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BILINGUAL
EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES: POWER, PEDAGOGY, AND POSSIBILITY Jim
Cummins University
of Toronto Bilingual education is usually
characterized as a controversial issue within U.S. educational debate.
Discourses of educational equity (often pejoratively labeled as “liberal” by
neoconservatives) collide with discourses ranging from overtly xenophobic and
racist to discourses that are not overtly xenophobic but rather portray
themselves as concerned with “rationality,” effectiveness, and cost.
Editorials in the New York Times over
a period of 20 years or so would fall into this latter category (Cummins, 1996;
Otheguy, 1991). Not surprisingly, debates over what the research data say about
the effectiveness of bilingual education in promoting bilingual students’
academic achievement occupy a central role in this debate. Advocates of
bilingual education (e.g. Cummins, 1996; Krashen & Biber, 1988; Wong
Fillmore, 1992) argue that some form of bilingual education is implemented in
virtually every country around the world, research from widely varied contexts
shows positive results from bilingual education with respect to both first and
second language development for both “minority” and “majority” students,
and there is compelling evidence that conceptual knowledge and language skills
transfer across language such that less instructional time spent through the
“majority” language exerts no adverse effect on achievement in that
language. By contrast, opponents of
bilingual education (e.g. Rossell & Baker, 1996; Porter, 1992; Schlesinger,
1991) often characterize it not only as educationally ineffective but also as
promoting social fragmentation and divisiveness. Arguments that bilingual
education is ineffective focus on interpretations of research that suggest
bilingual programs are no better than “sink-or-swim” (submersion) programs
and inferior to “structured immersion” programs. This latter approach
supposedly is modeled after Canadian French immersion programs that attempt to
promote bilingual proficiency among predominantly English-background dominant
group students by means of instruction through both French and English. The fact
that much of the so-called research support for “structured immersion” (an
English-only program, taught by monolingual teachers, with the aim of producing
monolingualism) comes from a fully bilingual program, taught by bilingual
teachers with the aim of producing bilingualism and biliteracy, does not seem to
bother its proponents. They focus
on the fact that in French immersion programs, initial literacy instruction is
through French (students’ second language [L2]) and thus minority and/or
bilingual students in the U.S. should also be taught (totally or almost totally)
through their L2 (English) if they are to succeed academically. Their
argument is that strong development of English academic skills requires maximum
exposure to English in school. The volumes by Marcia Moraes
and Lourdes Diaz Soto each address, in very different ways, aspects of this
issue. Moraes’ treatment of the
issue is largely theoretical, an attempt to establish the foundations of a
critical-dialogic pedagogy within bilingual education based on the theoretical contributions
of the Bakhtin Circle, mainly the work of Voloshinov and Bakhtin. Soto’s
volume, by contrast, details the struggle of a Puerto Rican community in
“Steel Town” Pennsylvania to preserve a nationally-recognized bilingual
education program, with 20-years of success to its credit, in the face of the
opposition of the school superintendent, school board and majority community. The ugly reality of
racism jumps off the pages of Soto’s volume, making it gripping but also very
painful reading. The legitimation for the school board’s eventual decision to
eliminate the bilingual program, despite strong and sustained opposition from
the bilingual community, is grounded by attitudes in the broader community that
encouraged the following kinds of discourse: Listeners
heard about the “Blue E” on the local radio station. The “Blue E” referred to a proposed city ordinance
encouraging local merchants to post a “Blue E” on their doorways to signify
their support for the English-only ordinance. The ordinance provided store
owners with the ability to price goods based upon the English language
proficiency of their prospective buyer. For
example, if the store clerk detected an accent or felt that the buyer’s
English was not up to par, they were expected to pay an additional 10 percent to
20 percent on their purchase since this signified additional paperwork and
expense for the merchant. Supporters
of this ordinance called the radio talk show, expressing views such as: “Send
all the spics back to their country”; “This is America...for whites only”;
“Our city was better off without all this trash”; “English is the language
my grandparents had to learn”; “One state should be set aside for these
people...but not Pennsylvania.” (Soto, 1996, p. 65) The re-emergence of this racism
was no doubt stimulated by the growth of bilingual communities in Steel Town
(and elsewhere) and by the fact that the community decided to stop “swallowing
hard” and remain silent in the face of discrimination as they historically had
done; instead, they mobilized to demand their educational rights and became both
audible and visible. In the eyes of the dominant majority, they no longer knew
their place. Soto details some
extraordinary scenes that demonstrate the commitment to education and high
aspirations parents held for their children. She quotes newspaper accounts of a
crucial public hearing on January 28, 1993 in which more than 100 people
approached the table of board members “who became noticeably frightened when a
congregation knelt and prayed on behalf of the bilingual children in Steel
Town” (p. 77): The
pastor of the Church on Steel Town’s Southside took the microphone off its
stand and approached board members, speaking softly, “Bendito, please listen
to the parents,” he said. “I’ve seen too many kids suffer and too many
kids don’t make it. Let’s give the kids a chance.” Facing the audience,
the pastor motioned Latino members to come to the front and began to pray as
board members found themselves looking up at a solid wall of standing people.
