|
|
 | Rights and Responsibilities of Educators of Bilingual-Bicultural Children |
| |
  | |||
| |
Rights and Responsibilities of Educators of Bilingual-Bicultural Children Jim
Cummins University
of Toronto This
paper focuses on the right and the responsibility of educators to make a
positive difference in the lives of bilingual-bicultural children.
I argue that every educator has the right to make a positive
difference in children’s lives and also that every educator has the responsibility
to make a positive difference in children’s lives. Neither of these claims
might seem particularly contentious but taken together they entail major
implications for how educators define their roles in the education of children.
In a context of overt and covert societal racism directed against the languages
and cultures of marginalized communities, educators not only have the right
to become proactive advocates for children’s linguistic rights, they have the
ethical responsibility to do so. I
illustrate the reality of societal racism directed against children’s
languages and cultures in two contexts: community and legislation. These
examples are drawn from the United States context but similar historical and
current examples can be found in countries around the world—for example,
Canada’s brutal treatment of its indigenous First Nations population in
residential schools up to the 1970s (e.g.
Haig-Brown, 1991) or the current educational repression of Kurds and the Kurdish
language in Turkey (Hassenpour, Skutnabb-Kangas, & Chyet, 1996). Then I present case studies of three schools in the United
States, Belgium, and New Zealand that have made a positive difference in the
lives of bilingual-bicultural children by affirming in every facet of the school
operation the value of children’s languages and cultures.
Finally, I discuss a theoretical framework that attempts to articulate
the relationship between power relations in the wider society and the reality of
teachers’ work in schools. Coercive Relations
of Power at the Societal Level
I
am using the term “coercive relations of power” to refer to the exercise of
power by a dominant individual, group, or country to the detriment of a
subordinated individual, group or country. Racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. all
represent examples of coercive relations of power. The first illustration comes
from Lourdes Soto’s (1996) description of the eradication of a successful
bilingual program in “Steel Town” Pennsylvania. Community.
The
bilingual education program in “Steel
Town” served primarily Puerto Rican students and had operated successfully for
more than 20 years. However, as the bilingual population increased in the area,
so too did expressions of racism in the wider community. The bilingual program
became a symbol of linguistic and cultural difference that had to be eliminated.
Opposition to the bilingual program was expressed by the school superintendent,
school board and majority community. The growth of racism in the wider community
is vividly illustrated by Soto: 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: 65) The re-emergence of this racism
was no doubt stimulated 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. 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. In addition, 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. The discourse that
propelled the elimination of the bilingual program illustrates well the
rhetorical veneer that often rationalizes coercive relations of power. For
example, the school district superintendent justified his proposal to eliminate
the bilingual program as follows: 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, 1996: 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 marginalized communities regarding what is
in the best interests of these communities. Apartheid in South Africa was
rationalized in these terms. Legislation. The bilingual education debate across the United States
changed dramatically in June 1998 with the passage of a referendum on bilingual
education entitled Proposition 227. California voters reversed almost 25 years
of educational policy in that state by passing Proposition 227 by a margin of 61
to 39 percent. Proposition 227
essentially eliminated the use of bilingual children’s first language (L1) for
instructional purposes except in very exceptional circumstances. The debate
leading up to the June referendum crystallized all of the arguments that had
been advanced for and against bilingual education in the previous quarter
century. Both sides claimed
“equity” as their central guiding principle. Opponents of bilingual programs
argued that limited English proficient students were being denied access to both
English and academic advancement as a result of being instructed for part of the
day through their L1. Exposure to
English was being diluted and, as a result, it was not surprising that bilingual
students continued to experience difficulty in academic aspects of English. Only
maximum exposure to English (frequently termed “time-on-task”) could
remediate children’s linguistic difficulties in that language on entry to
