Peter Browning

        This soundscape is an exploration of the material conditions in which English language teaching and learning take place in a public school in Rionegro, Colombia. It is my response to a teacher training session held under the auspices of Rionegro Bilingüe, a local programme to promote English language teaching and learning in the municipality, led by a representative from the prestigious private language school el Colombo-Americano.

        The training session formed part of a series of workshops designed to improve English teaching in public schools. In this session, held in a purpose-built, air-conditioned classroom in the language school whose state-of-the-art premises are on the top floor of the local mall, nestled between the cinema and the swanky Crepes & Waffles restaurant, teachers from the public sector were told that they must “modernise” their teaching, they must “keep up with the new pace of the world” and “focus our classes on communication” - the trainer here including himself, “our classes”, completely ignoring the differences in the teaching conditions. “We try, we have to improve” lamented Martica a self-appointed representative amongst the English teachers in the municipality, her 30-plus years experience in the public sector doing nothing to shield her from the trainer’s reprimands.

        In my response (which boarders on ‘defence’), I draw on field recordings, interviews, field notes and vignettes of English language classes in a public school generated as part of a nine-month ethnographic study of the implementation of a new English language policy in the municipality of Rionegro.I explore what I see as two interrelated strands that can be summarised as: 1) material conditions and 2) motivation. During my ethnography, it became clear that the material conditions of the public school preclude the so-called ‘modernisation’ that is promoted as the model of ‘good teaching’ by the workshops given under the auspices of the Rionegro Bilingüe language policy; to fit this new model of ‘good teacher’ is all but impossible under the conditions in which public teachers work. Unable to simply write themselves off from becoming ‘good teachers’, I documented a reinterpretation of their material conditions. Rather than being a central problem, the material conditions of the public school are often obviated, they are individualised, internalised and recast, emerging referentially in terms of motivation, attitude and desire to learn - striking in this respect is that this recasting is not limited to the students’ motivation, attitude and desire, but also the teacher’s. 

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         The soundscape begins with the ambient noise of the school, over which are layered extracts from my field notes taken during an English class in the second period of the day on a hot Friday morning (there's no air conditioning here!). The effect is supposed to be cacophonous, the layering of stimuli mirroring the characteristic background noise of the English class which continues throughout the soundscape; I came to understand these noises as representative of the complex needs and conditions the English teacher is faced with in her work. What follows is a weaving of interview excerpts from conversations with Paula (the English teacher) and Juan David (a so-called ‘difficult’ student) with classroom recordings. These pieces are juxtaposed to explore the complex and paradoxical ways in which the logics of material conditions and motivation come up against each other, and the struggle to make sense of these logics for Paula, Juan David and myself. The two vignettes, taken from my field notes, betray my own sensitivities towards the limitations of the material conditions themselves underpinned my by formation in critical sociolinguistics and by my desire to ‘speak back to’ the private school trainer as to the ‘reality’ of English classes in a public school.

         The soundscape ends with a reprise of the layered extracts from my field notes, this time accompanying the words of Paula, there is the suggestion that the soundscape could be beginning again, there is no resolution; the tensions remain unresolved, the complexity remains, somehow echoing beyond the tidy analytical frame of material conditions and motivation outlined above.

          In the production of this piece, I am inspired by the writings of Walter Benjamin and the narrative devices of Brechtian and Artaudian theatre. From Benjamin, I take the techniques of juxtaposition and resonance of fragments. In this fragmentary approach, I show the complex and paradoxical relationships between the circulating discourses and materiality of the English language teaching and learning encounter in this public high school; bringing these fragments into dialogue, it is my hope, will allow for new meanings to emerge. From Artaud, I take the notion of discomfort, which I hope to achieve not only through the confrontation with this difficult reality, but also with the aural overlading. This discomfort (Artaud’s “cruelty”) comes from a motivation to confront uncomfortable truths - these conditions are uncomfortable too to the dominant discourse of English teaching in Rionegro. Finally, from Brecht I take the concept of alienation, in order to preclude an aesthetic evaluation of the soundscape, or an assumption that is guided by a positivist urge to (re)present “reality”. I hope to achieve this alienation through repetition, through the non-linear development of the piece, and through the use of a mixed narrative focalisation.

For the best experience, I invite you to listen to the soundscape with the volume turned up, though (noise cancelling) headphones and with your eyes closed.