“Bless this administration. Let us love.” The
two security guards tensed. (p. 78) The vice-president of the board
was reported to say later that he appreciated the blessing but that he had seen
the light before the hearing: “I’ve heard them all before,” he said (p.
78). In Soto’s account, the
“bad guys” win: despite the unprecedented mobilization of the Puerto Rican
community and a positive report on the bilingual program from a district-wide
committee, the bilingual program is eliminated in favor of an English immersion
program, a new school is commissioned in a white middle-class district rather
than in the much more overcrowded South Side where the Puerto Rican community
live, South Side students are bussed out of their neighborhood because of
overcrowding and the refusal of the school board to construct additional
facilities, the school superintendent gets generous salary increases and
accolades from the board, an outspoken Puerto Rican advocate for the bilingual
program loses his job in a community college, pastors and priests from various
religious groups who supported the community are transferred to other locations,
a complaint from the community to the Office of Civil Rights remains in limbo,
and the Puerto Rican community emerges from the struggle with emotions ranging
from frustration and anger to
despondency and resignation. In her chronicle of these
events, Soto makes no pretense to be an outside neutral observer. She
participates with the community as an advocate for the bilingual program and
equal educational opportunities. Her own voice is strong and articulate as she
askes questions such as: Is
the American Dream for monolinguals only? What will it take to have children’s
voices heard?... To
the high school principal who shared how blatant and acceptable racism has
become by stating, “This is America!” I will say that many of us will resist
being a part of such an oppressive America. Our schoolchildren are taught about
a different America, an America that promises democracy, freedom, and equal
educational opportunities. Where is
our democratic America? (pp. 94-96) Unfortunately, as the histories
of the United States, Canada, and many other countries show, democracy
(understood as the rule of the majority) provides only very limited safeguards
for subordinated minorities. The brutal physical and sexual abuse suffered by
generations of Canadian First Nations children in residential schools run by
religious orders under the “supervision” of government illustrates just how
much protection of rights subordinated minorities can expect when the democratic
majority considers them to be inherently inferior. As Soto’s account
illustrates, coercive relations of power persist under the rhetorical veneer of
democracy, respect for human rights, and equality of opportunity. What has
changed during the past 30 years in many (but by no means all) countries is the
perceived need to rationalize and legitimate the hegemony of dominant groups in
terms of these latter constructs. Within a democracy, the continued dominance of
dominant groups requires the consent of the majority of those who vote. Only a
relatively small proportion of members of a society will readily admit (to
others or to themselves) that they are racist or bigoted; the majority see
themselves, and their nation, as fair, reasonable, and committed to freedom and
human rights (within “reason”). The fact that large doses of historical
amnesia are required to preserve and reinforce this individual and collective
social identity is not at all problematic for dominant groups. Discourse can
readily be mobilized through institutions such as the media and schools (largely
controlled by dominant groups) to legitimate coercive relations of power as
being reasonable, fair, and in the best interests of both the subordinated
minority and the society as a whole. It is desirable, albeit not essential, that
members of the subordinated minority also accept this legitimation; it makes for
a smoother democratic process. It is in this light that we can