school. Proponents
of bilingual education argued that L1 instruction in the early grades was
necessary to ensure that students understood content instruction and experienced
a successful start to their schooling. Reading and writing skills acquired initially through the L1
provided a foundation upon which strong English language development could be
built. Transfer of academic skills
and knowledge across languages was evidenced consistently by the research
literature on bilingual development. Thus, L1 proficiency could be promoted at
no cost to children’s academic development in English. Furthermore, the fact
that teachers spoke the language of parents increased the likelihood of parental
involvement and support for their children’s learning. This, together with the
reinforcement of children’s sense of self as a result of the incorporation of
their language and culture in the school program, contributed to long-term
academic growth. In
the context of Proposition 227, bilingual advocates argued that bilingual
education itself could not logically be regarded as a cause of continued high
levels of academic failure among bilingual students since only 30 percent of
limited English proficient students in California were in any form of bilingual
education. Less than 18 percent
were in classes taught by a certified bilingual teacher, with the other 12
percent in classes most likely taught by a monolingual English teacher and a
bilingual aide (Gandara, 1997). Thus, they argued that educational failure among
bilingual (particularly Latino/Latina) students was more logically attributed to
the absence of genuine bilingual programs than to bilingual education in some
absolute sense. Despite the fact that logically
the academic difficulties of bilingual children could not be attributed to
bilingual education, the media both in California and elsewhere consistently
distorted the role of bilingual education (Krashen, 1999). Latent anti-immigrant
xenophobia was mobilized through the media and backed up with assertions that
flew in the face of massive research evidence. For example, Proposition 227
claimed that one-year of intensive English instruction was sufficient for
bilingual children to acquire sufficient English to succeed academically in the
mainstream classroom without any further support. Several large-scale studies
show that at least five years is typically required for English language
learning (ELL) students to catch up to native-speakers in academic English (e.g.
Cummins, 1981; Klesmer, 1994; Thomas & Collier, 1997). It is clear from both the conflict in “Steel Town”
documented by Soto (1996) and the Proposition 227 debate that the discourse of
the wider community can exert a dramatic impact on what happens in the
classroom. Not only does it result
in prohibitions on using children’s L1 in the classroom but it also affects
the mindset of educators who teach bilingual-bicultural students. School board
administrators, school principals and classroom teachers are all placed in a
position where they have to make choices. They must decide what their
educational beliefs are and how they are to act on them in a context where
racism and xenophobia rule the day in the discourse of the wider society. For
example, what choices are available to a teacher in a school where the principal has ruled that no Spanish
shall be spoken in the classroom either by teachers or children, no Spanish
books will be used in the classroom nor given to children to take home for
reading with parents, and parents should be encouraged to speak English with
their children? This scenario is based on accounts of teachers in California (as
of December, 1999). My argument is that teachers have both the right
and the responsibility to resist these coercive injunctions. When the
classroom door closes, there are many ways in which teachers can communicate
accurate and affirmative messages to their students regarding the value of their
languages and cultures. They can also communicate to parents what the research
says about the importance of first language (L1) development for children’s
overall academic progress as well as for continued communication in the home. To
take these steps, however, teachers must define their role as challenging
coercive relations of power. The three programs described in the next section
illustrate how bilingualism and trilingualism, and strong academic achievement,
can be promoted in schools where educators have been willing to establish a
“counter-discourse” (Freeman, 1998) to the discourse of disempowerment that
prevails in the wider society. The Collaborative
Creation of Power in Three School Programs
Collaborative
relations of power reflect the sense of the term “power” that refers to
“being enabled,” or “empowered” to achieve more.
Within collaborative relations of power, “power” is not a fixed
quantity but is generated through interaction with others. The more empowered one individual or group becomes, the more
is generated for others to share, as is the case when two people love each other
or when we really connect with children we are teaching.
