There was an interesting meet-up in Second Life earlier this evening, courtesy of Dennis Newson, in which Scott Thornbury and Luke Meddings ventured in-world for a chat about DOGME ELT and their new book ‘Teaching Unplugged‘. Joined by numerous fans and interested people (Jeremy Harmer’s avatar also came along), we chatted for about ninety minutes.

Now any sane teacher will have a lot of time for the DOGME approach – we can all remember classes which have gone with a buzz, no materials, no rigid plan, just us and the learners working it out between us. I had a few of those when I was a teacher too. So let me first say that I have nothing against the approach as a tool in the teacher’s toolbox.

But there are certain things that grate with me…

Time and time again during the discussion we came to a clash of ‘what’s the point of technology in the classroom when we have all we need right there: the teacher and the learners?‘ Indeed, both Luke and Scott ventured that learners get so much exposure to other sources of English outside the classroom that there was really no need to use listening materials and the like inside it. But I’d beg to differ – teachers I know (working the state education system here in Spain, rather than private language schools, etc.) regularly tell me that their learners don’t enagage with English at all outside the classroom. Indeed, a research project carried out peripherally by the British Council last year concluded that learners don’t often use their ‘downtime’ for such pursuits.

Scott Thornbury, Luke Meddings, Jeremy Harmer et al in SL

And then there’s the whole point of technology to discuss. Scott would be the first person to admit that much of his professional life revolves around technology: from writing books, to research, online corpora, online teacher training with Blackboard, booking flights for speaking engagements, buying books… perhaps even listening to music, or whatever. Yet – and considering that it is as much a part of a learner’s life as it is of his – DOGME would deny learners the right to engage with something that is so embedded in their real lives, in the language classroom. And that strikes me as artificial at best, condescending at worst.

And what of the assumption that the teacher and learner can construct interesting and meaningful learning opportunities on a regular basis? There are boring teachers with not much to say – I’ve met quite a few during my professional career. There are also large groups of sullen teenagers who simply don’t want to know (and I’ve taught a few of them in my time too). Perhaps the DOGME approach would have me believe the teenagers are only unwilling to engage because of my lack of something or other – but then try telling their parents that! And if, sometimes, they have nothing to say… equally their interest in the anecdotes of a balding forty-five year old can sometimes be, shall we say, less than devotional. So sometimes this simply will not work.

If you’re lucky enough to be teaching adult ESL in England, then you may well have a class full of interesting and interested people. But if you’re like a lot of people I know, you’re more likely to be dealing with a group of hormonal 15 year old Spanish kids whose last desire is to be in English class when there are joints to be rolled and people to be flirted with.

I’m reminded of a lesson plan I saw in an august teaching journal once. It started with the instruction: elicit any 18th century vocabulary items your students many know. As you can imagine, that class didn’t go with a bang. And I got to wondering who wrote that, and when they’d last taught that lesson. Rose-tinted spectacles, anyone?

Yet learners (at least under 25) are often interested in movie clips, music, exchanges with other countries… or perhaps playing with audio files, or recording themselves, or making video clips for later broadcast on YouTube, or watching YouTube videos. And technology, of course, can facilitate all those things.

And then again, doesn’t DOGME (like technology) disenfranchise plenty of teachers? I’m thinking of the teachers I met two years ago in Cyprus whose surveillance by head teachers and local education bods is so strict that they can’t go off message. Or the Indian teachers I met last year, who spoke of the ‘tyranny of the textbook‘, or the teachers in Vietnam in January, who are obliged to use government approved coursebooks and stick to them, going page by page. Where does DOGME fit in for them – is there any hope for them as teachers?

And what of the beginner teacher? Some will claim that DOGME is for everyone, even beginner teachers – but what beginner teacher (groomed on well-crafted lesson plans à la CELTA, trained to tick boxes and jump through assessment hoops and endless self-chastisement at the latest crap demo lesson) is going to feel confident enough to go off-message so quickly? Doesn’t it take time, a repertoire of tricks, confidence and character?

So whilst I love the idea (and am very sympathetic to the core values) of DOGME, I can see flaws and inconsistencies in it. The biggest issue for me is this insistence on throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Where some people see DOGME as empowering both teacher and learners, I see it as hamstringing them, of denying them the rich variety that other tools can bring to the classroom, of condescending to the learner by refusing to acknowledge the tools and media she enjoys in her real life, tools and media which are now so much a part of her life that she can’t for one moment understand why she’s unable to use them in the 5% that makes up her weekly foray into English learning…

And, as it happens, using technology in our classes would actually be a very good thing – because we have something that often our learners don’t, because we ARE ‘tech-savvy‘ (at least some of us), whereas they are usually ‘tech-comfy‘ – and one thing we can do is help them to see the educational value in technology. For whilst they usually (at least those under, say, 25) know how to use technology, they often don’t know of the benefits that it can bring to their learning. And that’s a role we could usefully take on.

So I say this – DOGME is good, of that I am quite sure. So are IWBs (when used by creative, interested and trained teachers), so are computers (when used as part of a balanced diet), and books (in moderation) and audio (on occasions) and dictionaries (in certain contexts). But don’t ask me to buy into something that should be part of a whole, to pigeonhole me into an artificial construct that makes some sense only.

The book cover in the background at Dennis Newson’s place

I wonder how many teachers in certain parts of the world reading about the luxury of going ‘materials light‘ feel aggrieved by this middle-something conceit and would like the luxury of being in the position to try ‘materials heavy‘? Wouldn’t that make an interesting study?

Surely we should be helping teachers critically examine all sorts of tools and approaches – helping them to find the use in many different things, helping them gain the confidence and training and support to be able to use a variety of tools in their classes? Let’s not be blinded by simplicity – the world is not a simple place, our learners’ lives are not simple and we should not treat them as simple either.

Real DOGME acolytes are now invited to comment on this outragous tirade and include the following:

  • the teacher and the learners are the most valuable resource in the class (I don’t disagree)
  • DOGME lets teacher and learner construct meaningful learning opportunities (I don’t disagree)
  • technology gets in the way of that (here is where we part company)
  • you’re wrong because my learners love my DOGME classes (I don’t doubt they love them at all)

And anything else that springs to mind…

Just to remind you however – I have enormous sympathy with the DOGME approach, I have enormous respect for the work Scott has done over many years (Scott and I worked together for quite some time, and I was the one who first plugged his modem into the wall in the dark ages of 1996, thus leading him down the road to perdition!), and I have respect for all of you using and enjoying the DOGME approach. I’ve even got the book, and have enjoyed reading it, and see a lot of good in it – good that I also see elsewhere with other tools and approaches…

What I do not respect is the blanket writing off of other tools and approaches, the ‘technology is the devil‘ attitude or the denial that other tools, media and approaches can also achieve similarly good and engaging classroom experiences. I say live and let live – let’s do some DOGME, and let’s take them into Second Life too, because at the end of the day, they’ll do DOGME in their real lives (chatting to friends and family, learning in informal fashions from colleagues, etc.) but they’ll also do hi-tech too - and we should respect their right to bring their normal lives into our classrooms.

And I suspect their hi-tech lives are slightly more important to them, and more intrinsic to their everyday lives, than many might care to consider. Let battle commence…