The reality of language policies in Colombia: towards an intercultural language teaching configuration

Abstract

The linguistic policies established for the Colombian territory have made invisible, marginalized, and subordinated other subjectivities by conceiving a single language in the bilingual education project. Likewise, the teaching staff, from this linguistic and educational policy, has been instrumentalized and inhibited from a critical and reflective sense in their pedagogical practice, being imposed in their educational work the achievement of measurable and standardized linguistic objectives that ignore the realities and emergencies located within the educational contexts themselves. Alternatively, it is argued that language policies for language training should be dialogued and conceived as a counter-hegemonic bet on the part of teachers and the educational community in order to re-signify stories, experiences, and own voices and those of others that have been made invisible. Likewise, it is necessary from the field of language teaching (native or foreign) to coordinate critical, intercultural, and emancipatory pedagogical approaches that make possible the recognition and overcoming of those oppressions, marginalizations and segregations faced by otherness in the same geographical context of life and existence. Finally, the importance of collective work is highlighted, from the feelings of all to counteract the social injustices that, from the educational scenario, have been legitimized; subordinating other subjectivities and conceptions of the world from languages and cultures different from those that seek to standardize the linguistic policies anchored to the interests of the modern world.