Within this context, the term empowerment can be defined as the
collaborative creation of power. In
describing each of the three programs, I first provide a summary of the main
features in tabular form and then draw out some of the commonalities that
characterize all three programs. These programs illustrate what
educators, students, and communities can achieve when the ideology that
permeates the school challenges the constricting and devaluing ideology that
subordinated groups have typically endured in the wider society. Richmond Road
School
Location:
New Zealand (Auckland)
Languages:
Cook Islands, English, Maori, Samoan Students: Cook
Islands L1, English L1, Maori L1, Samoan L1 L1/L2%:
Model
A: 100 % English
Model B: 50 % Maori, 50 % English
Model C: 50 % Samoan, 50 % English
Model D: 50 % Cook Islands, 50 % English Goals:
To affirm and incorporate the languages and cultures of the students
within the school. Results:
By the end of elementary school, students’ reading attainment improved
dramatically compared to their performance in the first few years of schooling.
Most children (26/35) in the cohort analyzed longitudinally were performing at
or above grade expectations compared to only 3/35 who were at or above grade
norms on entry to school. This contrasts with the pattern in large scale studies
which showed similar students in New Zealand far below grade level with the gap
increasing as students progressed through the grades
(Elley, 1992)
. Comments:
The classes are organized in vertical family groupings rather than
according to chronological age. Peer tutoring and cooperative learning are
central to the instructional approach.
Students stay in the same program from 5 to 13 years old and parents are
given the choice of which model to enter. Thus, children from English-speaking
backgrounds also entered the bilingual (Maori) program (Cazden, 1989; May 1994). Oyster
Bilingual School Location:
USA
(Washington, DC) Languages:
Spanish,
English Students:
Approximately
60% Spanish L1 (primarily Salvadorian), 40% English L1 (about half African
American, half Euro-American). L1/L2
%:
Approximately 50% Spanish, 50% English; students read in both
languages each day. Each class is taught by two teachers, one responsible for
English-medium instruction and one for Spanish-medium instruction. This
organization is achieved through larger class sizes and by assigning ancillary
or resource teacher allocations to classroom instruction. Goals:
The
development of students who are biliterate and bicultural. Results:
Grade
3 Reading, Mathematics, Language and Science scores were more than one median
grade equivalents above norms (percentiles 74—81); grade 6 grade equivalents
were more than 3.5 years above norms (percentiles 85—96) (1991 data).
The school was ranked in the top 8% of Washington DC schools in reading
and mathematics on the SAT-9 test (1998 data). Comments:
Started in 1971, the school has evolved a social
identities project
(Freeman, 1998)
that communicates
strongly to students the value of linguistic and cultural diversity.
In the words of one of the teachers: “It’s much more than
language.” The
Foyer Model of Trilingual/Bicultural Education Location:
Belgium
(Brussels) Languages:
Dutch,
French, and one of the following: Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Students:
Students
from the following backgrounds: Italian (2 schools), Spanish (2 schools),
Turkish (1 school) and Moroccan (1 school) L1/L2%:
Nursery
school (ages 3-5):
50% L1 (L1 grouping), 50% Dutch (integrated in multi-ethnic groups); Primary school (ages 6-12): Year 1:
Year 2:
Year 3+:
Goals: 1.
To prepare all children and teachers to live together in a
complex, multicultural society; 2.
To enable migrant children to acquire fluency and literacy in three
languages by the end of elementary schooling; 3. To increase migrant children’s opportunities for integration in both the host country and in their countries of origin; 4.
