Abstract
Despite pedagogical, technological, and curricular advancements in the West Indian education system, there has been little success in constructively addressing the pervasive regional English language examination failures. I contend that most researchers address these second language acquisition failures by focusing on symptoms rather than causes. However, this study seeks a novel way of tackling the problem, by employing the WordTree design by analogy method, typically used in the engineering field, but adapted for this social science enquiry. The method is used to generate a fitting analogy for the current failing language education system to provide insights into underlying issues, which assist in better understanding and addressing this failure. This method finds that the failing system is analogous to that of the plantocratic system of colonial times based on their strikingly similar ideologies, practices, and attendant outcomes. Resultantly, I term this language education system, an edutocracy.1This study expands on scholarly works in the advancing areas of curriculum as cultural practice and colonial imagination to provide a different, deeper perspective of this West Indian problem, while exploring the implications of the analogous relationship.
Highlights
Despite a plethora of second language acquisition (SLA) research over the past few decades, little has been reported which effectively addresses the failure of vast numbers of West Indian (WI) students to acquire the second language proficiently
Based on the findings from the WordNet design-by-analogy model, coupled with a view through the socio-historical lens of colonialism, I have concluded that the WI language education system has been molded by plantocratic ideologies
The research indicates that the ideology of the period just prior to emancipation which supported monolingual education in this bidialectal context is based on the plantocratic principles of (a) preserving the status quo in favor of the plantocracy, (b) supremacy of the European and subservience of the African, and (c) the development of a colonial imagination for the spreading of a hegemonic vision
Summary
Despite a plethora of second language acquisition (SLA) research over the past few decades, little has been reported which effectively addresses the failure of vast numbers of West Indian (WI) students to acquire the second language proficiently. This article proposes to fill this lacuna in language education by reorienting the lens toward the smaller WI states while attempting to steer the narrow discussion of WI language education failure away from learner factors toward the broader and more enlightening discussion of curriculum as cultural practice and education for the shaping of a colonial imagination. This direction is more important than ever because WI officials have not approached reform in a truly systemic manner, resulting in cumulative problems for the education sector (Jules, 2015). The true sources of this language education failure require immediate examination, because communication is the life-blood of every sector in a country, which means that a proliferation of poor communicators produced through the language education system will inevitably impact every sector in these already vulnerable states, making them even more susceptible to social and economic risks
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