CLIL, Technology, Progress and Choice

Brave New World 

Published in 1932, Brave New World is an illustrative artistic treasure, which raises deep philosophical questions about progress, change and choice. Written by Aldous Huxley, the novel is set in a so-called futuristic utopia, achieved by social conditioning and technology.   It seems fitting therefore to discuss CLIL and technology from within the frame of today’s larger educational backdrop using Brave New World as a guide.

Hypnopaedia is the name Huxley gives to the manipulative conditioning process in which catchy phrases and slogans are repeated to indoctrinate unconscious sleeping children.   It is carried out in a successful bid to stabilize the ideas and attitudes of it’s citizens, who are unaware that it is even happening, as they live happily within a stagnant society.  Assembly line models and standardization lead to the dehumanization of individuals, who don’t know how to think and, as such, have restricted choices, doubtful freedom and few signs of wanting or being able to change this reality.

Technology, understood as the tools and applications developed from science, helps society move towards its goal of “progress” and ensure “happiness” among the citizens.  However, it dominates and dehumanizes in ways that make emotions and feelings obsolete and its use not only leads to dependence, but also replaces the need for individuals to use their own minds.   In this way, stability is achieved by eliminating diversity whilst the illusion of happiness is generated with the help of consumerism and drugs. 

The individual is sacrificed to the state and the most worrying thing is that he or she is unawares.  There are no alternatives, no real options and you don’t decide for yourself because the state and World Controllers decide for you.  There is no authentic identity, as this is impossible without conscious independent thought, and no apparent possibility for change.

Today?

In classrooms, where success and failure revolve around rote learning of ‘googleable’ content, whilst participants remain stuck teaching and learning the same mindless platitudes over and over again, progress may be similarly shut down.  Automatic answers, limited awareness and little reflection in standardized evaluation practices can condemn entire systems to stagnation.

On the other hand, in many educational circles, technology is becoming more and more prevalent at the same time as the schooling process is becoming increasingly dehumanized. In the novel different ‘castes’ live side by side, but interaction is, at most, superficial.    In many classrooms, in a similar fashion, students merely live side by side, whilst their real needs are at best, overshadowed by technology and copious numbers of artificial hurdles often in the format of exams.   Technology is undoubtedly capable of dominating society just as in Brave New World, leading to silent changes in goals, moralities and values, if we let it. 

Our role…

As teachers, we have a huge responsibility in shaping both the present and future of this society.  As individuals, and as professionals, unlike in Brave New World have do vast power to change things. What’s more, whether we recognize it or not, we are the ones who determine the direction of change, or lack thereof if we choose to bolster the status quo.  It’s what is happening every minute of every day behind thousands of classroom walls that’s determining the course of events, the progress, or the stagnation of this society.

The world we live in is far from utopia-like, but while that remains everyone else’s fault, while we remain stuck in complaints about all the restraints, all the problems, all that’s less than ideal, we are choosing to bolster that reality. On the other hand, getting stuck in dead end rhetoric becomes a convenient way of avoiding dealing with problems, of not facing them and doing our best.  Therefore, if we choose to stay stuck, consciously or more often unconsciously, we inadvertently reinforce stability and stagnancy, just like those in Huxley’s novel.   We inadvertently, or otherwise, brush off the power of our individual influence rather than going beyond what we know and what is more comfortable to actively instigate change in the right direction.

CLIL and Technology

CLIL provides an ideal framework for that move to occur.  With CLIL we can infuse independent thinking, an appreciation of diversity and a move towards more truly human systems that value that diversity for the good of all therein.  And CLIL has graduated from experimental apprenticeship status to the potential position of powerful driving force in Global Education.   However, while it requires integration on some levels, it is the teachers who will and are deciding, how far that goes.  Afterall, learner centred, empowering experiences don’t and won’t happen unless we make them happen.  Building and consolidating sound interpersonal skills, enabling communication and developing informed decision making, conflict management and leadership skills will undoubtedly have positive individual and collective ramifications, but all of this wholly dependent on very individual teachers’ actions. 

Technology on the other hand, if used conscientiously by confident and competent teachers can become a powerful tool to those ends.     And the integration of new technologies and CLIL provides a way for us to lead and for others to follow. 

CLIL has a sound theoretical underpinning that endorses progress, but far from in Brave New World terms, it does so in ways which can move individuals from dependence, to interdependence whilst simultaneously appreciating their individuality and fostering their independence.  It encourages coherent peer scaffolding platforms and possibilities that aspire to real equity though valuing difference and diversity.  It’s an adaptable tool that can help teachers to create enabling change processes.  We can customize CLIL in new, innovative, creative and tailored ways that can help ensure the best fit between the needs of teachers and learners - in each individual case in point, in ways that are adaptable to the needs of each classroom, the needs of each individual teacher, the needs of each society.

Far from conditioning, CLIL means teachers are in the position to debate, question and decide what learning should and can be going on at any given point in time.  This way, it will always be the individuals involved who decide what that progress will look like and it will be the individuals who collaboratively create the path towards it.  It means teachers can take part in real dialogue around what they consider worthy topics and activities to choose.   And what’s more, technology warrants this happening between teachers from different corners of the world with very different histories, circumstances and realities, but with the common goal of progress.

By integrating CLIL and technology, learning can be moved away from standardized curriculums and test preparation.  Instead, it can become a genuinely accountable process as students and teachers alike become more responsible for the direction their learning takes.  In this sense, progress becomes framed in processes of exploration and experimentation, in ever more human, more carefully considered ways.

Progress and Choice

But we have to choose to take risks and be coherent; in just the same ways we encourage our learners to do and be.  This means that, more often than not, it may be a difficult and uncomfortable voyage of discovery.  It means stability will be demoted and dynamic and calculated risk taking will take pride of place. It means not knowing all the answers, and it might even mean not knowing the right questions.  But we will reap what we sow.

Students after all, don’t need teachers with perfect knowledge of neither language nor content, what they need are authentic role models, committed to progress, committed to doing their best, committed to learning and development.  Committed teachers, despite imperfect circumstances, whose responsibility is to their students and who know where to go to access what they need.  Teachers who are prepared to share effective resources and who are aware of the value of communication and collaboration.  Teachers who scaffold each other, avoiding anonymity, and who choose, rather than avoid the truth about their circumstances and give up their individual agency as in Brave New World, to do what they can.   Teachers, who choose to be ever more aware that learning is neither a straightforward, nor linear process, but instead, an entangled web which is most powerfully built on appropriate attentive human interactions.