Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

Educational and political dimensions of bilingual education 65
a matter of self-ascription but depends crucially on how one is regarded by others;
and in the United States – more often than not – minorities, whatever their personal
wishes, are conscripted by public attitudes into pre-existing ethnic identities –
Latino, Asian and so on. The not uncommon result, to use Parekh’s (2000: 198)
phrase, is that assimilation does not ‘redeem its promise of … full acceptance’.
As for rewards, it is clear that the acquisition of fluent English, does not necessarily
of itself confer socio-economic advantage. Many African Americans, and Latinos, are
long-standing speakers of English but, as we have seen, this does not prevent them
from being over-represented among the lowest income groups.
A final point is that the assimilationist perhaps exaggerates the homogeneity of the
society into which the minority person is supposed to assimilate, and in so doing
offers an abridged version of national culture more or less identical with that of the
dominant majority group.
Pluralists, obviously, have quite a different ‘take’ on social justice. Starting from a
different understanding of the nature and history of US society, they call for state
funding for the maintenance of minority languages and cultures, arguing that this
is necessary not just to redress past injustices but to advance greater equality
of opportunity and respect in a society marked by profound ethnolinguistic
inequalities.
Invoked here also is the notion of collective (or group) rights to the maintenance
of minority languages and cultures, extensively discussed by political theorists such
as Kymlicka (1995), Parekh (2000), Raz (1994), Taylor (1994) and May (2001),
particularly in respect of their contrast with the individual rights historically
prioritised by liberals.
Discussion of normative theories of language rights lies beyond the scope of this
chapter, however. All we can do in passing, then, is refer to Kymlicka (1995), who
seeks to revise liberal political theory to render it more hospitable to cultural diversity
and group-based rights. The barest nub of Kymlicka’s (1995) argument is (a) that
the well-being of individuals is entwined with the well-being of the cultural
communities that shape them, and (b) that justice requires that ethnolinguistic
minorities enjoy certain cultural rights, since withholding them would lead the state
to fail in its moral obligation to represent all citizens fairly.
3.3.2 Bilingual education, national unity, the common good and social
justice: the arguments of pluralists and assimilationists
We now come to the second key value in the assimilationist–pluralist debate, and the
one most central to the assimilationist case; namely, national unity and the common
good.
Pointing to ethnolinguistic tensions elsewhere (e.g. Quebec, Sri Lanka), assimilationists
argue that bilingual education and other pluralist policies are deeply
inimical to the unity of the nation. They encourage minority groups to identify
interests distinct from, and often opposed to, those of the nation as a whole, and
they increase the likelihood that competition for scarce resources will fracture along