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The
Ethics of Doublethink: Language Rights and the Bilingual Education Debate Jim
Cummins University
of Toronto
The
term doublethink was coined by George Orwell in his futuristic novel Nineteen
EightyFour (1949/1983) to refer to the simultaneous belief in two
contradictory ideas. Orwell describes the process of doublethink as
follows: Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs
in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be
altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the
exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not
violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with
sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with
it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. (1983, p. 865) The
process of doublethink is very evident in the current debate in the
United States on the merits or otherwise of bilingual education. My purpose in
this paper is to document this process and to raise questions regarding the
ethical responsibility of academics and media commentators to address blatant
internal contradictions in the arguments they advance that are intended to deny
first language (L1) learning opportunities to bilingual children. I argue that
children’s linguistic and educational rights are denied by a public discourse
that tolerates and encourages doublethink and that this process
constitutes an example of the operation of coercive relations of power
(Cummins, 1996)
. I
review the writing of three prominent academic commentators who have publicly
opposed bilingual education and whose writings have contributed to the passage
of proposition 227 in California in June 1998, the intent of which was to
severely limit access to bilingual programs in that state. I argue that despite
their apparent opposition to bilingual programs, all of these authors are on
record, directly or indirectly, as supporting the effectiveness of bilingual
programs. I suggest that there is considerable common ground between opponents
and advocates. Specifically, both groups are critical of quick-exit transitional
bilingual programs and supportive of enrichment bilingual programs that attempt
to develop strong L1 literacy skills together with English literacy.
In particular, both groups appear to endorse dual language or two-way
bilingual immersion programs that involve language minority and majority
students with the goal of promoting bilingualism and biliteracy for all
students. These programs usually involve at least 50 percent minority language
instruction from kindergarten through grade 6 and are thus considerably more
“L1-intensive” than the vast majority of transitional bilingual programs
(Christian, 1994). [1] Rosalie Pedalino
Porter
Porter’s
book Forked Tongue
(Porter, 1990)
argued strongly
against transitional bilingual education on the grounds that it failed to teach
children English effectively and was based on flawed theoretical principles. She
rejects what she terms the "vernacular advantage theory,"
the argument that children learn best through their stronger language, on
the grounds that the major variable determining success in language learning is
"time-on-task." Thus, one of the lessons she derives from the Canadian
experience with early total French immersion programs for majority language
(English-background) students is that early intensive exposure to the target
language is essential: The evidence of direct correlation between early,
intensive second-language learning and high level of competence in the second
language is inescapable, as is the on-task principle - that is, the more time
spent learning a language, the better you do in it, all other factors being
equal. (p. 119) According
to Porter, the major problem with transitional bilingual education is that the
time spent through the medium of L1 does not contribute to the learning of
English. She suggests that the
success of French immersion programs for majority students in Canada augurs well
for the implementation of English immersion for minority students in the United
States. She has more recently described bilingual education as “terribly
wrongheaded” and “a failure” (Porter, 1998). There
are many problematic aspects to Porter’s argument and interpretation of
research data. One set of
blatant contradictions, however, stands out.
Despite insisting that exposure to English is a decisive factor in
determining academic success for bilingual students, she nevertheless endorses
two-way bilingual programs (involving both minority and majority students) that
will normally have far less exposure to English than either English immersion or
transitional bilingual education. Most
two-way programs continue instruction in both languages throughout elementary
school with at least 50 percent of the instruction through the minority
language. According
to Porter (1990), a two-way or dual immersion program is:
·
"particularly
appealing because it not only enhances the prestige of the minority language but also offers a rich opportunity
for expanding genuine bilingualism to the majority population" (p. 154); Such
programs promise: ·
"mutual
learning, enrichment, and respect" (p. 154). ·
They
"are also considered to be the best possible vehicles for integration of language minority students, since these students are
grouped with English-speakers for natural and equal exchange of skills" (p.
