JAILA JOURNAL Vol. 8(March 2022)

Ethics and Language Education
Tom GALLY
The University of Tokyo
I became interested in the emotional, deeply rooted controversies about English
education in Japan after I started working full-time at the University of Tokyo in 2005.
Although I had taught English part-time in Japan for more than twenty years, the ferocity ofthe disputes about the purposes and methods for teaching English in schools and universities
caught me by surprise. Beginning in 1984, I had taught adults at a couple ofEnglish-conversation schools; I also taught English privately to individuals and to employees
at several companies. In each case, the purpose of the lessons was clear—practice everyday
conversation, enjoy fiction or films in English, discuss current events—and the content andteaching methods could be negotiated between the students and me. If the students weren’tinterested in the classes or didn’t like the way I taught them, they could quit at any time. I
knew, of course, that school education was different, and that children and even university
students have little choice about whether or not to study English and about the curricula andteaching methods. But I hadn’t realized how strongly educators and others disagree about why
and how young people in Japan should be taught English.
My first-hand exposure to those disputes came when, in my full-time position, I began
working together with colleagues to develop a new science writing course. The course had apractical goal: to teach first-year undergraduates the basic English-language academic writing
and presentation skills that we thought they would need in the future as scientists andengineers. To replicate within the classroom the situation of many science labs and research
conferences, the classes would be taught only in English. After we had taught some pilot
classes and developed a provisional syllabus for the course, and after we had received fromthe university administration the promise of funding to hire teachers, discussions began within
the English department and the undergraduate college about whether and how to integrate the
new course into the curriculum. Those discussions were my first real exposure to the deep
fissures that exist among English educators in Japan.
The faculty who raised doubts about the proposed course made several points. One wasthat English classes taught to first-year undergraduates should not focus on teaching practicalskills, because the students have little need for those skills at that point; rather, it was said, theclasses should continue to build a basis in grammar, vocabulary, and other linguistic and117

JAILA JOURNAL Vol. 8(March 2022)

cultural knowledge that the students could draw on when needed in later years. Another point
was that the classes should be taught in Japanese, as it would be more efficient and effective
to convey knowledge about English to Japanese students by teaching them in their first
language.
A further issue was who we should hire to teach the classes. Some faculty favored
native English speakers, while others advocated also hiring teachers for whom English was asecond language. Because the course was focused on science writing, there was also
disagreement about whether to favor language-teaching specialists or people withbackgrounds in the sciences. These doubts and disagreements, expressed both in formal
meetings and in private conversations, struck me not only for their intensity but also for thelack of consensus they revealed about why and how all students at that university should
study English.
The course was launched in 2008 and, after some teething pains, eventually became an
integral part of the undergraduate curriculum. A similar English writing course was launcheda few years later for students in the humanities and social sciences, as well as a short course
for all students focused on spoken fluency. Now nearly thirty full-time faculty members teachthe three courses to over three thousand students a year, and the controversy over these“practical” courses seems to have died down. The faculty members who expressed thestrongest opinions against them have since retired, and the younger faculty seem to accept
them as a natural part of the curriculum. But, for me, the memory of that internal controversy
within one university remains vivid—partly because I was directly involved in it, but also
because, as I was later to realize, it encapsulated many of the larger disputes about why andhow English should be taught in Japan.
It was also around 2005 that I began attending research conferences and reading theliterature in both English and Japanese on English education. At the conferences, I was
similarly struck by the strong emotions expressed about reasons for and approaches to theteaching of English. Sometimes in formal presentations and research papers, but more often
during private conversations, educators showed extraordinary enthusiasm for their particularteaching philosophies and methods. Some could also be bitterly derisive about otherapproaches and the people who used them. I was not the only observer who compared theintense feelings of some language-education researchers to religious fervor.
My wonderment at the passion expressed by some researchers was matched by mydoubts about the validity of some of their claims. Many of these doubts, I admit, were due tothe difficulty of conducting empirical research on any complex human and social topic like118

