Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

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Discussion questions, exercises and further reading 201 New York’s Bilingual ‘Prison’ Instruction in English alone may not be the perfect method of helping immigrant students into the mainstream. But neither is a system that dragoons children into bilingual programs that reinforce the students’ dependency on their native language and then makes escape impossible. The Board of Education made this point last year in a scalding report on bilingual education in New York. Its broad conclusion was that new immigrants instructed in English alone performed better than students in bilingual education programs, where comparatively little English is spoken. In a lawsuit based mainly on the board’s report, a Brooklyn parents group charged this week that tens of thousands of immigrant children were being warehoused in bilingual classes well beyond the three years specified in state law, and taught neither English nor anything else very well. … Moreover, once enrolled in a bilingual program, the student is soon trapped in what lawyers for the Brunswick Parents Organization call a ‘prison’. The students speak so little English each day that they learn the language too slowly to test out of the program within the mandated three years. … The Bushwick parents also complain that children are often kept in bilingual classes despite protest from parents, who want their children mainstreamed. They also fault the State Department of Education for routinely issuing waivers that permit children to remain in the classes beyond the three year limit. The department claims that the waiver process is in keeping with the law and that the suit ‘has no merit’. That is too glib an answer for a program that according to the Board of Education’s own evaluation is failing. Whatever the merits of bilingual education, the present approach may be harming more students than it helps. (Source: New York Times 21 September 1995.) Suggestions for further reading Recommended are the following: Baker 2001, an excellent, wide-ranging introductory textbook on bilingual education and bilingualism, and Cummins 2000. Baker and Hornberger 2001 is a very useful collection of some of Cummins’s more influential papers. August and Hakuta 1997, Arias and Casanova 1993 and Crawford 1997 are all worth reading on the educational aspects of bilingual education (BE) in the United States, alongside Schmidt 2000 and Schmid 2001 on the political/identity dimension. Crawford 1999, meanwhile, is a readable account of the recent history and politics of bilingual education. Finally, there are a large number of websites on bilingual education in the United States, one of the more useful being that run by Crawford at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jwcrawford . CHAPTER 4: MINORITY LANGUAGES AND LANGUAGE REVITALISATION 1. What arguments are commonly advanced for protecting endangered languages? Are some more convincing than others? Which ones?
202 Language Planning and Education Are there circumstances where you think intervention to defend endangered languages is more, or less, justified? Which? Consider particular examples of endangered languages from a region with which you are familiar. 2. Consider your own ethnic group membership. What are the most important elements that define group membership: language, religion, descent myths, something else? How do they rank in importance relative to each other? 3. Consider situations where language teaching has been a significant element in language revitalisation efforts (e.g. the cases of Irish, Basque, Maori, Scots Gaelic, Hebrew, etc.). Compare these with the cases of Welsh and Breton discussed in this chapter. Has teaching played a more significant role in some cases more than others? And has revitalisation made greater progress in some case more than others? Why? What factors explain different levels of success or failure? Suggestions for further reading Dorian 1989, Crystal 2000 and Nettle and Romaine 2000 are useful starting points for those interested in language endangerment, and Fishman’s 1991 and 2001a volumes are essential reading on the topic of language revitalisation. Likely to be of interest for the topic of minority language rights are May 2001 and Kymlicka and Patten 2003. As regards Welsh and Breton, I have found Jones, M. 1998a, Aitchison, J. and Carter, H. 2000, Jenkins, G. and Williams, A. (eds) 2000, and Williams, C. 2000b particularly useful resources, the last mentioned covering revitalisation in Wales and elsewhere. The papers by Jones, M. 1998b, Humphreys 1993, Kuter 1989, Moal 2000 and Texier and O’Neill 2000 are helpful on the Breton situation. CHAPTER 5: THE GLOBAL SPREAD OF ENGLISH: CAUSE, AGENCY, EFFECTS AND POLICY RESPONSES 1. Identify a country with which you are particularly familiar and consider the role of English within that country, reflecting on the following points: • The place of English in the education system (at what stage is English introduced into the school curriculum? Is it a medium of instruction at any level? What percentage of the school population study English?). • The place of English in public institutions (e.g. in administration, the press and media) and business. • Public attitudes toward English, and discourses about English (e.g. in newspapers, magazines and the broadcast media). In the light of your reflections, can you comment on: • The effect of English on other languages in the society. Is English a threat to other languages? Does English diminish the vitality of other languages by, for
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