I've yet to eat bread or cakes from a mass-baking company that could compare with a private, family-owned bakery around the corner. Problem is, I guess, that those family-owned local bakeries aren't around our corners much these days.
In a quick exchange with no less than Jeremy Harmer on a forum somewhere, we both came to the conclusion that teaching is (or at least ought to be) very much a 'craft' -- in the way it is developed and applied in classrooms.
So is language teaching actually a sort of craft industry? Like the carpenter who masters his skills over time and eventually sets up shop creating various pieces of furniture (many to order), with each being completely unique?
If so, how does the 'craft' teacher (pursuing what I now like to call "tailorism") survive in English Language Teaching, where a sort of Taylorism has pretty much taken over the 'profession' in so many of the contexts where English instruction is offered?
And, for those of us who can agree that good teaching is very much a 'craft', how can we rescue it from the clutches of mass production and lean manufacturing models?
After all, there's a good reason why there aren't many independent family-owned and run bakeries around any more... Most of us are more than willing to chew on the same mass-produced bread we can get on supermarket shelves if it's cheaper to buy (and to hell with that silly notion that it's nice to chat to the person who actually baked it!).
Right?
=D