understand the school district superintendent’s argument in favor of
the new proposal he recommended to the school board: Its
main premise is early English acquisition, which would ensure success equipping
students with the ability to communicate in the language of this
country--English! The fact is that English immersion programs are legal and have
been implemented successfully all over the United States for many
years...As superintendent, please know that my single motivation for
changing the current bilingual education program is my deep and sincere belief
that the earlier children master the English language, the better their chances
for success. (newspaper column, January 27 1993; quoted in Soto pp. 76-77) There is no reason to suspect
the superintendent of hypocrisy; he no doubt had (and probably still has) a
“deep and sincere belief” that English immersion is in bilingual
children’s best interests. Those who hold power also usually hold “deep and
sincere beliefs” that they act in the best interests of the society as a whole
and that they have more insight than subordinated communities into what is in
the best interests of these communities. Apartheid in South Africa was
rationalized in these terms. The questions left
hanging at the end of Soto’s volume are “How can racist educational
structures and provision be changed?” “How can coercive relations of power
in schools be transformed into collaborative relations of power?” “How can
marginalized children and communities make their voices heard by those who
occupy the centers of power?” Not surprisingly, she provides
no definitive answers to these questions. She invokes the President’s
Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies (1980) to point out
that the society as a whole can benefit from the linguistic and cultural
resources of ethnic minority groups. Freire’s approach to transformative
educational change through grassroots organization and action is also suggested
as an appropriate direction for communities.
However, the reader is left with the distinct impression of a community
at least temporarily spent and dispirited. Community organization and action was
tried but to no avail. Those who held power used it to reinforce the barriers
between the center and the margins. Largely
unresolved in Soto’s volume is the issue of why dominant groups should do
otherwise and how can marginalized communities generate the power to persuade or
force them to abandon coercive models of power relations in favor of more
collaborative models. Interestingly, this is
the central issue that Brazilian educator Marcia Moraes attempts to address in
her treatment of bilingual education in the United States. She uses the work of
the Bakhtin Circle to argue both for a dialogic-critical pedagogy within
bilingual education (and other) programs and for an approach to educational and
societal change that goes beyond the Freirean model of the oppressed struggling
for liberation from the oppressor. She suggests that whereas the Freirean social
movement towards awareness and struggle is from the margins to the center, a
Bakhtinian movement would be from the margins and also from the center.
We need a pedagogy of the oppressor as much as a pedagogy of the
oppressed, she asserts. Dominant/oppressive groups have been educated “toward
a tacit understanding that they are superior. Therefore the oppressed can be
best empowered if we also turn our attention to the oppressor” (p. 115).
Moraes elaborates on this point as follows: We
need to create conditions for oppressors to critically analyze their own
situation; to critically analyze the levels in which they are also oppressed
because they live under various forms of social control and are discursively
positioned in contradictory ways that blind them to their own situatedness in
relations of power and privilege.
Then students from the oppressive groups will be able to understand the
oppression of the oppressed, since they are also part of the oppressed group
that is ideologically controlled. (p. 115) ...