JAILA JOURNAL Vol. 8(March 2022)

education and learning. Quantitative studies of, for example, student learning with a particularteaching method are very difficult to conduct well; it is hard to isolate the effect of one factor
within the complex, ever-changing social and cognitive environment of a study’s participants,
or to identify or control for the variation among learners and teachers. Qualitative
research—individual case studies, ethnographic observations of particular learning
situations—often yielded interesting insights and seemed to me to be on firmer groundepistemologically, but the results of such narrowly focused studies are difficult to apply tocurriculum development or educational policy.
But gradually I came to realize that my biggest dissatisfaction was not with thespecifics of research design or analysis. Rather, it was with the logic of the arguments madeby many researchers, particularly the connections they made between the data they obtained
and the conclusions of their studies. A typical study might, for example, be presented as astraightforward scientific experiment: two groups of similar learners received similar lessons
for a semester, with one group exposed part of the time to a novel technique for teaching aparticular language point and the other group receiving conventional instruction on that point.
Students were tested before and after the semester on that language point, and the difference
between the two groups’ test scores was analyzed to determine whether the novel teaching
technique had been effective or not.
So far, so good. While there were sometimes issues with sample size or statisticalsignificance, in general I did not see any major problems with such studies. What troubled me
were the recommendations that many of the researchers tacked on the end of theirpresentations and papers. Rather than concluding with just “Method A is more effective than
Method B,” they would also say “Therefore teachers should use Method A.” It was thislogical leap, from “is more effective” to “should use,” that bothered me. But I couldn’t
explain what the problem was.
Around 2015, I happened to mention my concerns about research on English education
to a younger colleague who had recently received his Ph.D. in philosophy. He directed me tothe is-ought problem, which was originally raised by the Scottish philosopher David Hume inhis 1739 book A Treatise of Human Nature:
In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d,that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, andestablishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; whenof a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions,

119JAILA JOURNAL Vol. 8(March 2022)

is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an
ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For
as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessarythat it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should begiven, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a
deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.
Hume had put into words the doubts I felt more than two and a half centuries later: There issomething very unconvincing about an argument that begins with an empirical statement offact—is or is not—and then proceeds directly to an assertion of what is good or bad, desirable
or undesirable, ethical or unethical—ought or ought not, should or should not.
After learning about the is-ought problem, I looked into what philosophers since Humehave said about the issue. It turned out that this is just one of many issues that have been
investigated and discussed in the branch of philosophy called metaethics. If ethics is the studyof what is right or wrong, then metaethics is the study of what it means to say that somethingis right or wrong. Like much of philosophy, discussions of metaethics are often deep andcomplex, and I cannot claim to know the field well. But what I read about the is-ought
problem helped to clarify why I had been dissatisfied with many research papers andpresentations on language education. As Hume wrote, assertions of fact are fundamentallydifferent from assertions of morality, and it is not possible to draw conclusions about should(= ought) only from assertions about is.
Those ethical questions about what should be, about what people should do, though, arevery important in every area of our lives. In fact, most of the fierce disagreements about how
and why to teach English in Japan are essentially should questions: Should English classes
focus on practical skills or on general knowledge? Should children be taught American andBritish English or should they be exposed to other varieties of English as well? Should native
speakers of English be chosen as teachers over nonnative speakers? Should students be taught
only in English, or should teachers use Japanese in class as well?
While each of these should questions can be illuminated with empirical data—that is,with is statements—the validity of should cannot be argued convincingly only from is. There
must be shared assumptions about should—about ethics, about morality, about what is rightand what is wrong—in order to draw conclusions about should.
The mistaken belief that one’s own ethical assumptions are shared by others is, I think,
why many educators and researchers don’t notice the flaws in their is-ought arguments. For

120

JAILA JOURNAL Vol. 8(March 2022)

