Alastair Pennycook: "English is an unfair language"

Because...

-It acts as a gatekeeper for education, jobs and social mobility, favouring a monolingual elite, both in the Centre and in the Periphery.

-It makes certain domains inaccessible to many people.

- It is causing many minority languages to disappear and prevents many people from identifying with their mother tongue.

- It hinders literacy in the mother tongue for speakers of minority languages.

- It is not receptive to the needs of many people.

- It privileges the figure of NS in the ELT profession, together with many other fallacies.

- The prevailing, barely communicative, pedagogical orientation of EFL education in Spain tended to silence & marginalize learners (even though those coming from advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds).

Book review: http://www.tnewfields.info/Articles/PDF/reviewPennycook.pdf

I agree with these statements: in few words, English is an elitist language. Languages are built by a community of speakers who share certain cultural values, so it will evolve according to their needs. Then English may be useful to some people, but not to others. 

Moreover, privileging English language above their own, speakers are giving less importance to their mother tongue. The consequence is the disappearance of many languages. In relation to this, another characteristic is the leveling down of societies, as opposed to diversity. 

With regard to English at Spanish schools, pupils are not taught how to communicate in the real world. They finish 2nd of Bachillerato with a very poor level of English, so we have to reflect on what is being done wrong and change the methodology.

And the last point is: has everybody the same opportunities to learn English? At least nowadays Internet is quite accessible and offers a great variety of sources to read or listen to English.

My conclusion is that English is now the global language because English countries have the global power, but this may change. Using English for commercial purposes is useful, but we can't forget our mother tongue for our everyday life. Our language defines us. Being bilingual or plurilingual is really enriching and healthy for our brain, so let's take advantage of this!