if we do not reinforce the relevance of a dialogic interaction between the
oppressed and oppressor, it will be more difficult for the oppressed to overcome
social constraints and, therefore, to be empowered. From this perspective, the
awareness of the oppressed is fundamental, but the awareness of the oppressor is
crucial in the sense that the oppressor can understand that he or she must
collaborate for a better society, for his or her own emancipation as part of the
social arena...Then we can take a truly liberatory step toward emancipation and
social freedom and a step toward democracy because the oppressive groups will be
able to understand that oppression toward the other becomes their own
imprisonment. (p. 112) How does the work of a group of
Soviet intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s, who were more directly focused on
the nature of language and communication than on social change, lead us to these
conclusions? Bakhtinian constructs
such as dialogue and heteroglossia
are analyzed as follows by Moraes to make the connection between the nature
of language and social interaction, on the one hand,
and social transformation on the other: According
to Bakhtinian theory, an individual does
not exist outside of dialogue (emphasis original)--a dialogue in which the
consciousness of the speaker encounters the consciousness of another speaker; a
dialogue that reveals conflicts; a dialogue that embodies history and
culture;... In the Bakhtinian sense of dialogue...the existence of the self and
the other is a simultaneous existence; a dialogical existence. The Bakhtinian
notion of language embraces the idea that the other cannot be silenced or
excluded...language never exists outside historical forces and...the dialogic
essence of language implies that a unique group can never dominate all other
languages completely. (pp. 94-95) The notion of heteroglossia
refers to the multiple ideologically-infused discourses that intersect in all
utterances and forms of language use. Thus, “language must be understood as a
site of political struggle in which meanings collide and have to be
negotiated” (p. 95). Moraes quotes Quantz and O’Connor (1988, p. 99) to the
effect that the heteroglossic essence of social life can be better understood
through the concept of multivoicedness: Multivoicedness
seems to be the term that best captures the idea that any particular, concrete,
historical dialogue is best described in tems of the multiple voices
participating... The concept of dialogue as a multivoiced social activity
explains how the ideas of the powerful gain and maintain legitimacy as well as
how the disempowered can attempt to legitimate their ideas and beliefs to
others. (Soto, p. 100-101) The foundations of a
dialogic-critical pedagogy are rooted in the fact that “both oppressed and
oppressor must understand that our dialogic existence is something that cannot
be denied” (p. 112). Thus, we
must construct a pedagogy that initiates and maintains a living dialogue between
oppressed and oppressors whereby both groups can understand the social
constraints that inhibit progress toward an emancipatory democracy and become
more aware of the different forms of oppression each group experiences. Moraes asks the obvious
question “How can we make the oppressor aware that society cannot function
fairly while people just think in egocentric and binaristic terms of domination
and subordination?” (p. 113) She
replies to this question as follows: The
fact is the oppressor must also understand and be aware of social
inequalities... [We have to construct] a dialogic-critical pedagogy in which
students who occupy the position of oppressors understand that the oppositional
relationship between oppressor and oppressed is not a relationship that will
guarantee social freedom or social hope. It is important that the oppressor
recognizes that both social freedom and social hope can be reached through
dialogic interaction. (p. 113) While these sentiments are
difficult to contest, we are still left with the same question that faced us on
the final pages of Soto’s volume. Why should dominant groups give up or share
their (coercive) power? How can subordinated/oppressed groups convince their
oppressors that it is also in their best interests to move towards more
collaborative models of social progress? I know of no opponent of bilingual or
multicultural education who is likely to be convinced by the argument that
“our dialogic existence is something that cannot be denied” (Moraes, p.
112). In response to the argument
that “the oppressor must understand and be aware of social inequalities”
(Moraes, p. 113), those positioned as oppressors are likely to respond that they
are very much aware of social inequalities and that’s why they are adamant
that bilingual children must learn English as early and as quickly as possible. It is tempting to dismiss the
Bakhtinian-inspired perspective of reciprocal two-way dialogue between
oppressed/oppressors advanced by Moraes as naive and impractical. It is much
more straightforward to work from a Freirean perspective where the oppressed
identify their oppression and its source in coercive power structures and take
steps to transform their world through language and concrete action.
