ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Curtis Kelly

Chuck Sandy

Chris Hunt

Panelists: Marc | Peter | Curtis | Chuck | Chris
Date: January 2005

Topic: "Should "real world" tragedy be brought into the classroom?"

Peter Viney

The recent tsunami disaster brings up the question of how we deal with such events in the classroom. I’m certainly not talking about a ‘teaching opportunity’ which I think is a totally inappropriate response.

The day it happens
If you’re teaching as a major tragedy unfolds, there isn’t a lot of choice except to gather round a TV set, tune into the news and watch, trying to help explain the events as they unfold in simpler English. For many, this is the 9/11 scenario. They were in class as it happened. With something as great and as sudden as the tsunami or 9/11, it’s highly likely that the lesson situation becomes so irrelevant that you will all prefer to watch the news in the mother tongue.

“Events of this magnitude generally cause people to open up to strangers. But you can neither expect nor demand a particular response.”

After the immediate impact
Here we’re looking at the time span just after the immediate news. It could be that your students have spent all day watching it on TV, and have come to class. Maybe they want an air of normalcy, maybe they want to discuss it there and then. This is not a situation where you’d ever use it as “teaching material” but one where you gently help them express their feelings. The one concession to a language class would be to switch to CNN, Sky News or BBC World News. You might go as far as to record the news, not as teaching material, but because the classroom has a video but not access to cable or satellite. The role is still explanation. As ever, when recording the news, it only works that day or the next.

Degree of intimacy
Marc mentions expressing genuine feelings in English rather than discussing the normal bland topics. There is a question here though. What degree of intimacy do you have with your students? What degree of intimacy do they have with one another? If you’re seeing your students and they’re seeing each other once, or a couple of times a week for 90 minutes, some of them may well not want to open up their feelings. Discussion is related to degree of intimacy. Some people have the knack for escalating conversation to a deeper degree of intimacy. Others don't. Having said that, events of this magnitude generally cause people to open up to strangers. But you can neither expect nor demand a particular response.

Personal involvement
Are your students personally involved in the tragedy? Do they have friends or loved ones impacted by it? Do you as the teacher know this? I’ve taught classes during wars where I had students from both sides in the same room. This was in my early teaching days during the Arab / Israeli conflict of 1973. I’ve told this story before, but I arrived to find two Arab students outside the classroom. They asked me to wait while their Israeli classmate, worried about his family, finished listening to the 2 o’clock news. Because the concept of supporting travelling companions is so deeply embedded in Arab culture, their Israeli classmate’s status as a “travelling companion” outweighed the war situation and he was treated with both sympathy and overt displays of friendship, which were reciprocated. But that was before the days of suicide bombers and bulldozers. I somehow doubt that it would happen now.

Even if you’re certain that none of your class is personally involved, then the question of parallel disasters in their own lives comes up. You’re highly unlikely to know whether the event is replaying deep emotions. Perhaps this is always true. Personal memories of car accidents, murders, plane crashes or whatever can always be set off and we couldn’t ever get bland enough to avoid any possibility!

Collecting money
What situation are you teaching in and how far does it dominate the student’s interface with the outside world? If you’re teaching in a residential university or (as I was for years) in a multi-lingual school in an English-speaking country, the school will provide the easiest route for students to contribute to disaster relief. We never put the hat round in class. Some of our students on government contracts had very little money and were sharing classrooms with rich bankers. Instead we made a collection point available in the student reception area. If you’re teaching in a non-residential system or a private language school, you will be aware that students have had the opportunity to contribute elsewhere in their lives and that no one can be expected to give everywhere, every time.

What can we do?
This is a natural response, and one the teacher might be in a position to assist. It happened for me in the UK during the devastating earthquakes in Nicaragua and Mexico City. We already had a weekly show for students with 400 seats. When we announced that the next show would be for earthquake relief, we were overwhelmed by students wishing to participate. It feels better to contribute time and personal energy rather than (or as well as) simply contributing cash. We had a lot of Latin Americans and we put on teacher / student shows. No language content except necessary language in rehearsals. They sang in Spanish. A Japanese pop singer who was at the school sang in Japanese. An Iranian girl sang in English. A professional Turkish mime artist performed silently. The singers either backed themselves or we had our regular band back them. We raised a lot of money for Nicaragua. Also people felt they had done their bit. It takes a great deal of organization. It needs facilities and above all a potential paying audience.

Compassion fatigue
In the last two days, this problem has been mentioned by both Sir Bob Geldof and Tony Blair. Both referred to the ongoing situation in Africa, with starvation, war and AIDs, which they said results in the weekly equivalent of the tsunami (this was said a week ago, since when numbers have doubled, but the exact scale is irrelevant. It’s not a competition for sympathy), but Africa has passed beyond the public perception of immediate need. So how do you avoid this happening with the tsunami victims, who will need help for months and years to rebuild their communities? I don’t know the answer any more than they do. In a school or university situation, some lengthy ongoing project or relationship with a connection to a school in an affected area might be possible, but we won’t know for a few months because that’s the least of their worries now.

Panelists: Marc | Peter | Curtis | Chuck | Chris

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Peter Viney, Freelance ELT Author

Co-author of New American Streamline & Grapevine. Peter's Web site

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