To
increase family involvement in the school and society in general; Results:
Project
students develop better L1 knowledge than those in monolingual Dutch schools,
although their L1 knowledge is less than that of students in their countries of
origin. Students also develop a level of Dutch sufficient to enable them to keep
up with subsequent classes at secondary school, although there are still
differences between them and Dutch-L1 Belgian students. Comments:
Started in 1981 by Foyer (a non-state
organization concerned with the well-being of immigrant communities in
Brussels), the project assumed as axiomatic that children should be taught in
part by teachers of the same origin as themselves in order to support their
sense of identity (Byram & Leman, 1989; Reid & Reich, 1992). According
to the evaluation report on Dutch proficiency “children in the experimental
group succeed in catching up on most of their arrears in proficiency in the
course of primary school” (p. 47)
(Jaspaert, 1989)
. Some
commonalities among the schools are immediately obvious. All three schools
articulate the value for individual students and their families of developing
strong L1 proficiency in both oral and written modes. In doing so, they are
challenging the still pervasive devaluation and sometimes “linguicidal”
orientation towards the mother tongues of subordinated groups in the wider
society (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1999) The
following quotations from evaluation reports and other documentation illustrate
other aspects of the deep structure of collaborative empowerment and willingness
to challenge coercive relations of power that characterizes these schools. Richmond
Road. From
Courtney Cazden’s (1989) report comes these quotes from teachers in Richmond
Road that illustrate the ways in which identities are negotiated between
teachers and students and among teachers from different backgrounds: We, as teachers, share our various ethnic backgrounds
with each other. This helps to enrich us as a group working together. And not
only that—the children also share their backgrounds with each other and with
the teachers. The whole basis of
the subject content matter of the school is who we are in this school.
(1989: 148) I’m learning from the kids—their cultures, and
not only that, their languages as well. (1989: 148) It’s taken a long time, but for me—like many
people before—I think of Richmond Road now as my turangawaiwai [a place
to stand]. It’s the place, and what it represents to me, in my mind and my
heart. I left Fiji with a chip on
my shoulder, and I had nothing to do with Fijian people for ten years.
It’s only by being involved with the philosophy here: we’re
constantly telling people not to be sucked up in the system that says you have
to speak English and be like an English person before you can succeed.
And I realized that here I was, telling them to do these things,
and I wasn’t even doing them myself.
I had never spoken to my children in Fijian.
This was a big discovery to me. I felt good about myself before, but as a
New Zealand person. Whereas
now, because of the experiences that I had here, I feel totally different.
(1989: 149) When I was a child, my mother never came near the
school, because she felt she didn’t have a place in it. Here people come and
feel they’re helping, and I think that’s what’s important—that
everybody’s got something they can do for the school.
If parents and children feel that school is a special place for them,
then the child benefits from this liaison. When you, as a teacher, have the
support of the parents who feel good about the place, then there’s nothing
that can’t be done for that child. That’s
special about Richmond Road. And, of course, it’s happening for each
ethnic group. (1989: 158-159) When
teachers who belong to groups with differential status in the wider society
share as equals within the school, this constitutes a challenge to the pattern
of coercive macro-interactions in the society.
Similarly, when teachers learn from their culturally diverse
students, a shift in the pattern of power relations has occurred.
When the school creates a climate of two-way partnership with parents
from varied backgrounds and values the language and cultural resources they can
bring to school, collaborative empowerment is taking place. Oyster
Bilingual School. Rebecca Freeman provides detailed discourse analyses that
illustrate how the micro-interactions between educators and students in Oyster
bilingual school “refuse” the discourse of subordination that characterizes
the wider society and most conventional school contexts. She points out that the discourse practices in the school
“reflect an ideological assumption that linguistic and cultural diversity is a
resource to be developed by all students, and not a problem that minority
students must overcome in order to participate and achieve at school” (p.
