Talkback Circuits / DNA 23 New Alphabets at School

The language of tomorrow originates in the schools of today. This book looks at (colonial) alphabets in the school microcosm, centring on a Spanish course at Johanna-Eck-Schule in Berlin and the project work carried out with Santiago Calderón and Aliza Yanes. The two artists present their own animated film images as a counter to the Eurocentric narratives offered by the class textbook which are rooted in colonialism. The students’ everyday lives are also determined by the informal use of language; here we are able to look into the pages of books and get to listen in on break-time conversations. How do the exchanges between the students, which are typically multilingual, tally with the monolingual transfer of knowledge? How does online hate speech affect people’s thinking? How can a syntax of body language be found? And how can the creative potential of memes and chat shorthand be transferred to educational practice?