Decolonizing the ‘Modern’ in ‘Modern Languages’
This video was really interesting for me. I had never thought about what ‘modern’ really meant in terms of ‘modern languages’. Dr Ruth Bush explores the teaching and decolonizing of modern foreign languages. One of the first questions she asks is the question of which languages we teach and the predominant focus on Western European languages in modern language teaching. Modern languages has focused mostly on Western languages. Languages were used as a way of improving cultural cooperation which was particularly of growing importance after the First World War. With such a focus on ‘modern languages’, students don’t have access to other languages because they don’t fit historically into what modern languages have meant. Dr Ruth Bush goes on to question the need for the word ‘modern’ in ‘modern languages’. At our school currently, we still have a department called ‘modern languages’. I think it would be an interesting unit to do with students to understand and deconstruct what the word modern really means, and how we can decolonize the department and how languages are taught at schools in Canada.
https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/decolonising-education-from-theory-to-practice/0/steps/190049