233). Specifically, educators have choices
in the way they organize discourse practices and these choices entail
significant consequences for both language minority and majority students. The
school requires all students to become bilingual and biliterate in
Spanish and English, and “to expect, tolerate, and respect diverse ways of
interacting” (1998: 27). Oyster’s bilingual program has two complementary
agendas that together challenge the unequal distribution of rights in mainstream
US schools and society. First, the dual-language program is organized so that
language minority and language majority students have the opportunity to develop
the ability to speak two languages and to achieve academically through two
languages. Second, the social
identities project is organized so that language minority students gain
experience seeing themselves as having the right to participate equally in the
academic discourse, and the language majority students gain experience
respecting that right. (1998: 231) In
other words, the school “aims to promote social change on the local level by
socializing children differently from the way children are socialized in
mainstream US educational discourse” (1998: 27). Rather than pressuring language minority students to
assimilate to the positively evaluated majority social identity (white
middle-class native English-speaking) in order to participate and achieve at
school, the Oyster educational discourse is organized to positively evaluate
linguistic and cultural diversity. ... this socializing discourse makes possible
the emergence of a wide range of positively
evaluated social identities, and offers more choices to both language minority
and language majority students than are traditionally available in mainstream US
schools and society. The Oyster educators argue that students’ socialization
through this educational discourse is the reason that [limited English
proficient], language minority, and language majority students are all
participating and achieving more or less equally. (1998: 27) The
Oyster Bilingual School Local School Plan for the school year 1999-2000 provides
more information about the outstanding achievement levels of the students and
insight into the conditions that nurture this achievement. It notes that Oyster
has moved from being ranked 25th out of 119 Washington DC elementary
schools in the results of standardized tests in 1982 (top 21%) to being ranked 9th
out of 111 elementary schools in the results of the SAT-9 reading and
mathematics assessment in 1998 (top 8%). On the Spanish achievement test
(APRENDA), 51% of Oyster students scored at the proficient or advanced levels in
reading and 77% scored at the proficient or advanced levels in mathematics
(Oyster Bilingual School, 1999). The
Local School Plan also notes that The hallmark of Oyster’s dual-language immersion
program is that it nurtures students’ valuing of themselves and their valuing
of others. That cherishing of human growth comes in significant measure from the
way that the dual language immersion program is delivered at Oyster. From
Pre-Kindergarten, students learn in an atmosphere where language and culture are
integrated. ... the equal valuation of two languages communicates to the
children that cultures and the people who are products of those cultures are
also to be equally valued. (1999: 3) The
Foyer Model. A
number of themes run through the various evaluation reports of the Foyer
project. One is the necessity for schools to focus directly on issues of identity
if they are to prepare students to thrive in a complex multilingual
multicultural social context. In
Brussels (and Belgium as a whole), French is the more prestigious language but
Dutch is the majority language. Because of the similarity of languages, Spanish
and Italian children often acquire French on the street and are frequently more
fluent in French than their Dutch-speaking peers. These students speak their L1
in the home and frequently visit their countries of origin during the summer.
So three languages permeate many aspects of their lives and constitute
significant components of their Belgian identity.
At
one level the school simply reflects and positively valorizes this multilingual
and multicultural reality. However,
the apparent logic and “obviousness” of this approach masks its uniqueness
and the challenge it constitutes to the educational status quo. Unlike more
traditional schools that ignore and (implicitly or explicitly) devalue
students’ home language and culture, Foyer communicates to students (and their
parents) the fact that their languages and cultures are resources that
provide them with expanded options or choices with respect to both
identity and future life choices (e.g. employment possibilities, place or
residence etc.). Also
clear from the Foyer case study is the fact that trilingualism can be developed
at no cost to students’ achievement in the dominant language of society and
school (Dutch). Although the
evaluation comparisons involve small numbers, it is clear that teachers,
researchers, and parents consider the program to be highly successful with most
students coming close to Dutch (L1) norms by the end of elementary school. In
short, the organizational structures of the project together with the ways in
which educators have defined their roles or identities result in a pattern of
micro-interactions that expand the identity options and academic opportunities
available to language minority students. The
language as resource orientation that permeates the ethos of the Foyer
schools challenges and refutes the language as problem/minorities as inferior
orientation that characterizes more typical educational contexts. These
three case studies illustrate the fact that educators are not impotent to affirm
the value of students’ languages and cultures and to promote language
enrichment together with strong academic achievement. The framework presented in
the next section attempts to depict the underlying structure of this process.
