The Eighth International Literacy & Education Research Network Conference on

SPETSES, GREECE
4-8 July 2001

Juliet Perumal

Lecturer, Department of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Demythologising the Metaphors We Teach By

Abstract

Demythologising the metaphors we teach by provides a postmodern feminist critical review of the Communication, Literacy, and Language component of the Outcomes-Based Learning document, and the Interim Core Syllabus for English Second Language education in the newly democratised multilingual and multicultural South African, secondary school context. Given the androcentric bias of the English language and the masculinist supremacy that characterises school institutional structures, this paper argues that despite the express commitment of these language policy documents to promote a non-racist, non-sexist, and a unitary education, many of its egalitarian ideals are likely to be compromised by naturalized pedagogic metaphors that reinstantiate androcentric ways of being and knowing. The paper identifies taken-for-granted pedagogic metaphors that feature repeatedly in the language policy documents, and subjects them to a critical review to unpack their subtle androcentric biases. It contends that merely mouthing gender equality rhetoric under the rubric of multilingualism and multiculturalism does not adequately address conventions of English language education that promote the inferior linguistic socialization of females. It suggests a critical postmodern feminist engagement with the policy documents to guard against reinstantiating new guise patriarchal regimes of rationality.

Bionote

My name is Juliet Perumal and I am a lecturer in the School of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand. I am currently researching towards a PhD in Education. I have provisonally entitled my research: Enacting feminisms in multilingual classrooms: in search of critical feminist pedagogies of praxis. My research interests include critical and feminist pedagogies, sociolinguistics with a particular focus on language and gender in multilingual contexts. I have lectured in Language and Leaning, Gender Studies, and English Methodology at the University of Durban-Westville, S.A. and in Research Methodology at the M.L. Sultan Technikon in S.A. I have also worked as an educational consultant and have provided editorial support to PhD and Masters students.

Presentation Type
30 min. Paper

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Country
South Africa