The open racism and unwillingness to engage in any form of serious
dialogue that the Puerto Rican community encountered in Soto’s account
reinforces the view that rights will only be achieved by means of active
community-based struggle against oppression. It is possible to
speculate on further measures that the community might take to assert their
children’s right to a culturally-sensitive and equitable education. In addition to pursuing the Civil Rights complaint, they
might consider the action taken by a Finnish community in Sweden who withdrew
their children from school for an 8-week period in protest against the
school’s termination of a successful Finnish-Swedish bilingual program
(Skutnabb-Kangas, 1988). The community demands were eventually met by the school
who found it difficult to defend its arbitrary decision in the face of national
attention and community mobilization in support of the strike. The accounts of
this strike demonstrate how coercive power relationships break down when the
subordinated group refuses to play their (essential) part in being the
recipients of this form of power. However, I believe it
would be highly unfortunate to dismiss Moraes’ Bakhtinian perspective as
impractical. On the contrary, I
believe her work embodies important insights into the nature of progressive
social change and how it can be furthered.
Moraes is quite explicit in fully supporting the struggle of oppressed
groups against the forces that oppress them. In addition to challenging coercive
power structures directly, however, she appears to be suggesting that
marginalized communities can also engage in other strategies aimed at promoting
an identity change among dominant groups through engaging them in dialogue. Her
discussion of this process remains largely at a theoretical level and thus,
without elaboration, is not particularly
helpful to communities whose struggles for educational rights and attempts at
dialogue are rebuffed. In what follows I attempt to elaborate in a concrete way
what a “Bakhtinian-inspired” two-way dialogical process involving dominant
and subordinated communities might look like and how pressure and persuasion can
be exerted on dominant groups to engage in this type of dialogue. I would see four components to
this process: ·
Recognition that dominant groups are no more homogenous
than subordinated groups and to dismiss all of those who enjoy privileged status
in our society as “oppressors” amounts to essentialization that will curtail
rather than promote the dialogic process; there is a need to identify and reach
out to those within dominant groups who are prepared to engage in meaningful
dialogue. ·
Identification of shared goals and common vested
interests that transcend more superficial “us versus them” divisions between
dominant and subordinated communities. ·
Demystification of research findings related to the
issues under dispute (e.g. bilingual education) and exposure of
contradictions and inconsistencies inherent both in academic attempts to
distort these research findings and in the media discourse related to diversity. ·
Promotion of programs that explicitly challenge “us
versus them” divisions and demonstrate in a concrete way the advantages for
all in establishing collaborative relations of power. Each of these components can be
illustrated briefly. Identification of the Possibilities for Dialogue.
If we consider the fact that approximately 70 percent of those who voted
in California’s Proposition 187 plebiscite in 1994 were in favor of severe
restrictions on the use of languages
other than English, we might well be apprehensive about the impact of
further “democratic” action on minority rights in general and
bilingual education in particular. Proposition
187 expresses the fear of diversity, the fear of the Other, the fear
of strangers - xenophobia. It is about power, who has it and who intends to keep
it. It is also racist and is intended to intimidate those who advocate for human rights. These realities must be recognized if we are to fight this type of
initiative. However, we should also
recognize that a large proportion of those who supported Proposition 187 do not
see themselves as racist and are not in any sense overtly or actively racist.
They would see themselves as supportive of “the common good”
despite the fact that they have bought into (or been indoctrinated into) the
discourse of xenophobia. If we
dismiss all those who support anti-immigrant initiatives as “racist” or
“oppressors” then the possibilities of change through democratic action are
remote indeed. If we are to challenge the discourse of xenophobia and work toward
a saner and more tolerant society we must communicate and dialogue with many of
those who currently see diversity as a threat. In fact, we must join forces with
them to articulate a vision of our society where there is cooperation rather
than competition across cultural boundaries and where cultural and linguistic
differences enrich rather than
fragment the whole. Recognition of Common Goals and Shared Vested Interests. Among
the common goals in which all members of society have a vested interest are the
following: ·
Promote
Academic Achievement for All. At a time when both corporations and nations acknowledge that
intellectual resources are paramount to their future progress, it should not be
difficult to agree on the desirability of maximizing the academic and
intellectual potential of all students. Every dropout carries a huge price tag
for the society: these students’ potential to contribute to the economic and
social well-being of their society is not realized, there are increased costs
for social services ranging from welfare to incarceration, and tax revenues that
they might have generated are lost. Subordinated
group students are massively over-represented among statistics of school failure
and thus any means of reversing school failure among these students will pay
dividends to the society in both short and long term.