Reversing the legacy of school failure has much more to do with challenging
coercive power structures than with technical aspects of instruction (e.g.
specific ways of teaching reading). A
Framework for Making a Positive Difference in Children’s Lives The
framework (Figure 1) proposes that relations of power in the wider society
(macro-interactions), ranging from coercive to collaborative in varying degrees,
influence both the ways in which educators define their roles and the types of
structures that are established in the educational system. Role definitions
refer to the mindset of expectations, assumptions and goals that educators bring
to the task of educating culturally diverse students. Educational
structures refer to the organization of schooling in a broad sense that includes
policies, programs, curriculum, and assessment. While these structures will
generally reflect the values and priorities of dominant groups in society, they
are not by any means fixed or static. As with most other aspects of the way
societies are organized and resources distributed, educational structures are
contested by individuals and groups. Educational
structures, together with educator role definitions, determine the
micro-interactions between educators, students, and communities. These
micro-interactions form an interpersonal or interactional space within which the
acquisition of knowledge and formation of identity is negotiated. Power is
created and shared within this interpersonal space where minds and identities
meet. As such, these
micro-interactions constitute the most immediate determinant of student academic
success or failure. Micro-interactions
between educators, students and communities are never neutral; in varying
degrees, they either reinforce coercive relations of power or promote
collaborative relations of power. In the former case, they contribute to the
disempowerment of culturally diverse students and communities; in the latter
case, the micro-interactions constitute a process of empowerment that enables
educators, students and communities to challenge the operation of coercive power
structures. FIGURE 1 COERCIVE AND
COLLABORATIVE RELATIONS OF POWER MANIFESTED IN MACRO- AND MICRO-INTERACTIONS COERCIVE AND COLLABORATIVE
RELATIONS OF POWER MANIFESTED IN MACRO-INTERACTIONS BETWEEN SUBORDINATED COMMUNITIES AND DOMINANT GROUP INSTITUTIONS
í
î EDUCATOR ROLE DEFINITIONS «
EDUCATIONAL STRUCTURES
î
í MICRO-INTERACTIONS BETWEEN EDUCATORS AND STUDENTS forming an INTERPERSONAL SPACE within which knowledge is generated and identities are negotiated EITHER REINFORCING COERCIVE RELATIONS
OF POWER OR PROMOTING COLLABORATIVE RELATIONS OF POWER The
macro-interactions between dominant and subordinated groups in the wider society
give rise to particular forms of educational structures that are designed to
reflect the priorities of the society. Since dominant groups, almost by
definition, determine the priorities of the society, education has historically
tended to reproduce the relations of power in the broader society. Examples
of educational structures that reflect coercive relations of power are: ·
English
submersion programs for bilingual students that actively suppress their L1 and
cultural identity; ·
exclusion
of culturally-diverse parents from participation in their children's schooling; ·
tracking
or streaming practices that place subordinated group students disproportionately
in lower-level tracks; ·
use of
biased standardized tests for both achievement monitoring and special education
placement; ·
teacher
education programs that prepare teachers for a mythical monolingual monocultural
white middle-class student population; ·
curriculum
content that reflects the perspectives and experiences of dominant groups and
excludes those of subordinated groups. These
educational structures constitute a frame that sets limits on the kinds of
interactions that are likely to occur between educators and students. They constrict
rather than expand the interactional space. In
summary, a central principle of the present framework is that the negotiation of
identity in the interactions between educators and students is central to
students' academic success or failure. Our interactions with students are
constantly sketching a triangular set of images: ·
an
image of our own identities as educators; ·
an image
of the identity options we highlight for our students; consider, for example,
the contrasting messages conveyed to students in classrooms focused on
collaborative critical inquiry compared to classrooms focused on passive
internalization of information; ·
an
image of the society we hope our students will help form. In
other words, an image of the society that students will graduate into and the
kind of contributions they can make to that society is embedded implicitly in
the interactions between educators and students. These interactions reflect the
way educators have defined their role with respect to the purposes of education
in general and culturally diverse students and communities in particular. Are we
preparing students to accept the societal status quo (and, in many cases, their
own inferior status therein) or are we preparing them to participate actively
and critically in the democratic process in pursuit of the ideals of social
justice and equity which are enshrined in the constitutions of most democratic
countries? This
perspective clearly implies that in situations where coercive relations of power
between dominant and subordinated groups predominate, the creation of
interpersonal spaces where students' identities are validated will entail a
direct challenge by educators (and students) to the societal power structure.
