through emotional connection and perspective taking.

120. Reframing Your Teaching of Culture to Emphasize Justice and Equity Sunday, April 25, 2021, 10:00 AM–11:00 AM Social justice issues related to fairness, human rights, and equity are inherent in the cross-cultural, reflective, and analytical nature of studying world languages and cultures. In this session, we provide a framework and instructional strategies for adding a layer of social justice to the cultural products, practices, and perspectives you currently teach. We will emphasize ways to transition your traditional or typical culture topics to include current issues, such as justice and equity issues related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Materials and resources will be shared that can be immediately incorporated into your curriculum and instruction.

Here are the titles of a few other “Featured Sessions” for the upcoming NECTFL conference:

136. Focusing Lesson Design Through Social Justice, Standards & Can-Do Statements

148. Sustained Inquiry of Social Justice Issues Through Project Based Learning

156. Going to the Movies: Developing Social Justice Units Using Film

163. Social Justice Can’t Wait: Engaging Learners from the Start

166. Elles, Muxes, and Identities in WL classroom.

The titles and descriptions of these conference sessions suggest that the teaching of foreign languages has become irrelevant to NECTFL or, at most, an afterthought. Titles like these make me wonder about the content of the handouts and PowerPoint presentations that NECTFL intends to share at its upcoming 2021 conference.

Is it possible to teach a foreign language without aggressively pushing a particular political ideology? Presumably yes, based on the fact that foreign languages have been successfully taught for centuries without any need to inject fringe politics into the classroom. Many people familiar with NECTFL’s long-standing mission will be surprised to see NECTFL advocating for these controversial political positions, all of them crammed onto the far left side of the political spectrum.

I know for a fact that more than a few foreign language teachers are concerned about NECTFL’s decision to try to indoctrinate language teachers and students with these Woke ideological positions. They consider NECTFL’s efforts to turn this year’s conference into a Woke Education Camp to be insulting, presumptuous and contrary to the Mission Statement of NECTFL. These language teachers are reluctant to speak out in public.

I am writing this post to speak on their behalf.

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Matt Taibbi Discusses the Sovietization of the American Press

I follow Matt Taibbi writings at his site, TK. His recent article is titled: "The Sovietization of the American Press: The transformation from phony "objectivity" to open one-party orthodoxy hasn't been an improvement."

It is a thoughtful analysis with many examples. What I'd like to do in this post is simply post one excerpt showing how the exact same issue is treated extraordinarily differently by the same Newspaper (NYT) under Trump versus under Biden:

[C]overage of Biden increasingly resembles official press releases, often featuring embarrassing, Soviet-style contortions. When Biden decided not to punish Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi on the grounds that the “cost” of “breaching the relationship with one of America’s key Arab allies” was too high, the New York Times headline read: “Biden Won’t Penalize Saudi Crown Prince Over Khashoggi’s Killing, Fearing Relations Breach.” When Donald Trump made the same calculation, saying he couldn’t cut ties because “the world is a very dangerous place” and “our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the paper joined most of the rest of the press corps in howling in outrage.

“In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing.” was the Times headline, in a piece that said Trump’s decision was “a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.” The paper noted, “Even Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill expressed revulsion.”

This week, in its “Crusader for the Poor” piece, the Times described Biden’s identical bin Salman decision as mere evidence that he remains “in the cautious middle” in his foreign policy. The paper previously had David Sanger dig up a quote from former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, who “applauded Mr. Biden for ‘trying to thread the needle here… This is the classic example of where you have to balance your values and your interests.’” It’s two opposite takes on exactly the same thing.

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To What Extent Can the Government Prosecute Liars?

To what extent can the government prosecute lies? First Amendment Law Professor Eugene Volokh has written an excellent article considering many angles. Here's an excerpt:

Surprisingly, the Supreme Court has never resolved the question. It hasn’t resolved the big-picture question: When can the government punish lies? It hasn’t resolved the medium-size question: Can the government punish lies in election campaigns? And it hasn’t resolved the particular question: Can the government punish lies about the mechanisms of voting, and in particular about how to vote?

[T]he court considered the case of Xavier Alvarez, a local government official in an LA suburb; he had lied about getting the Congressional Medal of Honor, and was prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act, a statute that bans such lies about military decorations. Unconstitutional, six justices said. There was broad agreement that “Laws restricting false statements about philosophy, religion, history, the social sciences, the arts, and other matters of public concern … would present a grave and unacceptable danger of suppressing truthful speech.” “The point is not that there is no such thing as truth or falsity in these areas or that the truth is always impossible to ascertain, but rather that it is perilous to permit the state to be the arbiter of truth.” (That’s from the dissent, but the concurrence endorsed it, and the plurality’s opinion was even more speech-protective than the others.)

Yet when it came to more specific lies, whether about one’s own medals or something else, there was no majority opinion.

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The Self-Loathing by Media Elites

Matt Taibbi offers a peek into the workings of the brain of a prominent member of the media elite. These people are threatened by the fact that there are some real-life independent journalists who vigorously investigate stories (including stories about the corruption of the media elite) and who zealously follow the facts where they lead. I suspect they are also jealous that these real journalists are doing what these elites only pretend to do and they cannot hide this fraud from their own friends and family. They are jealous to the point of a self-loathing that has bloomed into Nietzschean ressentiment. That's my analysis. Even though I am not a professional psychiatrist, I don't think I'm far off.

See also, Glenn Greenwald's take on who is trying to cancel who, using the most twisted of logic.

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Ryerson University School of Journalism Goes Full Woke

Ryerson University is huge. Almost 50,000 students attend school at the Toronto campus. What's going on in the Ryerson School of Journalism? Former Graduate of the School of Journalism (Master's Degree), Danielle Kubes, would like you to know. Her article in the National Post is titled "Opinion: 'Traumatized' student snowflakes behind Ryerson controversy will never make it as journalists." This is a story that we are hearing more and more from people who love their educational institutions, people who have decided to draw a line in the sand to say "No more!" Here's an excerpt from Kubes' article:

Reading this letter you would think these aspiring journalists attended an orphanage from the Jane Eyre era instead of a modern, urban university. They speak of trauma, a poisoned environment, how unsafe it is and how they have been silenced and belittled.

.   .   .

The irony is, of course, that in their strident attempts to dismantle systemic racism, the students ended up acting more like the oppressors they rail against. They tore down two women in hard-won positions of power. They demand that Ryerson hire teachers and administrators specifically on the basis of sexual orientation and race. They actively discriminate against fellow students with different religious beliefs.

You see, only they get to decide what kind of diversity matters — and they’ve settled on colour, gender and sexual orientation. Diversity of thought and opinion need not apply.

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