Linguistic and Cultural Education for "Bildung" and Citizenship

Author(s): MICHAEL BYRAM

Source: The Modern Language Journal , Summer 2010, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp.
317-321
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers
Associations

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40856134

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 Perspectives 317

learning."for by fostering a deep

She engagement with narra-
points
nificant consequence
tives. Narratives as a particularly accessible and
learners are to way
particularly "impressive" learn
for learners to ex-
meaning perience
between cultural immersion in the FL classroom an
also deserve close attention not
recognizes theonly because they loare
opment among our
of that"primary sense-making abilitresources" but
to capturealso because
its they inherently
dynam highlight differing
learning process.
perspectives taken in different cultures on the hu-
That man condition.concern
same The fact that narratives are also

term quality
among the most centralof forms in which an we engage
derstanding and
with language and, by extension, learn languageth is
adequately
the final decisive reflecte
feature that recommends them

assessment
for the largerpractice
project of integrating language and
culture in FL classrooms.
Furstenberg's contri
vative use Whether
of these technol
representations amount to a
fundamental reconsideration
transcultural of the role of cul-
compe
have created
ture in FL curricula or a cours
not, they provide stimu-
number of language
lating perspectives that might ultimately enable
original it.
French conte
ical stance that privi
probing, REFERENCES
of hypoth
uncovering contradi
izing them in netwo
ACTFL. (2006). Standards for foreign language lear
the core of languag
in the 21st century (3rd ed.). Yonkers, NY: N
students from tional Standards in Foreign the r
Language Educatio
through the Project. use of a
tural exchange. As
Council of Europe. (2001). Common European Framework s
such an approach
of Reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assess- i
program ment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
contexts re
there can M.be
Halliday, A. K. (1999) . The notion
no of "context" in lan-dou
guage education. In M. Ghadessy (Ed.), Text and
many of our earlier
context in functional linguistics (pp. 1-24). Philadel-
The contribution b
phia: Benjamins.
such context in which
Malinowski, B. (1935). Coral gardens and their magic (Vol.
fully take place:
2). London: Allen & Unwin. Th
that regular FL
Modern Language Association Ad Hocclassr
Committee on
mersion classrooms
Foreign Languages. (2007). Foreign languages o
enable learners to
and higher education: New structures for a de
tural identities that all contributors seem to call changed world. Profession, 2007, 234-245.

THE COMMENTARIES

Linguistic and Cultural Education for Bildung and Citizenshi

MICHAEL BYRAM, University of Durham, Emeritus

At the heart of theory and practice in In foreign

this contribution, therefore, I want to fo-
language teaching, as of education in cus on purposes
general, is - avoiding the narrowness of the
the need to clarify purposes. Given theterms "aims of
number and objectives" - and to suggest that
a reappraisal
books and articles on methods and techniques forof purposes with respect to the cul-
the classroom, it might appear that ittural
is method-
dimension of foreign language teaching will
ology that is central. The dominant lead
contempo-
to richer, more complex outcomes. These re-
rary assumption is that the purpose of considered
foreign purposes are, however, more demand-
language teaching is to develop communicative
ing on teachers and learners; in other words, my
competence and discussion turns around "com-
proposal is not an easy option.
It is often
municative methodology" in its various forms, but in times of critical societal change
that questions
methodology is a second-order issue derived from about purposes come to the
the question of purposes. fore, and a tension between "educational" and
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 318 The Modern Language Journal 94 (201 0)

