Learning Languages of Advocacy and Hope – Perspectives on Language Education for Sustainability

• In Event: Improving Education for a More Sustainable World

Proposal

Pondering whether there is a solution to climate change, Bayo Akomolafe (2019) asks us: “What if the way we think about the crisis is the crisis?” – one could add to this question the follow-up: “What if the way we (teach and learn to) speak about the crisis is part of the crisis as well?”
When it comes to education for social justice, equity, and inclusion, language learning plays an integral part because successful communication is key to developing a sense of interconnectedness and a capability to act and effectuate change.
In this context, it is important to remember that social injustices are inextricably linked to environmental injustices. This relationship becomes particularly apparent in the case of the climate crisis, which is as much a cultural crisis as it is a human rights crisis. Language educators have long resorted to using literature to address climate change-related slow violence (Nixon 2010) in the classroom; that is, slow and long-term forms of socio-environmental injustices which already threaten parts of the global world risk society (Beck 1986). However, there is a certain danger associated with the use of texts, such as poems, novels, or films, as they might overwhelm learners emotionally or lead to a reverse catharsis effect: The dramatic, depressing global developments are being left behind after engaging with literary texts, and learners return to the alleged security of their lifeworlds. Regarding communicative learning goals, they practice languages of risk, despair, and crisis. However, if a central objective of language education is to prepare learners to become active participants in societies and discourses (i.e., being response-able and discourse literate), and thus contribute to sustainable transformation on a communicative level, learners much rather need to be encouraged to cultivate languages of advocacy, change, and hope.
Against this background, this contribution discusses the following questions: In the face of globally increasing socio-environmental injustices, can and should sustainability-oriented language education be based on the principle of hope? Which approaches are suitable for the design of such pedagogy?
The starting point of these deliberations is the concept of disappointed hope (Horkheimer & Adorno 1972), which is being linked to Beck's (1986) notion of world risk society. This leads to the formulation of fundamental hypotheses on the role and function of hope in (language) education for sustainable development, which serve as a basis for the discussion of human/children's rights education as a pedagogy of hope in the context of language education for sustainable development. Against this background, this paper uses the example of employing such texts in the language classroom as short stories, poems, and eco-documentaries, to illustrate how language education can contribute to teaching and learning for active global citizenship, for socio-environmental justice, for learner empowerment, and for hope. As such, it can be located at and addresses the intersection of CIES 2023 sub-themes 1 – social justice and inclusion – and 2 – environmental sustainability.

Author

• Ricardo Roemhild, University of Muenster