example, a research presentation might show, based on experimental data, that a Japanesechild is able to pronounce English vowels more like native speakers’ vowels when the childpractices along with recordings of native-speaker English using a certain teaching method.
The researchers will then conclude by saying that Japanese children should be taught with thismethod. People who believe, consciously or unconsciously, that English as spoken by native
speakers is the appropriate model for Japanese learners will accept that argument despite theis-ought gap. That logical leap is more likely to be noticed by those who reject that ethicalassumption—for example, by educators who question the native-speaker model on the
grounds that it is impractical, discriminatory, or inappropriate in a globalized world. But ifthey raise their objection after the presentation, the presenters are likely to feel that it is besidethe point, as they do not accept the ethical assumptions of those who reject the native-speakermodel.
Reading what Hume and other philosophers wrote about the is-ought problem clarified
for me the resistance I had felt toward much research on English education. Since then, I havebecome more confident about advising junior researchers in the field. By encouraging them todistinguish clearly their empirical findings from their ethical assumptions and assertions, I
think I have helped them make their arguments more convincing.
Dipping into the philosophical literature on ethics led me to think about ethical issues
more broadly. My interest in ethics was also sparked by my participation in the managementof education programs in which ethical questions played an important role. In that
undergraduate science writing program, for example, my colleagues and I had to struggle withquestions about where to draw the line between acceptable use of others’ ideas in student
writing and unacceptable plagiarism. The students in that course are asked to design andconduct their own simple scientific experiments, so we also had to figure out, in consultation
with our scientist colleagues, what kinds of experiments, if any, should be permitted withhuman or animal subjects. Many of my graduate-student advisees were doing research on
language education with human subjects, and I had to submit their research proposals to theuniversity’s ethical review board. Few of the ethical issues that came up had clear answers.
While often frustrated by that lack of clarity, I also became even more interested in the
problem of ethics itself.
My new interest in ethics led me to wonder whether there were important ethicalissues—other than is-ought—in the field of language education. So I did what I usually dowhen looking for information about an unfamiliar field: I searched the Web. I tried thefollowing search strings (with the quotation marks) at Google:

121

JAILA JOURNAL Vol. 8(March 2022)"ethics and language education""ethics and second-language education""ethics and foreign-language education""language education and ethics""second-language education and ethics""foreign-language education and ethics"
When I first tried these searches in the summer of 2016, I obtained exactly zero relevant hits
for those phrases. Searches of the academic literature at Google Scholar also came up blank.
This contrasted sharply with, for example, searches for "ethics and science education" or"ethics and medical education", which yielded hundreds of thousands of hits and many books
and research papers. Clearly scholars and educators in the English-speaking world had not yet
begun thinking about language education from the perspective of the philosophy of ethics.
(When I repeated the search for the language-education phrases in February 2022, I found two
relevant pages, one for a paper in Korean with the English title “A Study on Korean Language
Education and Ethics” and the other about a Brazilian scholar named Alex Alves Egido whose“primary area of research [was said to be] ethics and language education.
The relationship between ethics and language education thus seemed to be an
unexplored field, so I decided to start exploring it. During the autumn semesters of 2016 and2020, I devoted my graduate seminar to the topic. After spending the first few weeks on somebasic concepts from the philosophy of ethics, the students and I spent the rest of each term
discussing ethical issues of language education from many perspectives.
We focused on language teaching at schools and universities, especially in Japan, so
many of the questions involved classroom activities, testing, and grading. One question we
discussed, for example, was:How should classroom teachers respond to different preferences by students about
taking part in group work?
This was an interesting question because working in pairs and groups—role playing,
discussions, etc.—is often regarded as an important part of active learning in the classroom,
and active learning has been promoted in Japanese educational policy in recent years. Group
work is done in other subjects as well, of course, but some educators feel it is particularly

122

JAILA JOURNAL Vol. 8(March 2022)

useful in foreign-language classes because it allows students to practice conversation skills
that they would otherwise have little opportunity to use. Classroom teachers, however, havenoted that some students don’t like doing group work, perhaps due to shyness, conditions
related to autism, personality conflicts with other students, or a preference for traditional
lecture-style learning. One option would be to excuse those students from group work, butsome teachers or students might object to that on the grounds of fairness or equality oftreatment.
Another question involving equality of treatment was:Should students be required to take part in immersive language classes even if theyfind them uncomfortable?
Some of the graduate students in my class reported that, when they had been in Japanese
schools, some of their teachers had attempted to teach English classes using only English.
Government policy encourages English-only instruction at the high school level, and many
universities in Japan offer foreign-language classes taught only in the target language. The
arguments in favor of target-language-only instruction tend to focus on its supposed
educational effectiveness, while arguments against it focus on its supposed ineffectiveness.
What is often overlooked is the fact that it makes some students very uncomfortable. Being
spoken to in a language that one does not understand, especially by an authority figure like ateacher, can be upsetting, even traumatic to some people. Even if immersive instruction iseffective, that doesn’t mean it should be used with all students.
This issue of fairness and equality of treatment comes up in many educational disputes
in Japan. The public education system, especially at the elementary and junior-high-schoollevels, makes great efforts to ensure that all children are given equal educational opportunities
and are treated equally. Perceived deviations from the principle of fairness are subject tointense criticism. When the government tried to replace the standard university entrance
examination in English with TOEFL, IELTS, and other commercially produced exams, theproposal was vigorously attacked and eventually defeated—largely because it was believedthat those exams would make the university admissions process less fair. As an ethical issue,
fairness is very complex. Deeper discussions of the various ways in which fairness isunderstood, and of the implications of fairness for language education, might lead to progressin resolving some of the thornier controversies about English education in Japan.

