Impediments to Fostering Interculturalism at Home

The Nation-State, Social Power, and Cultural Representation in EFL Teaching Materials

Abstract

The present pandemic moment in which students’ international mobility is curtailed sets the stage to think about the effectiveness of local education. In this essay, I consider the role of local English language teaching (EFL) in fostering interculturalism. Reflecting on a corpus of public school EFL teaching materials from Japan collected as part of a larger, ongoing examination of the hidden curriculum, I focus on how they portray international culture. I conclude that these materials reflect historical relations of social power in placing emphasis upon powerful nations while also implicitly promoting the notion of cultural uniformity within countries, a uniformity in which the visibility of privileged social groups prevails. Both aspects – coupled with misconceptions about the nature of culture itself - are at odds with effectively fostering interculturalism. This particularly impacts students for whom the EFL class may represent the primary channel for intercultural opportunity in lieu of international travel.