Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Implications /171

against innovation, but it has at least provided some consistency across
the ever changing fashions of a commodity oriented academy .

Cultural and political reasons for the central role of teachers in the
educational process, however, may be typical of underdeveloped countries.
Groups differ in their conceptions of the role of the adult in the
socialization process, and societies that have still to come to terms with
or adjust to the rapid pace of overall change tend to regard elders as
masters of experience and unquestionable guides to the younger. This is
reflected not only in the relationship between adults and children but
also between children of different ages. Theories elaborated in certain
groups which stress the joint discovery of knowledge by adults and
children at home and at school, or restrict the universe of children to
peer groups are not easily or legitimately exportable, and are likely to
clash with contrasting conceptions elaborated in other groups, as the
same mechanisms which operate to construct knowledge produce different
outcomes.

The political function of teachers in affluent and poor countries is also
different: in the latter they are considered the main agents of change,
which in turn is overtly spelled out and its direction necessarily the
monopoly of centralized structures of government. The phase when it was
so in Vestem, rich countries has long passed, and consequently there
teachers are presently either a non reliable force or an ineffective one
when compared with others, or both. Underdeveloped countries differ In
the degree of control over teachers and education, and in the political
role they manifestly attribute to teachers: those whose independence was
the result of an mass armed confrontation tend to be at one extreme of
the continuum, at least for the first decade after independence, but no
ruling class can afford to disregard the opportunities offered by the
joint demand for education willingly paid for by the population, and the
network of controllable agents reaching all the corners of the land.

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