For example, to acknowledge that culturally diverse students' religion, culture
and language are valid forms of self-expression, and to encourage their
development, is to challenge the prevailing attitudes in the wider society and
the coercive structures that reflect these attitudes. The
necessity for bilingual classrooms to become “sites of resistance”
(counter-hegemonic) if they are to be truly successful in promoting bilingualism
and academic achievement is illustrated in a case study of one classroom
documented by Sheila Shannon (1995). She points out that teachers must recognize
how the power of English as the high status language in the school and society
undermines children’s desire to speak Spanish and identify with their home
culture. They must also take active steps to challenge and resist the unequal
language status in bilingual classrooms by conveying an enthusiasm for Spanish
and ensuring equity in materials and attention to each language.
In Shannon’s account of one bilingual classroom, we see how issues of
power and identity are virtually inseparable from issues of language learning
and academic achievement. In
summary, empowerment derives from the process of negotiating identities in the
classroom. Interactions between educators and culturally diverse students are
never neutral with respect to societal power relations. In varying degrees, they
either reinforce or challenge coercive relations of power in the wider society.
Historically, subordinated group students have been disempowered educationally
in the same way their communities have been disempowered in the wider society.
It follows from this analysis that subordinated group students will succeed
academically to the extent that the patterns of interaction in the school
challenge and reverse those that have prevailed in the society at large. It is
both the right and the responsibility of educators both individually and
collectively to contribute to this challenge and thereby make a positive
difference in the lives of their students. References
Byram, M., & Leman,
J. (1990). Bicultural and trilingual education. Clevedon, England:
Multilingual Matters. Cazden,
C. B. (1989). Richmond Road: A
multilingual/multicultural primary school in Auckland, New Zealand. Language
and Education, 3, 143-166. Cummins,
J. (1981). Age on arrival and immigrant second language learning in Canada: A
reassessment. Applied Linguistics, 1, 132-149. Freeman,
R. D. (1998). Bilingual education and social change. Clevedon, England:
Multilingual Matters. Haig-Brown,
C. (1991). Resistance and renewal: Surviving the Indian residential school.
Vancouver: Tillacum Library. Hassanpour,
A., Skutnabb-Kangas, T., & Chyet, M. (1996). The non-education of Kurds: A
Kurdish perspective. International Review of Education, 42(4), 367-379. Jaspaert,
K. L., G. (1989). Linguistic evaluation of Dutch as a third language. In M.
Byram, and Leman, J. (Ed.), Bicultural and trilingual education (pp.
30-56). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Klesmer,
H. (1994). Assessment and teacher perceptions of ESL student achievement. English
Quarterly, 26(3), 8-11. Krashen,
S. D. (1999). Condemned without a trial: Bogus arguments against bilingual
education. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. May,
S. (1994). Making multicultural education work. Clevedon, England:
Multilingual Matters. Oyster
Bilingual School. (1999). Local School Plan . Washington, DC: Oyster
Bilingual School. Reid,
E., & Reich, H. (1992). Breaking the boundaries:
Migrant workers' children in the EC. Clevedon, England: Multilingual
Matters. Shannon,
S. (1995). The hegemony of English: A case study of one bilingual classroom as a
site of resistance. Linguistics and Education, 7, 175-200. Skutnabb-Kangas,
T. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education - or worldwide diversity and
human rights. Mawah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Soto,
L. D. (1997). Language, culture, and power:
Bilingual families and the struggle for quality education. New York:
SUNY Press. Thomas, W. P., & Collier, V. (1997). School effectiveness for language minority students . Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.
| ||||||||||||||||||
