Critical Language Teaching and the unpostponable crossing: from exclusion to inclusion

Abstract

In the school setting, exclusion can happen in a variety of ways, from limited access to a decent education for all, besides issues of accessibility to the environment and even pedagogical exclusion, when the student is not contemplated. In this regard, this essay aims at reflecting about the critical teaching of languages as an alternative to the promotion of inclusion. For this purpose, it addresses how in several settings, languages and their teaching are used to segregate, to exclude, configurating as a pedagogy of exclusion, what demands a critical linguistic education, to promote an unpostponable crossing to inclusion. Thus, some issues are discussed, such as the language prejudice and learner’s self-exclusion, notably engendered with strong ideological marks, which take place in the language teaching and learning setting, mother tongue or foreign languages. In this way, to think of inclusion promotion, this reflection is heated, upon proposing the critical language teaching, as a way to politicize students, in order to prepare them, mainly, to confront ideologies which are posed in general society, and that are materialized through language. In this perspective, this essay addresses exclusion, mainly the pedagogical one, which is materialized, many times, through language, as a way to contribute to teacher training, so that they can understand even better the need of the unpostponable crossing from exclusion to inclusion.