Buying into English

English has become the language of choice for global economic, political, and cultural exchange. Many developing countries (and, notably, many former Soviet bloc countries) have little choice but to "buy into English" as a path to ideological and material betterment. As Catherine Prendergast reveals, however, investing in English has not always been easy and has often disappointed expectations.

Catherine Prendergast is professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. Board of Education.