Integration as ideology: Survival ESL and the nation-state

grantor: University of TorontoUsing a critical, feminist framework, this thesis will examine what has become known as "Survival ESL" within the larger social, political, and economic context of the nation-state. The overall goal of Survival ESL is teach immigrants the linguistic and cultural knowledge they need in order to participate in their new society and it is subsequently within this context that Survival ESL engages in progressive pedagogies (i.e. communicative language teaching, communicative competence, and the situational/functional syllabus). Thus, it is to this end that Survival ESL lays claim to a discourse of empowerment. However, the larger sphere in which Survival ESL is situated is characterized by the inequality inherent to the capitalist nation state. The ideologies of racism, sexism, class, and integration, operate within this larger context to organize and naturalize a certain set of relations: a set of relations in which immigrants are marginalized. Thus, despite Survival ESL's discourse of empowerment, its failure to critically engage with the social and ideological implications of both its pedagogical orientation and the larger social relations within which it is situated supports an integrationist framework. As demonstrated through a survey of the existing curricular materials it will be argued that this framework operates to enable immigrant learners to function within an existing set of relations: a set of unequal relations. Thus, it will be argued that only by engaging in a critical or transformative pedagogy which explicitly confronts these relations of power can a Survival curriculum begin to be genuinely empowering.M.A