ARE YOU A HUMANIZER? A CHECKLIST
by Francisco Gomes de Matos

In the No. 36/April 1996 issue of FIPLV WORLD News, I made a plea for Humanization as a new approach to language education, based on such values as human rights, justice, peace, dignity, and intercultural understanding. In that brief text, I characterized the mission of “humanizers” as that of providing language learners with dignifying-and-edifying learning experiences. As a follow-up here is a Checklist for teachers and teacher educators to ask themselves to what extent and how deeply they can consider themselves as veritable humanizers.

I am a humanizer when I….

1. perceive and treat my students as persons having rights and responsibilities

2. approach language education/teaching as a system for helping learners grow personally, socially, intraculturally and interculturally

3. view and implement assessment of learners´ performance as positive, humanizing system which emphasizes the strengths employed by students in their language learning. On the strategic relevance of using psychological knowledge positively, see the pioneering Handbook of Positive Psychology, edited by C.R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez, Oxford University Press, 2002.

4. apply human communicative rights in the classroom and assure learners of their right to hear (what is being said by other members of the classroom community) and the right to be heard and to see to it that students fulfil their corresponding communicative responsibilities.

5. adapt/change portions of teaching materials which do not contribute to personal or group humanization. In such case, the key-question would be: what needs to be changed in such and such lesson, etc., so that language learning can become a deeply humanizing experience? How can that be done?

6. adopt and sustain a positive view of the language and culture which are being experienced in the classroom and motivate students to share such constructive linguocultural perception.

7. create humanizing, peace-building, peace-enhancing, peace-promoting activities so that learners build up their competence as caring and compassionate language users

8. probe language resources -- especially vocabulary -- as tools with which students can both humanize themselves and the persons they interact with. In such spirit, investing cognitively on how to teach vocabulary positively can pay off good humanizing dividends. The corresponding key-question would be: How can the learning of vocabulary contribute to strengthening the learners´ sense of self-respect, mutual respect, and dignity?

9. capitalize on literature which provides examples of humanization through interaction (dialogue between/among characters) and personal narrative. Testing the humanizing effects of such uses of literary texts would be a corollary to that pedagogical practice.

10. preparing students to make the most humanizing uses of the Internet, through chatting with e-friends sharing a commitment to changing our world into a constructive place.

Every teacher and teacher educator is a creative person, so it is up to you to probe, refine and expand the above Checklist. As a humanizer sharing the belief that languages are systems for humanizing their users, you are herein invited / challenged to play your role as committedly and constructively as possible.

Dr. Francisco Gomes de Matos is an Applied Peace Linguist and Teacher / Educator from
Recife, Brazil. He is a frequent contributor to this Newsletter. E-mail: fcgm@hotlink.com.br