154). Furthermore,
two-way programs are:
The
doublethink process here involves the simultaneous endorsement of
(a) English-only immersion programs as the most promising option for
bilingual students’ academic success because they provide maximum English
exposure (time-on-task); and (b) two-way bilingual immersion programs that
typically entail less English-medium and more L1 instruction than any
other bilingual education option. Porter also fails to address the fact that the
documented academic success of bilingual students in such programs
(Cazabon, 1998)
(
(Freeman, 1998)
, despite reduced
exposure to English, directly contradicts the "time-on-task"
principle. Keith Baker
Baker
has been a prominent critic of bilingual education since 1981 when he
co-authored a report entitled The Effectiveness of Bilingual Education
(Baker & de Kanter,
1981)
. He has more recently co-authored with Christine Rossell a
report that reaches essentially the same conclusion: when
methodologically-adequate research is considered, there is no evidence that
bilingual education is more effective than English-only “structured
immersion” programs; on the contrary, the evidence strongly favors structured
immersion
(Rossell & Baker,
1996)
. Baker,
however, has also been a strong critic of Porter’s work and appears to have
little problem drawing diametrically opposite conclusions from the same research
study at different points in time. Consider
the following two interpretations of the El Paso Independent School District
research. The El Paso program was labeled “bilingual immersion” by the
district and involved a “native language cognitive development” component of
90 minutes a day at grade 1, gradually
reducing to 60 minutes a day by grade 3 and 30 minutes a day by grade 4
(Gersten &
Woodward, 1995)
(Krashen, 1996)
. The first quotation
comes from a critical review of Porter’s book Forked Tongue
(Baker, 1992)
while the second is
from a more recent article in the journal Phi Delta Kappan
(Baker, 1998)
. The first quotation
argues for more intensive forms of bilingual education on the basis of the El
Paso data while the second highlights how the El Paso data document the harm
that bilingual education does to children’s academic development: She summarizes a report from El Paso (1987) as
finding that an all-English immersion program was superior to bilingual
education programs. The El Paso report has no such finding. What Porter
describes as an all-English immersion program in El Paso is, in fact, a
Spanish-English dual immersion program. The
El Paso study supports the claims of bilingual education advocates that most
bilingual education programs do not use enough of the native language.
It does not support Porter's claims that they should use less. … Like El Paso, San Diego has an extensive
two-language program. Like El Paso, there is evidence that the extensive
bilingual education program worked better than the typical bilingual education
program. … Like El Paso, the results of the San Diego study argue for more
bilingual education programs, not fewer as Porter maintains" (p. 6). El Paso created an SEI [structured English immersion]
program in which Spanish instruction was reduced to 30 minutes a day.
The district followed students from this program and from the
state-mandated bilingual education program for 12 years.
The SEI students scored significantly higher on all tests for 11 straight
years. In the 12th year,
the SEI students still scored higher, but their advantage was no longer
statistically significant, suggesting that, after a decade or so, the harm that
bilingual education programs do to learning English is more or less wiped out by
continued exposure to English outside the classroom. (p. 201) It
is clearly an extreme example of doublethink to be able to describe in
1992 a program as “a Spanish-English dual immersion program” whose positive
results support the “claims of bilingual education advocates that most
bilingual education programs do not use enough of the native language” and six
years later to describe exactly the same program as a “structured English
immersion” program whose positive results illustrate “the harm that
bilingual education programs do to learning English.” [2] Christine Rossell
Although
Christine Rossell has not directly endorsed any form of bilingual education, a
large majority of the studies she employs to argue for English-only structured
immersion are in fact bilingual or trilingual programs. Evidence of doublethink
comes from her use of the
documented success of bilingual and trilingual programs to argue against
bilingual education. Rossell
and Baker (1996) cite ten research studies which they claim show structured
immersion to be superior to transitional bilingual education (TBE).
Specifically, they claim that in comparisons of reading performance in TBE
versus Structured Immersion, no difference was found in 17 percent and
structured immersion was significantly superior to TBE
in 83 percent of studies. Seven of these studies were studies of French
immersion programs in Canada. One
(Malherbe, 1946)
was an extremely
large-scale study of Afrikaans-English bilingual education in South Africa
involving 19,000 students. The
other two were carried out in the United States
(Gersten, 1985)
(Peña-Hughes & Solís,
1980)
. The Pena-Hughes and
Solis program (labelled "structured immersion" by Rossell and Baker)
was a kindergarten program involving about an hour of Spanish language arts per
day and was viewed as a form of bilingual education by the director of the
program
(Willig, 1981/82)
. Unlike the
transitional bilingual program to which it was being compared, the goal of the
Spanish language instruction was to develop Spanish language and pre-literacy
skills. Gersten's
study was the only monolingual program in the ten comparisons.
