Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

The global spread of English 141
English-medium schools, institutions that cater primarily to the children of
wealthier middle-class parents (Annamalai 2004: 187).
It is not difficult, therefore, to see English, and English-medium education, as
assisting the reproduction of the elite’s privileged position; this class-stratifying
property serving, in the view of some commentators (e.g. de Swaan 2001a: 104),
as one motive for the retention of colonial languages (e.g. English and French) as
languages of governance and education. They function, in Myers-Scotton’s (1990)
phrase, as instruments of ‘elite closure’; that is, the elite, who in part owe their
privileged position to their control over high status varieties of English or French, see
the continued official role of these languages as one means of excluding the masses
from higher levels of the labour market and thereby as instrumental in consolidating
their near monopolistic control over it.
If this analysis of the link between English and inequality is reasonably persuasive,
the remedies often mooted carry less conviction. Replacing English as a medium of
instruction with indigenous languages is one of the more obvious, but is problematic
for a range of reasons (see Chapter 7), the most powerful of which is that it is usually
opposed, paradoxically, by those who collectively lose most from the perpetuation of
a foreign language medium of education.
Their behaviour cannot be seen as irrational, however, for at the individual level
parents want their children to receive the education that best enhances their
employment chances, and this usually means education in English. They may well
realise that English skills do not guarantee a good job, and that chances of school
failure are high. But they also understand that without English one is definitively
excluded from the more desirable forms of employment. The trouble is, however,
though rational at the individual level, these preferences, when aggregated, help
collectively to maintain a system of education that may well disadvantage most of
them.
Drastically curtailing the presence of English in the curriculum is also problematic,
however, for reasons beyond those of democratic choice. With national
economies increasingly in thrall to transnational corporations and globalising
industries like tourism, it is increasingly difficult to gainsay the economic value
of English language skills, a fact well understood by elite groups, who would very
probably switch to private English-medium schooling if exposure to English was
limited in the state education sector. The effect, surely, would be to exacerbate rather
than reduce inequality.
The logic of this position appears to suggest an extension of English, making it
more available to all. And for such democratisation of access there is definitely
something to be said. After all, the more widely distributed English language skills
are, the more likely they are to become a banal skill and the less likely they are to
command a premium in the labour market (Grin 2001), or to serve as an instrument
for ‘elite closure’.
Democratisation of access can, however, take a variety of forms, one of the less
desirable of which is an extension of English medium into the lower levels of primary
education. The reasons why this is inadvisable have to do with both educational