"functional"/"utilitarian" to purposes
collect and interpret appears in for US
intelligence necessary
general debate about schools and
national security,society.
(p. 556) This
distinction is then applied to language learning
per se. Specifically, language The echoes with the
learning isLeathes
presentedReport (1918) are
as a discipline, as trainingclearof
- plus(the
ça changefaculties
. . . of)
the mind, even though that Theisothera and
long apparentlydiscredited
alternative purpose
19th-century approach, and placed
of foreign language in opposition
teaching - the educational
to learning or acquiring a language
purpose - suffers beneath for the use weightinof mak-
interaction with others, those others
ing language learning more efficient often
and effective for
the "writers"
thought of as "speakers" than instrumental purpose. of aWherever
foreign one looks,
language. The same distinction
policymakers between
are concerned about educa- the level of
tional and utilitarian purposes
proficiency is also
attained applied
through to
language teaching.
the cultural dimension of foreign
This is the caselanguage
in Japan on oneteach- side of the world
ing and to the linking of and one end of and
culture a continuum, where the common
language.
Learning about the speakersperceptionof is thatanother
language teaching lan-- usually syn-
guage and the (national) culture
onymous with to which
the teaching they
of English - does not
seem to belong can be presented
produce proficientas havingspeakers. It is prac-
also a concern
tical purposes and as having
in Norway educational
on the other side of theones.
world and the
This is evident, for example,
other endin of a the discussions
continuum, despite the common
of purposes of language teaching in reaction
perception that language to
teaching is successful.
the First World War. In Britain, a report
In fact, the learning of Englishon that
happens more out-
topic was commissioned during the
side school than war
within, and
and the ap-
learning of other
peared in 1918. Commonly called
languages in schools the
is no moreLeathes
effective than in
other countries.
Report (1918), it stated boldly that knowledge
about other countries and theirLanguage (national)
teaching professionalscul- follow the
tures might have influenced leadthe
of policymakers
course of - and properly
the war: so because
they have a duty
"Ignorance of the mental attitude and to aspirations
society - but in so doing
of the German people may theynotfail to have been
give adequate the to the edu-
attention
cational
cause of the war; it certainly purpose and its
prevented methodological
due prepa- implica-
ration and hampered our efforts
tions for theafter the
classroom. Thewar hadthat ed-
possibility
begun; it still darkens our counsels"
ucational purposes do (p. not32).
excludeTheefficient and
report concluded that language teaching
effective language should
learning receives little profes-
change its focus from the sional attention, no doubt and
philological because there
liter-is an
automatic
ary tradition to the inclusion of but unnecessary assumption
knowledge of the that the
methods systems,
economies, histories, political involved in the one andare inimical
con-to
temporary societies of other countries.
the other; the confusion This of was
purposes and po
ble methods
to be encapsulated in the change fromcreateslanguages
problems because of loo
to "modern studies." This thinking.
report was also noticed
in the United States. Indeed, several articles in There are exceptions, and it is not surpris-
the Modern Language Journal in the early 1920s ing that they include language professionals in
debated the purposes of language teaching, refer- Germany, where the significance of Bildung -
ring to the Leathes Report (e.g., Olmsted, 1921). that interplay between the individual and the
Ultimately, the report's proposal was ignored, world that is the "formation," perhaps "trans-
and the report itself shelved. However, the con- formation," of the individual - continues to be
cern with knowing cultures as well as languages of central to debate about all education, includ-
countries or regions of geopolitical significance ing foreign language education. Werner Hüllen,
for pragmatic reasons can be seen again and for example, in his address to the conference
again over the years. In Australia, for example, of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Fremdsprachen-
it is present in the shift from teaching European forschung (DGFF, German Society for Foreign
languages to East Asian languages. In the United Language Research) in Munich in 2005, re-
States it is evident in the recent surge of interest minded his audience of the importance of Bil-
in Arabic, an interest that, according to Kramsch dung, as did Lothar Bredella and others in their
(2005), is linked to national defense: publications. For example, Bredella (e.g., 1992)
The real world problem is no longer how to under- has demonstrated for many years that the study of
stand the role of the USA in a world that speaks literature is one of the modes of achieving inter-
languages other than English, but how to create a cultural sensitivity and competence, not only lit-
cadre of language professionals that, with advanced erary critical competence. Additionally, the blurb
knowledge of the language and the culture, are able of a recent book edited by Bredella and Hallet

