There's no doubt that criticism of current ELT practice - the CEFR framework; poor pre-training courses; inefficacious coursebook-driven courses; poor CPD; bad washback effects of high stake exams - is misrepresented, minimised, and, most of all, ignored - starved of oxygen. Nevertheless, there's also no doubt that criticism of the ELT staus quo is increasingly vocal, widespread, and difficult to stifle.
Those of us who fight against current ELT practices are gaining traction. We're becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Change is coming and the big companies who currently run the current $200 billion industry know it. Watch their attempts to once more "adapt" in face of calls for radical change. Watch out for their fake versions of Dogme and TBLT; their adapted coursebooks; their more carefully-grained, AI-assisted high stakes exams.
This is how 21st century capitalism works: it refines 20th century ways of absorbing criticism. The rebel is turned into a celebrity, the critic wins prizes, the anarchist is celebrated in a tv drama. The Situationists of the 1960s talked of the Society of the Spectacle, sixty years later, it's turned into a Broadway opera. Every attempt to fight capitalism is turned back on itself, "recuperated" as the Sits said, i.e,. its challenge is nullified.
Making your radical voice heard while living in the belly of the beast is the challenge - we in Spain ask George Chilton, surely el maestro of subversive messaging, for help. Forming local groups like the SLB in Barcelona is great, but make sure you link up with other local groups in your own and other countries, so as to ensure an international network - why not start by linking up with Paul Walsh in Berlin and Ljiljana Havran in Belgrade!
Above all, organise and fight. Do it gently or as roughly as you can, but don't accept the given "narrative" that fighting against the Cambridge Cartel or the Pearson Empire is impossible.
