I believe a large part of why there is an idea of politics in the classroom is that we are scared of offending people. The idea of offensiveness is something that has been a large part of the latter parts of my degree.
In TESOL methodologies we looked at the phrase ‘PARSNIPS’ (TESOL methodologies).
Politics Age, alcohol Religion, race Sex, sexual orientation Narcotics Immigration (isms) Poverty, pork Social class
These are several areas which will never be mentioned in ELT textbooks or in ELT classrooms. These topics are seen as ‘taboo’ and in need of censoring. Additionally, there is a vicious cycle between the publishers of books and the authors. Whether the authors want to try and implement change within the textbooks or not, they face a large challenge. If they write any kind of taboo topic/ suggest it with illustrations then they are at risk of a publisher not publishing their books because the publishers know so many classrooms won’t use them when they contain ‘certain’ topics.
Some of the topics might be considered as ‘taboo’ which I looked at in second year (sociolinguistics). When I was looking at these topics I thought it was really interesting how ‘taboo’ topics were essentially indefinable (this was the conclusion of my sociolinguistics project). What was taboo and offensive for one person, wasn’t even worth an eyebrow raise for another. Reflecting upon my theme of politics in the classroom in relation to this: how do we possibly decide what can and cannot be included in a textbook, or in a syllabus when every country (let alone every individual) has a different idea to what can and can’t be used. Because schools, and publishers are more concerned with what might offend one person rather than benefit another, I believe there is a lot of topics left out of English Language teaching which should definitely be considered.