What English to Teach in the English Department?
By: Dr. Majeed u. Jadwe
This question would be pointless if asked some forty years ago. English departments in this
country then were stable academic oases with British English as the rule and a syllabus
deeply entrenched in canonical British literature. The English being taught and spoken is a
brand of academic English with a deep British variety as most professors were either
graduates of UK universities or had at least taken a graduate semester in a UK university.
That was the time of the British council and the Baghdad Observer. Professors,
undergraduates, and postgraduates were frequenting the British Council and its prosperous
library. Having a daily copy of the Baghdad Observer was essential to one’s identity as a
student in the English department at that pastoral time whereas The Oxford English
Dictionary was as indispensable to students as a big full moon to summer nights. Professors
and students in a typical classroom in an English department sounded like characters who
escaped the pages of a Dickensian novel.
Then came the omens of the new millennium (aka 2003 occu-liberation) and the country
was busy re-inventing itself in the footsteps of Globalization and Uncle Sam. We were
suddenly part of the global village with the WWW, satellite channels, and the Social Media
taking us out of guard. The sundry pastoral time of make things easy and British is lost
forever. Simulated students with badly simulated American English are hanging around
time-worn campuses. T sound suddenly disappeared, S sound became shivering SH, the
old dear Zed became Zee, and lots, lots of “gonnas” and “wannas” were harshly scratching
academic ears. Elegance gave way to farcical nonsense.
The English classroom became a fantastic mixture of a Stephen King novel and a Gene
Rodenberry Sci-Fi. A room full of zombies with smart phones run by a mustacheless
puppet master (Females included). Spiky hair styles, incredibly tight jeans, and heads full
of PlayStation games and social media nonsense. Textbooks, like Baathists, were outlawed
and tiny handouts became the heroes of the day. Dedicated professors became the enemies
of the state and the people and the ‘student’ is the innocent victim in every possible
scenario. The English classroom is no longer ‘English’ nor even a ‘classroom.’ We became
mill factories! Halleluiah, it is raining degrees!!