However, it involved an extremely small number of Asian-origin students
(12 immersion students in the first cohort and nine bilingual program students,
and 16 and seven in the second cohort) and hardly constitutes an adequate sample
upon which to base national policy. Malherbe
concluded that students instructed bilingually did at least as well in each
language as students instructed monolingually despite much less time through
each language. Malherbe argues strongly for the benefits of bilingual education.
He points out that as regards language attainment “the superiority in their
second language both on the part of English and Afrikaans-speaking pupils is
considerable where they attend the bilingual school” (p. 1946, p.121). With
respect to the seven Canadian French immersion programs cited as evidence of
structured immersion by Rossell and Baker, it is important to note that these
are all fully bilingual programs, taught by bilingual teachers, with the goal of
promoting bilingualism and biliteracy. Typical
French immersion programs in Canada are taught by fluently bilingual teachers
and involve 100 percent French instruction in kindergarten and grade 1 with
English language arts introduced in grade 2 and a gradual movement towards half
the instructional time through each language by grade 5 and 6. It seems
incongruous that Rossell and Baker use the success of such bilingual programs to
argue for monolingual immersion programs taught largely by monolingual teachers
with the goal of developing monolingualism. This is especially the case in view
of the fact that two of the evaluations considered to demonstrate the
superiority of monolingual English-only structured immersion programs were
actually evaluations of trilingual programs (Hebrew, French, English)
which demonstrated clearly that such programs were highly feasible
(Genesee, 1983)
(Genesee, 1977)
. More
bizarre, however, is the fact that their account of the outcomes of these
programs is erroneous in the extreme. Consider
the following quotation: "Both the middle class and working class
English-speaking students who were immersed in French in kindergarten and grade
one were almost the equal of native French-speaking students until the
curriculum became bilingual in grade two, at which point their French ability
declined and continued to decline as English was increased. The 'time-on-task'
principle--that is, the notion that the amount of time spent learning a subject
is the greatest predictor of achievement in that subject--holds across classes
in the Canadian programs." (p. 22) Rossell
and Baker seem oblivious of the fact that the "time-on-task" principle
is refuted by every evaluation of French immersion programs
(and there are hundreds) by virtue of the fact that there is no
relationship between the development of students' English proficiency and the
amount of time spent through English in the program. French immersion students
who spend about two-thirds of their instructional time in elementary school
through French perform as well in English as students who have had all of their
instruction through English. [3] Rossell
and Baker also seem oblivious to the fact that by the end of grade one French
immersion students are still at very early stages in their acquisition of
French. Despite good progress in learning French (particularly receptive skills)
during the initial two years of the program, they are still far from native-like
in virtually all aspects of proficiency - speaking, listening, reading, and
writing. Most grade 1 and 2
French immersion students are still incapable of carrying on even an elementary
conversation in French without major errors and insertions of English. To claim
that two years of immersion in French in kindergarten and grade 1 results in
almost native-like proficiency in French in a context where there is virtually
no French exposure in the environment or in school outside the classroom flies
in the face of a massive amount of research
data
(Cummins, 1999)
(Lambert & Tucker,
1972)
. [4] Similarly,
it is bizarre to claim, as Rossell and Baker do, that the French proficiency of
grade 6 immersion students is more poorly developed than that of grade 1
students and to attribute this to the fact that L1 instruction has been
incorporated in the program. Significantly, Rossell and Baker cite no specific
study to back up these claims. In
fact, the French immersion data are the opposite of what Rossell and
Baker claim. There are very significant differences between the immersion
students and native French-speaking controls at the end of grade 1 (after two
years of monolingual total immersion) but the immersion students catch up in
French listening and reading in the later grades of elementary school after the
program becomes bilingual (and obviously after they have had several more years
of learning French!). There are still major differences between immersion and
native French-speaking students in the productive skills of speaking and
writing. It
seems clear that Rossell and Baker could have constructed a far more convincing
case for the efficacy of dual immersion or two-way bilingual immersion than the
case they attempt to construct for English-only "structured
immersion." Nine of the ten studies they cite as supporting monolingual
"structured immersion" are in fact bilingual (or trilingual) programs.