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 Por<ihpriii)p<i ^1Q

(2007)with societyemph
of the social agent. However, as Lovlie
to and Standish (2002) showed, the transmission of
counterac
the concept of Bildung to other traditions allows
The present vo
for a "pragmatic transformation" (pp. 319-320).
tribution to B
Such pragmatism contem
gainsay is particularly well developed in
eign Dewey's work, where attention is paid to the in-
language
dividual taking social action and where
pragmatic dim inquiry
is democratic, the individual acting together with
In this
others. conte
serves a closer look. It was not available to those
To date, foreign language teaching has not yet
writing about language teaching in the 1920s,drawn
and appropriate conclusions from such con-
it is often decried today as being reductivesiderations.
and It does not define its purposes and
technicist. It is, however, a useful concept when
outcomes - or its methods - in a way in which
used wisely (Fleming, 2009) inasmuch as it canthe
op-gebildeter Mensch and the acteur social can
erationalize not only the instrumental purposes of focus of language teaching. I suggested,
be the
language teaching, for which it seems most appro-
in 2008, that the way forward is to turn to ed-
priate because they are related to performance,
ucation for (democratic) citizenship. Here, the
but also the educational purposes, which likewise
much-debated notion of the gebildeter Mensch
need to be realized in performance or "action."
includes, at the very least, the ability to analyze,
The concept of acteur social adds yet another
discriminate, and reflect on oneself and on the
dimension to such an understanding of compe- society into which one has grown and into which
tence. It is found notably in the Common one Eu-has been led or "educated." The concept of
ropean Framework of Reference (CEFR, 2001), politische Bildung operationalizes this notion, even
where it was first formulated in French and then
as it also emphasizes the importance of social ac-
in English. The influence of the CEFR is sub-tion within that society. It thus makes explicit the
stantial in Europe and beyond but often largely
complementarity of Bildung and action. Theorists
in terms of the definitions of levels of language
of politische Bildung (e.g., Gagel, 2000; Himmel-
competence. Yet, it is worth recalling that mann,
the 2006) have defined it in terms of com-
CEFR and related works were produced under thepetences; similarly, the U.S. American National
aegis of a project on language learning that envi-
Standards for Civics and Government (1995) have
sioned a new European citizenship. The CEFR is
defined intellectual skills (e.g., identifying, ex-
thus an attempt to describe the consensus viewplaining, and evaluating) and participatory skills
of the plurilingual competence needed by Euro-(e.g., influencing policies, negotiating, and man-
pean citizens and how they might acquire it. It conflicts). Although such documents have
aging
emphasizes the functional-pragmatic tendenciesprovided useful impetuses, they continue to be fo-
to which Bredella and Hallet (2007) refer, with
cused on national societies and take for granted
the implication that the social agent is thereby that the language competence required, for ex-
enriched:
ample, in managing conflicts will be unproblem-
atic, even though, within any society, there are
As a social agent, each individual forms relationships
groups with different first/ native languages. Sim-
with a widening cluster of overlapping social groups,
ilarly,
which together define identity. In an intercultural ap- they have assumed a shared (national) cul-
ture even though the skill of negotiation needs
proach, it is a central objective of language educa-
tion to promote the favourable development of the
knowledge and understanding of the multiple cul-
learner's whole personality and sense of identity
turesin present in any situation within a given soci-
response to the enriching experience of otherness
ety. in
language and culture. It must be left to teachers and
The significance of linguistic and intercultural
the learners themselves to reintegrate the many parts
competence in Bildung and politische Bildung is
into a healthily developing whole. (CEFR, 2001, p. 1)
evident to language professionals. However, the
There is, then, in principle no contradiction lack of clarification of the responsibilities and ac-
tivities of an acteur social in documents such as
between the concepts of the acteur social and the
gebildeter Mensch, whatever the debates aboutthe eachCEFR would be evident to those engaged in
of these separately may be. Such debates must education
be for citizenship, all the more so when
seen in their internal relatedness, not least be- the citizenship in question is European and social
cause their underlying concepts are complemen- action and active citizenship necessarily involve
tary. The classical, neohumanist understanding of competences in other languages and cultures.
Bildung focuses on the formation of the individual In fine, the cultural dimension of foreign lan-
per se and might reject the utilitarian engagement guage teaching needs to fulfill purposes that are

