Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
11-2000
Abstract
In this paper, I will address critical changes and challenges which all educators around the world will have to address if we are to develop a global village in which all humans are respected, allowed to live with dignity and without persecution. Teachers and teacher educators will need to consider the vital importance of helping learners in their moral development as they become competent communicators. Prepackaged, superimposed curricula which do not allow room for teachers and learners to negotiate their words and their worlds simultaneously will eventually come to be seen as counterproductive to the best interests of the societies of the twenty first century. In fact, the basic skills we most need to be teaching, those which help students to develop ontologically while preserving their epistemological curiosity about the world, are conspicuously absent from commercial materials, standardized tests, and courses of teacher preparation. Rather than teachers as technicists who cover a fragmented, decontextualized curriculum, skill by skill, teachers must intellectualize their efforts to design thought provoking activities which require negotiation for meaning and higher order thinking. They will have to learn to read their student s' evolving, developmental proficiencies, as teachers pose critical questions which promote student engagement with issues of language, literacy, culture, ecology, democracy, and humanity.
Copyright Statement
This document was originally published in the Selected Papers from the Ninth International Symposium on English Teaching by the English Teachers' Association, Republic of China. Copyright restrictions may apply.
Publication Information
Bahruth, Roberto E.. (2000). "Changes and Challenges in Teaching the Word and the World for the Benefit of All of Humanity". Selected Papers from the Ninth International Symposium on English Teaching, 1-7.