It
is worth noting that the El Paso Spanish-English
bilingual immersion study (El Paso Independent School District, 1987)
is one of those they consider methodologically acceptable as is the
kindergarten study carried out by Dorothy Legaretta
(Legaretta, 1979)
which also reported that a 50% L1, 50% L2 model resulted in
more English language acquisition than models with less L1 instruction
(Rossell & Baker,
1996)
On
the basis of their own review of the literature, and Baker's published
statements endorsing the El Paso and San Diego models, Rossell and Baker would
appear to agree with Porter that two-way bilingual immersion is a model with
demonstrated success in promoting bilingual students' academic achievement in
English (and L1). Their literature review is totally consistent with the
assertion that this model should be promoted vigorously as a viable option in
promoting equity for bilingual students. With
respect to the near universal endorsement of two-way bilingual immersion
programs, it is worth noting that Charles Glenn who has been critical of
bilingual programs that segregate bilingual students from the mainstream is one
of the strongest and most consistent advocates of two-way bilingual immersion as
the following quotations illustrate: More than any other model of education for linguistic
minority pupils, two-way bilingual programs meet the diverse expectations that
we set for our schools. Properly designed and implemented, they offer a
language-rich environment with high expectations for every child, in a climate
of cross-cultural respect. Linguistic
minority pupils are stimulated in their use of English, while being encouraged
to value and employ their home language as well.
(Glenn, 1990, p. 5)
. The best setting for educating linguistic
minority pupils—and one of the best for educating any pupils—is a
school in which two languages are used without apology and where becoming
proficient in both is considered a significant intellectual and cultural
achievement.”
(Glenn & LaLyre,
1991, p. 43)
Conclusion
The
doublethink process that I have attempted to document raises ethical
issues. The vehement arguments made
by Drs. Porter, Baker, and Rossell against bilingual education have been
influential in reinforcing public antipathy towards the use of bilingual
students’ L1 as an instructional medium. Advocates of bilingual programs would
see this as a denial of both linguistic and educational rights. It represents a
process of mobilizing public discourse in the service of coercive relations of
power
(Cummins, 1996;
McQuillan & Tse, 1996)
What
appears paradoxical is the fact that each of these scholars has also endorsed,
directly or indirectly, strong use of bilingual students’ L1 as a medium of
instruction with the goal of promoting literacy in both English and the L1.
Porter holds similar views to Charles Glenn’s on the benefits of
two-way bilingual programs as a means of promoting bilingualism; Baker endorses
the El Paso and San Diego bilingual immersion programs, and Rossell cites the
success of bilingual and trilingual programs as an argument for monolingual
English immersion. There
is too much at stake for children’s educational and person development to
brush these contradictions aside as a cute exercise of doublethink. There
is an ethical responsibility to address and clarify the contradictions both for
academic audiences and for the general public. The adversarial nature of the
debate on bilingual education has hurt children and denied many the opportunity
to develop fluent bilingual and biliteracy skills. The outstanding results produced by two-way bilingual
immersion programs suggest that this option is worth pursuing vigorously.
This is particularly the case if, as I am suggesting, the self-styled
opponents of bilingual education are in agreement with advocates that two-way
programs “represent the best setting for educating linguistic minority
pupils” (Glenn & LaLyre, 1991). Footnotes
1.
Porter appears to believe that typical transitional bilingual programs in the
United States involve almost exclusive L1 instruction in the early grades. She
claims, for example, that "the teaching of all subjects in the native
language of the child for the first few years of schooling has become a
non-negotiable condition for the TBE [transitional bilingual education]
framework" (p. 71). In fact,
large-scale studies have shown that in typical transitional bilingual education
programs only about 25% of instructional time is spent through the medium of L1
(Tikunoff, 1983)
. Teachers typically switch to L1 for clarification of
instruction. In many cases the
instructional time devoted to L1 is minimal; for example, in a longitudinal
study of instructional practices in bilingual classes involving Chinese- and
Spanish-background students, it was reported
(Wong Fillmore, Ammon,
McLaughlin, & Ammon, 1985)
that the L1 of
students was used for no more than 10% of the instruction. This average time
allocation range (10-25%) is consistent with the findings of other reviews
(Wong Fillmore &
Valadez, 1986)
. 2.