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 320 The Modern Language Journal 94 (2010)
both educational and utilitarian. As is now well language teachers might turn the experiences of
established by theorists and by some exemplary CLIL to their advantage and focus on content
practice, educational competence can be fulfilled as well as form - a lesson learned from bilingual
by a focus on intercultural competence, which education
in- in Wales and propagated by Dodson
cludes critical reflection. The utilitarian can (Dodson,
po- Price, 8c Williams, 1968) and Hawkins
tentially be fulfilled by theoretical and practical (1981) many years ago. My own proposal is that
interaction with education for citizenship, for the"in-content in question should draw on citizen-
tercultural citizenship." It can simultaneously ship en-education, enriching it with attention to
rich education for citizenship by paying attention intercultural communicative competence and giv-
to multilingual and multicultural aspects of ing socialsubstantial and meaningful content to lan-
action. In the best of all possible worlds, the guage
inter-lessons, while providing opportunities for
methodological
cultural citizen is gebildet, is a social agent active in innovation and cross-curricular
a multicultural society, whether "national-state" cooperation. The acquisition of intercultural cit-
or international polity. izenship competences would be the aims and
Furthermore, the linguistic purpose of objectives lan- realizing both educational and instru-
guage teaching can be enhanced by attention to
mental/functional purposes.
the linguistic competence needed in social action In concluding my reflections, let me fore-
and intercultural citizenship. This has notstall been some of the comments readers may have
by acknowledging that I have deliberately been
my focus, but it is evident that the skills of negoti-
ation, for example, presuppose linguistic compe- polemical and necessarily prone to simplification.
tence of a kind that is not trivial. The concern Even so, I have tried to contextualize the issues
is not with basic interpersonal communication
historically and contemporaneously in order to
skills, to borrow Cummins's (1979) term, but with
state where we might go in the future with lan-
more complex and advanced competence analo- guage teaching for societies - both national and
gous to Cummins's cognitive academic language international - that require their citizens to be
proficiency. gebildete acteurs sociaux, if I may allow myself a
I have portrayed a demanding scenario, one plurilingual coin at the end.
which can only be met in favorable conditions of
teaching and learning. Not coincidentally, it also
takes us back to questions of methodology and
curriculum to which I referred at the outset. Al- REFERENCES

though a full treatment is obviously beyond the

scope of this text, current methods, whether old
Bredella, L. (1992). Towards a pedagogy of intercult
or new, and current modes of organizing curric-understanding. Amerikastudien, 37, 559-594.
ula, which give insufficient time for foreign Bredella,
lan- L., & Hallet, W. (Eds.). (2007). Literaturun
guages, quite clearly will never solve the prob-terricht, Kompetenzen und Bildung. [Literature
lem. A simple calculation of the number of hoursstruction, competencies, and education]. Tri
Germany: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
of "exposure" to language teaching of, say, 4 hr
Byram, M. (2008). From foreign language education t
per week for 40 weeks per year over 5 years - to
ucation for intercultural citizenship. Clevedon, U
take a typical language learning career - is equiv-Multilingual Matters.
alent to about 2 months of living in an envi-
CERF. (2001). Common European Frameivork of
ronment in which the language is spoken. Even erence for Language: Learning, teaching, asse
with the benefit of structured learning ratherment. Strasbourg/ Cambridge: Council of Europ
than mere exposure, realistic expectations sug-Cambridge University Press.
Cummins, J. (1979). Cognitive/academic language p
gest modest outcomes even before considering
the specifics of methods, of the difficulty of a givenficiency, linguistic interdependence, the optimu
language for given learners, and of matters ofage question and some other matters, Working
pers on Bilinsrualism, 19, 121-129.
motivation.
Dodson, C.J., Price, E., & Williams, I. T. (1968). Towards
We need a more radical vision of language edu-
bilingualism: Studies in language teaching methods.
cation of all kinds, as proposed in the new project Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
of the Council of Europe called "Languages inFleming,
Ed- M. (2009) . The challenge of "competence. In
ucation, Languages for Education" (2009). Here A. Hu & M. Byram (Eds.), Interkulturelle Kompe-
methods of content- and language-integrated tenz und fremdsprachliches Lernen: Modelle, Empine,
learning (CLIL) have indicated a way forward, Evaluation / Intercultural competence and foreign
provided the conditions are appropriate. Foreign language learning: Models, empiricism, assessment.

