English Language Teaching: a Political Factor in Puerto Rico?

By Mirta Martes-Rivera

As an educator, Mirta feels blessed and pleased because she has taught courses of English and ESL to students coming from different ethnic groups and social strata from different countries in the world. Likewise, she has conducted research and has written curricular and cross-curricular material published whether in printing or online. But mostly important, she enjoys teaching.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503512672

Mirta Martes-Rivera

Mirta Martes Rivera is an instructor of English and linguistics who has taught in the higher education system in Puerto Rico and the United States. Mirta was born and raised in Puerto Rico and was educated in the public school system of Puerto Rico. She attended the University of Puerto Rico–Rio Piedras where she received a BA in English. After graduation, she taught English at public schools in Rio Piedras, but something was missing. So she attended the University of Puerto Rico–Rio Piedras where she received a master’s degree in English and secondary education. After receiving her master’s, she went back to public schools, but then she decided to attend Teachers College, Columbia University, where she received a master’s degree in applied linguistics. While in New York City, Mirta taught English to English native speakers at the prestigious Norman Thomas Commercial H. S., then a campus site of NYU. She also taught a TESOL course to international students enrolled in the CEP of Teachers College, Columbia University. Although Mirta was offered an administrative entry-level position at some offices at TC/CU, she decided to return to Puerto Rico. (Now Mirta wouldn’t decline those job offers.) After attending Teachers College, Columbia University, Mirta returned to the island and taught English at the UPR-RP, namely, in the UHS lab school administered by the College of Education and the English Department in the College of Humanities.(Currently she teaches English to freshmen in the English Department of the College of General Studies.) However, two years later, Mirta attended Harvard University where she took courses with well-known scholars, namely, Dr. H. Gardner and Dr. C. Snow and took a course at MIT with the internationally well-known linguist, writer, and philosopher Dr. Noam Chomsky. She also conducted research in a bilingual program in a middle school with permission of the Boston Public School System. After Harvard University, she returned to PR and continued teaching at the higher education system. In the late ’90s, she worked as an intermittent teacher in the US DoDEA, namely, Antilles–Puerto Rico. In 2001, she went to Illinois where she taught ESL to immigrant students enrolled in high schools of the Illinois public school system and worked as an adjunct faculty in the ESL and Linguistics Department of William Rainey Harper College. Mirta has taught all levels in secondary schools in Puerto Rico, the United States, and the US DoDEA and has taught undergraduate students and nontraditional students in Puerto Rico and the United States. At the university and college level, Mirta has taught courses of ESL, English, linguistics, developmental college writing, expository writing, literature, public speaking, and communication. Some of these courses have had the components of research and lab work.

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Copyright © 2015 by Mirta Martes-Rivera.

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Rev. date: 08/29/2015

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CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgment

Introduction

Chapter I

Historical Overview of the Teaching of English in Puerto Rico

Chapter II

Educational Language Policies Related to the Teaching of English in Public Schools in Puerto Rico

Chapter III

Implications and Recommendations

Abbreviations Used

Notes

References

In memory of my late father, SSG-6 Mario Martes-Arturet

(1928–2009)

PREFACE

T HE TEACHING OF English as a second language has been always a controversial issue associated with political overtones in Puerto Rico, which seems to discourage the teaching and learning of English among Puerto Rican learners. Merely speaking, public school students overlook the relevance to learn the English language; some relevance they give to their vernacular—Puerto Rican Spanish. This sociolinguistic attitude is acceptable in a linguistic environment where all is spoken in Spanish. However, it is certainly a detrimental linguistic fact when the significance to learn English in our present worldwide global community is a must. Nevertheless, the political issues are not the only ones troubling the attitudes of students at public schooling. The demanding behavior of teachers and the classroom milieu contribute also as negative factors. Why? The commanding behavior of teachers could possibly affect the students’ auto stigma for the worst. If this might be the case, teachers who teach English in Puerto Rico should recall that public school students are complex, sensible human beings who undergo emotional challenges in an always changing, complex world. ¹

With this in mind, teachers of English ought to help students envision how advantageous is to learn English or any other foreign language. To learn English is beneficial not only for the individual enrichment of speakers but also for the understanding of this global village and technology web we all live in.² Moreover, language teachers should guide public school learners to appreciate that speaking and reading in more than one language is a linguistic advantage any speaker possesses. (Apropos, there is nothing wrong to be monolingual.) An example of this are the multilingual speakers of Europe, the Middle East, India, and Asia. Besides, English is an international language indispensable in the present twenty-first century wherein all depends on technology. And merely speaking, technology uses English as a means of communication—as a lingua franca.³

Although I am not a historian, this work attempts to present a brief historical overview aimed at showing that the subject of English was taught in Puerto Rico since 1832. That is, it was taught on the island as a subject during the Spanish ruling and not when Puerto Rico became a territory of the United States. It also presents the educational language policies regarding English in the past 117 years.