123

JAILA JOURNAL Vol. 8(March 2022)

Some issues that we discussed involved not only fairness but also whether and how
particular aspects of language should be taught. For example:
Should teachers encourage their students to follow the cultural norms—forms ofaddress, gender norms, politeness, etc.—associated with the language they arelearning?
When Japanese is taught as a second language, students are often taught to use the linguistic
forms indicating politeness and respect (teineigo and keigo). The use of those forms among
native Japanese speakers is largely determined by cultural norms about interpersonal relations
based on differences in age, social rank, familiarity, formality, etc. Those norms may seem
strange or unjust to people from other cultural backgrounds. On the other hand, learners ofJapanese who do not use those forms in the standard way run the risk of being misunderstoodor regarded as rude. Languages in which gender is deeply embedded in the grammar, such as
Spanish or Russian, can seem to promote unfair gender discrimination to people who speak aless gendered language like English or Japanese. However, not using the gendered
grammatical forms would, in many cases, be regarded as serious mistakes by fluent speakersof the language. (English, of course, is not immune to such issues, as shown by the ongoing
evolution of cultural norms for the use of personal pronouns.)Among the ethical issues we discussed in my seminar, the one that interested me mostwas:Should teachers try to motivate language students to study harder?
The motivation of students to study English and other foreign languages is an issue of greatinterest to teachers. Not only do many teachers believe—no doubt correctly—that motivatedstudents learn languages better; language classes are also more enjoyable to teach when thestudents are enthusiastic about studying. Classroom teachers, program administrators, andtextbook writers have developed many techniques to motivate students, including trying to
make the classroom more fun through games, songs, and skits; arranging opportunities forstudents to use the target language in real life so that they can better understand how they will
benefit from knowing it; and making textbooks and other learning materials entertaining aswell as educational.

124

JAILA JOURNAL Vol. 8(March 2022)

In 2014, I had taught my graduate seminar on the theme of motivation and language
education, so I had read some of the research literature in the field. I had also helped tosupervise several master’s and doctoral theses on motivation-related topics. Only after I
started thinking about ethics and language education, however, did I notice that educators andresearchers seemed to have overlooked an important ethical aspect of motivation. Motivatinga student to study means intentionally trying to change the student’s psychological andemotional state, sometimes drastically. Is that okay? (Some Japanese students really don’t
want to study English.)Ethical issues involving motivation apply to subjects other than language. In myrecollection, at least, teachers of mathematics also struggle to keep their students interested in
the subject; the same is probably true of history and chemistry and art. But some of the ethicalissues we discussed—such as whether native-speaker pronunciation should be emphasized,
especially for an international language like English, and whether language students should be
encouraged to adopt the mindset or identity associated with the target language’s
culture—were specific to language education. Language is deeply embedded in human
psychology, society, and culture, and whether or not educators should try to
motivate—manipulate?—students to study second languages harder needs to be discussed
from an ethical perspective.
In popular use, the word ethics often refers to what is right and what is wrong; inphilosophy, this is called applied ethics. While I am not unconcerned about the applied ethics
of language education, I am more interested in what is called descriptive ethics: what dopeople believe is right or wrong, and why do they believe it? Clarifying the ethical attitudes
and assumptions of teachers, administrators, students, and the general public about languageuse, language teaching, and the purposes of language education would not only reduce thefrequency of is-ought fallacies in language-education research. It would also help to cool
down some of the controversies about English education in Japan.

* This essay originally appeared in the March 2022 issue of JAILA Journal, which is published by the Japan
Association of International Liberal Arts. This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

125