Initiatives such as bilingual and multicultural education should thus be
examined not only through an ideological lens but as dispassionately as possible
for their potential to reverse underachievement and realize the intellectual and
academic resources of the nation. ·
Develop
Society’s Cultural and Linguistic Resources. At a time of
dramatically increased global interdependence (e.g. economic, ecological,
conflict avoidance and resolution, etc.), the cultural and linguistic resources
of any nation assume particular significance. Ability to work together to solve
problems across cultural, linguistic, racial, and national boundaries is not
only part of the “job description” coming down from Corporate America, it is
essential for social cohesion both in domestic and international arenas. As
Robert Hughes (1993) succinctly put it: “In the world that is coming, if you
can’t navigate difference, you’ve had it” (p. 100). From this perspective,
it makes no economic or other form of sense for a society to squander its
cultural and linguistic resources when for a minimal investment they could be so
easily developed. Demystification of Research Findings. The suspicion
that bilingual education is some form of “Hispanic Plot” to destabilize the
nation is fuelled by the apparent counter-intuitive nature of its rationale.
This rationale suggests that English proficiency will be better developed if
children are taught in Spanish (or some other language) rather than in English.
It makes more sense to many skeptics to argue that success in learning English
is more likely to be assured if instructional time through English is maximized.
This “maximum exposure” hypothesis is totally at variance with all
the research findings from bilingual programs around the world that involve
either minority or majority language students (see Cummins 1996, Cummins &
Corson, 1997 for reviews). Despite the empirical support for bilingual programs
and the fact that some form of bilingual education is implemented in almost
every country around the world, there has been a sustained attempt since the
early 1980s to discredit both the rationale and empirical foundation of
bilingual programs (e.g. Rossell & Baker, 1996). It is not difficult to
expose the superficial logic and sociopolitical functions of the attempt to
undermine the empirical basis of bilingual education.
For example, most of the “methodologically acceptable” studies
related to bilingual education identified by Rossell and Baker (1996) are
studies of French immersion programs in Canada. They label these studies
“structured immersion” and suggest that they constitute evidence against
bilingual education and for immersing bilingual students in English-only
programs. They are reluctant to point out that French immersion programs are
fully bilingual programs that provide strong L1 (English) instructional support
after the initial grades; teachers in these programs are also fluently bilingual
in French and English, and the goal of the program is to promote high levels of
bilingualism and biliteracy. To argue for a monolingual program, taught by
monolingual teachers, aimed at promoting monolingualism, on the basis of the
success of a fully bilingual program, taught by bilingual teachers, whose goal
is bilingualism is either naive or cynical in the extreme. Similarly, Rossell and
Baker together with other opponents of bilingual education (e.g. Porter, 1991)
consistently invoke the “time-on-task” or “maximum exposure” notion to
argue for monolingual instruction in English for bilingual students. However,
they refuse to examine the predictions that derive from this principle in
relation to the research. If this
principle were valid, then there should be a direct relationship between the
amount of instructional time in English and English achievement in all bilingual
programs for both minority and majority students. This prediction is
disconfirmed by all the evaluation results they cite in their review, whether
these results derive from French immersion programs for majority language
students or bilingual programs for minority students. In both types of programs
students taught for a significant amount of time through a language other than
English (the majority language) fare at least as well in English as comparison
groups taught entirely through English. These are data that
require explanation but rather than search for theoretical constructs that might
account for the data, Rossell and Baker erect a facade of “methodological
acceptability” that determines which studies they will accept as
“scientific”. Their discourse becomes interpretable when seen as the
discourse of the courtroom lawyer whose goal is to present the most persuasive
case for her/his client with little regard for the truth. The goal is frequently
to obscure the facts so that “reasonable doubt” is created in the jury.