Baker’s reporting of the El Paso results in his 1998 article are at
variance with Gersten and Woodward’s (1995) data. They report that there were
no differences between the programs by grade 7 whereas Baker, citing Gersten and
Woodward, claims that the “structured immersion” program was
“significantly higher on all tests for 11 straight years” (p. 201). Baker
(1998) also implies that the El Paso program involved only 30 minutes a day of
L1 instruction when, in fact, between 90 and 60 minutes a day of L1 instruction
designed to develop Spanish literacy was employed between grades 1 and 3. 3.
Another example of doublethink on Rossell’s part is her
endorsement of the “time-on-task” assumption while at the same time
acknowledging in a commentary on the Ramirez (1992) report that
"large deficits in English language instruction over several grades
apparently make little or no difference in a student's achievement" (1992,
p. 183). Expressed more positively, instructional time devoted to promoting
bilingual students’ L1 literacy
entails no adverse consequences for English language or literacy development. 4.
For example, Lambert and Tucker (1972) report highly significant
differences between grade 1 immersion and native French-speaking students on a
variety of vocabulary, grammatical and expressive skills in French, despite the
fact that no differences were found in some of the sub-skills of reading such as
word discrimination. References
Baker, K. (1992). Review of Forked Tongue. Bilingual Basics(Winter/Spring),
6-7.
Baker, K. (1998). Structured English immersion: Breakthrough in teaching
limited-English-proficient students. Phi Delta Kappan(November), 199-204.
Baker, K. A., & de Kanter, A. A. (1981). Effectiveness of
bilingual education: A review of the literature. Washington, D.C.: Office of
Planning and Budget, U.S. Department of Education.
Cazabon, M. T., Nicoladis, E., & Lambert, W.E. (1998). Becoming
bilingual in the Amigos two-way immersion program. Washington, DC: CREDE/CAL.
Cummins, J. (1996). Negotiating identities: Education for empowerment
in a diverse society. Los Angeles: California Association for Bilingual
Education.
Cummins, J. (1999). Beyond adversarial discourse: Searching for common
ground in the education of bilingual students. In I. A. Heath & C. J.
Serrano (Eds.), Annual editions: Teaching English as a second language
(pp. 204-224). Guildford, CT: Dushkin/McGraw-Hill.
Freeman, R. D. (1998). Bilingual education and social change.
Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Genesee, F., Lambert, W., & Tucker, G. (1977). An experiment in
trilingual education. . Montreal: McGill University.
Genesee, F., & Lambert, W. (1983). Trilingual education for
majority-language children. Child Development, 54, 105-114.
Gersten, R. (1985). Structured immersion for language minority students:
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Gersten, R., & Woodward, J. (1995). A longitudinal study of
transitional and immersion bilingual education programs in one district. The
Elementary School Journal, 95(3), 223-239.
Glenn, C., & LaLyre, I. (1991). Integrated bilingual education in the
USA. In K. Jaspaert & S. Kroon (Eds.), Ethnic minority languages and
education (pp. 37-55). Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger.
Glenn, C. L. (1990). Introduction, Two-Way integrated bilingual
education . Boston: Department of Education, Office of Educational Equity.
Krashen, S. D. (1996). Under attack: The case against bilingual
education. Culver City: Language Education Associates.
Lambert, W. E., & Tucker, G. R. (1972). Bilingual education of
children: The St. Lambert
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Legaretta, D. (1979). The effects of program models on language
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Malherbe, E. G. (1946). The bilingual school. Johannesburg:
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McQuillan, J., & Tse, L. (1996). Does research matter? An analysis of
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20(1), 1-27.
Peña-Hughes, E., & Solís, J. (1980). ABCs (Unpublished
report ). McAllen, TX: McAllen Independent School District.
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The politics of bilingual education. New York: Basic Books.
Rossell, C. H., & Baker, K. (1996). The effectiveness of bilingual
education. Research in the Teaching of English, 30, 7-74.
Tikunoff, W. J. (1983). An emerging description of successful
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Wong Fillmore, L., Ammon, P., McLaughlin, B., & Ammon, M. S. (1985). Learning
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