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(pp. 3-14). Tübingen:

Kramsch, C. (2005). Post 9/11: Foreign languages be
Verlag. tween knowledge and power. Applied Linguistics,
Gagel, W. (2000). Einführung in die Didaktik des politis- 26, 545-567.
chen Unterrichts [Introduction to the didactics of Languages in Education, Languages for Educa-
civic education] (2nd ed.). Opladen, Germany: tion. (2009). Retrieved March 18, 2010, from
Verlag Leske und Budrich. www.coe.int/ t/dg4/linguistic/LangEduc/LE_
Hawkins, E. W. (1981). Modern languages in the Platformlntro en. asp
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Press.
ern Languages in the Educational System of Great
Himmelmann, G. (2006). Concepts and issues in Britain.) (1918). Modern studies: Being the report oj
citizenship education. A comparative study of the Committee. London: H.M.S.O.
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i J J ' ι - - -

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Gunter Narr Verlag. 6, 1-11.

The Field of C
KATHERINE AREN

The title
not achievedfor proficiency in the thisfour skills and
of Culture in
the social integration into a C2thethat these skills
already points
promise. to t
taken up: reconcei
Exacerbating the gaps between canonical and
a more consistent educational framework that
newer goals for language learning, a decade of
teaches language and culture in tandem, with its reforms has called for the use of texts
curricular
goal a joint literacy about a second language (L2) to our students' interests and lives. Mo-
relevant
and culture (C2). bilizing student interest does foster learning, but
Postsecondary education staunchly upholds
the newly chosen texts often tacitly undermine tra-
both the convention of a 2- or 1-year language
ditional claims for language learning as fostering
requirement as key to a liberal educationintercultural
and literacy: German hip-hop, for exam-
the educationally unreachable goal of the ple,
quasi-
does not necessarily carry the same claims for
native speaker (for limitations of this practice, see
legitimacy as Goethe, Schiller, Flaubert, Dante,
Kramsch & Whiteside, 2007). At best, that orlofty
Cervantes. A curriculum committee or dean
outcome is achievable only for certain learners
may be inclined to doubt that teaching a teenager
and outside the traditional higher education
howen-to be a teenager in German is an appropri-
vironment, such as in institutions that educate
ate outcome for college-level classrooms. Calling
future professionals (e.g., in the military, intel- such addenda a new "language and culture" cur-
ligence, the foreign service, and certain fields of riculum further calls our collective judgment into
international business). For those students, it is question and exacerbates the famous gap between
indeed necessary to target outcomes as some va- lower and upper divisions by taking one kind of
riety of the traditional "four skills" because they culture for the lower division and another for the
purportedly need to function in a C2 as full lin- majors.
guistic adults who are integrated into appropri- A more pragmatic definition of culture as a
ate domains. However, that expectation does not field may open the door to alternatives. The so-
define the aspirations, abilities, and opportuni- ciologist Pierre Bourdieu (1993) used the term
ties of the average college student. Mastering to refer to any site or region within which
the four skills is in a real sense a canonical out-
a group acts, communicates, and evolves its
come, defining what "proper" language learning
characteristic knowledge and identities (see par-
must be: The student will have failed if she has
ticularly, chapter 1 ) . That site is furnished with a

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