In a climate of xenophobia, all that is needed to confirm the paranoia in
relation to “Hispanic activists” is to create soundbites to the effect that
“In reading, 83% of the studies showed TBE [transitional bilingual education]
to be worse than structured immersion” (1996, p. 21). As illustrated in
Soto’s volume, these soundbites then get recycled through the media and into
the discourse of policy-makers providing “scientific proof” for what was
obvious anyway to reasonable observers that bilingual education doesn’t work
and simply constitutes at best a make-work program for Hispanics and at worst a
plot to undermine American values. The fact that the bulk of the
“scientific” evidence for this position comes from bilingual programs for
dominant group students carried out in Canada (7 out of 10) or South Africa (1
out of 10) all of which clearly refute the “maximum exposure/time-on-task”
notion is a detail that conveniently resides outside the soundbite’s regime of
truth. The bottom line is that “the experts disagree” so policy-makers must
rely on other criteria, such as “common sense” or “American values” to
support their decision-making. Promotion of Programs that Challenge “Us versus Them” Discourse. The
“Achilles heel” of bilingual
education opponents is the success of two-way bilingual immersion programs. More
than 200 such programs are currently implemented across the United States and
evaluation data suggest that they work exremely well for both minority and
majority students (Thomas & Collier, 1996; Dolson & Lindholm, 1995).
These programs involve either an initial 90:10 ratio of L1 to English, moving to
a 50:50 ratio by about grade 4, or a 50:50 ratio throughout elementary school.
For majority students the program is an L2 immersion program (modeled on the
success of French immersion programs in Canada); for minority students it
constitutes a language maintenance program that aims at full bilingualism and
biliteracy. According to the
“maximum exposure/time-on-task” argument, these programs should be a
disaster for language minority students since they involve much less English
instruction than the vast majority of transitional bilingual education or
all-English (structured immersion) programs. In fact, minority students in these
programs consistently attain or come very close to grade norms in English
academic skills by grade 6 or 7 (Cummins, 1996).
The reason Rossell and Baker pay scant attention to these programs is
that both majority and minority students clearly benefit from the program
(thereby dismantling the effectiveness of “us versus them” rhetoric) and the
results show an inverse relation between exposure to English and achievement in
English when compared to all-English immersion programs (Thomas & Collier,
1996). Conclusion Soto’s account of the
community struggle for effective bilingual programs in Steel Town shows the ugly
face of racism and xenophobia that peers through the transparent veneer of
“deep and sincere beliefs that the earlier children master the English
language, the better their chances for success.” Addressing the same issues
from the perspective of semiotic theory, Moraes concludes that dialogic
interaction between oppressed and oppressor is crucial to the possibility of
social change. She combines Freirean and Bakhtinian analyses in arguing for a
critical dialogic pedagogy that would equip students (and communities) with the
tools both to struggle directly against oppression and to work for dialogue with
the the oppressor. In exploring the
implications of these volumes for the current debate over bilingual education in
the United States, I have attempted to elaborate some of the forms that a
critical dialogue might take. However disdainful some academics might be of the
media’s soundbite discourse through which coercive power relations are
perpetuated, the reality is that this is a primary discursive arena for the
political process. A major implication of Moraes’ theoretical analysis is that
it is irresponsible to abandon this arena to the forces of racism and
xenophobia. In the absence of dialogue, the “democratic” voice of the
dominant majority, infused with pre-recorded soundbite formulas, will ensure
that the coercive status quo will remain intact. Dialogue, by contrast, has at
least the potential to identify common concerns and priorities shared by various
sectors of the society, expose the superficial logic and sociopolitical
manipulation underlying opposition to programs such as bilingual education, and
finally work towards concrete social and educational changes that overturn
xenophobic “us versus them” perspectives and implement programs that are
self-evidently for the “common good”. Critical dialogue of this type has the
potential to cause soundbites to implode because their apparent logic can be
sustained only in the absence of dialogue.
However, for this process to begin, the “real” world that Soto
describes must be engaged by the “theoretical” world that Moraes explores in
more concrete ways than just subjecting the real world to further theoretical
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