As I scanned the beer menu I was overwhelmed by the variety of Belgian ales and German pilsners. I ordered the Eupner. Why drink foreign when you can have domestic?

 The town of Eupen lies at the nexus of Netherlands, Belgium and Germany – for many, Eupen is a European borderland. Situated within Belgium, Eupen operates under the jurisdiction of a Deutsche Gemeinschaft (German community). Eupen is neither Belgian nor German and at the same time it is both.To add to their identity crisis the citizens inhabiting Eupen and the surrounding areas struggle to align their ways of life with their neighbors within the European Union. The most minute of differences among the three countries are migraine-worthy. One example: In order to cooperate during emergencies, the Belgians, Dutch and Germans in these borderlands agreed to share fire-fighting equipment and engines. Though admirable, the collaborative plan came to a standstill when Dutch and Belgian, and German fire-hoses did not fit their neighbors’ fire trucks.

 The Goethe-Institut sponsored both of my last teacher exchanges to Europe. A cultural extension of Germany, the Goethe-Institut is a public-private organization dedicated to promoting German language and culture – among other things. They operate in over 132 countries and are funded partially by the German government and by private organizations. The Goethe-Institut has expressed an interest in “internationalizing” the social studies curriculum and strongly promotes its Transatlantic Partnership Outreach (TOP) textbooks to American social studies teachers.

 I believe today’s educators have a responsibility to teach what Spivak calls “transnational literacy”. At the same time, educators should guard their classrooms from a Trojan Horse that is slipped into the curriculum.

 In “Crossing Borders”, Spivak notes how during the Cold War, the Ford Foundation helped found Area Studies, which combined social and literary studies.  In my experience education – especially social studies – is always political, always ideological, and never neutral. A teacher should always be on the lookout for bias in the established curriculum. Indeed, the Goethe-Institut’s TOP program is supported by big names such as Siemens, The Robert Bosch Stiftung, and the Deutsche Bank. Spivak notes the politics “the production of knowledge”, and educators should pay attention, lest schools become sites of indoctrination or manipulation. In the case of Area Studies during the Cold War, different agendas in the humanities had been mobilized to affect political outcomes.

 “In the Postmodern Subaltern”, Susan Koshy articulates the need for a ‘transnational literacy’ that I think has great potential in today’s public schools and universities. As an public educator in the borderlands of UMD, I have seen the transformative power of the classroom and appreciate the diversity that my students bring to the classroom. In just one class today I had five Iraqi, seven Hispanic, two African, three Nepali students. Of the fourteen hundred students about 52% are Hispanic and about 75% are on free and reduced meals. Indeed in my seven years of teaching Social Studies at Parkdale High School has been one transnational experience after the other. 

 One claim by Susan Koshy resonates with my experience of teaching first-generation immigrants. Koshy criticizes the feminist academic for assuming the voice of the oppressed subaltern female “through this discursive move” (124). In all of this I now question whether academics are the best people to speak on behalf of the subaltern or marginalized. I appreciate how Anzaldúa used language to incorporate all Chicanas into the fold. It is clear that she is interested in the lives of all Chicanas who inhabit the Borderlands. However, what is missing from this academic and transnational feminist debate is the real (if not unrefined) voice of the subaltern female. Indeed the majority of my Latina students possess a working-class subjectivity that seems overlooked or misappropriated by “hegemonic feminisms”.

 As a student at the University of Maryland I have experienced how language is kicked around like a discursive football. Seemingly intelligent people play conversational keep away. They try to force their voice down the field while blocking any dissenting voices. What if educators to first-generation, working-class immigrants imposed the same discursive imperialisms present at the university level? Shu-Mei Shih’s appeal for “discursive rights” is important not just for minority feminists but for all lone wolf academics. I believe both Anzaldúa and Spivak come the closest to honoring and valuing the academic and linguistic contributions of those “remedial classes whose imaginations are crossing and being crossed by a double aporia-the cusp of two imperialisms” (Spivak, 12). Perhaps for some would-be, working-class academics or feminists there are no divisions separating the political from the literary. Educators should listen more closely for the working-class subjectivities of their students, which is usually drowned out by more “respectable” discourses.