MacPherson, S. (2006). To STEAL or to TELL: Teaching English in the Global Era . In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as Cultural Practice (71-94). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

The acronyms in the title are: STEAL (Surreptitiously Teach English as an Assimilative Language) and TELL (Teach English as a Liberatory Language).

This chapter tackles the assimilative goals of English language instruction head on. It provides quotations from historical documents that unabashedly claim the goal of assimilation, and it also uncovers less purposeful but still harmful effects of current instructional practices.

MacPherson makes the point that it is not sufficient for minority languages to be used in the personal realm alone – this might help to ensure the languages’ survival, but only at a conversational level. For the full texture and depth of a language to survive, it must be used academically and professionally.

The author is not against the teaching of the English language; she/he teaches English to speakers of other languages. The point is that the English language is not necessarily fit to convey the ideas of other cultures, and so must not be allowed to dominate minority languages. When the higher level words of a language are lost through disuse, because the language has been relegated to the private conversational realm, then the ideas that those words expressed can also be lost.