Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

Educational and political dimensions of bilingual education 67
Meanwhile, the claims of US English that new immigrants, particularly Latinos,
are less willing to learn English than previous generations are unsupported by
empirical evidence. Indeed, the contrary may be true. On the basis of an extensive
study drawing on recent census data, Veltman (2000: 90) concludes that:
there is no evidence that continued immigration poses a threat to the linguistic
integrity of the United States. The learning of English and its adoption as a
personal, preferred language occur very rapidly in immigrant groups.
At the theoretical level, the pluralist response to assimilationist arguments drawing
support from traditional conceptions of a culturally and socially homogenous nation
state is more complicated. It involves acknowledging (a) that the nation state does
have its advantages, 21 and (b) that it is not set to wither away; since, despite some
attrition of its powers by globalisation from without and by more assertive minority
populations from within, it remains the dominant form of political organisation, and
one whose underlying ideology is still widely taken for granted.
That said, the traditional nation state has significant flaws, as pluralists point
out: it is ill-equipped to respond equitably to the increased, more assertive multiculturalism
of contemporary societies and tends, in May’s words (2001: 104), to
represent ‘the particular communal interests and values of the dominant ethnie as
if those values were held by all’. Moreover, in its individualist emphasis, it underestimates
the cultural embeddedness of human individuals and, therefore, the degree
to which respect for the individual requires an extension of respect to the language
and culture that shapes them (see Parekh 2000).
Since the nation state is not set to wither away, and since its project of
linguistic/cultural homogeneity is no longer feasible or valid, the best alternative,
pluralists argue, is to rethink its nature, or, as May (2001: 17) puts it, ‘reimagine [it]
along more plural and inclusive lines’; this being in fact the current enterprise of
political theorists such as Kymlicka (1995), Parekh (2000) and May (2001) himself.
Further discussion of this project is, however, neither feasible nor appropriate in
the present chapter, focused as it is on bilingual education. All that one might add
here is that such ‘re-imagining’ is likely to involve acceptance of ‘the legitimacy of
some form of group-based rights’ (May 2001: 17), a non-possessive, more inclusive
re-definition of national identity, and, and at the most general level, some complex
reconciliation of the demands of unity and diversity.
3.4 CONCLUSION
In this chapter we have surveyed the educational and ideological dimensions of
recent US debate concerning the education of linguistic minority pupils. Inevitably,
this has required locating the debate in its socio-historical context, one of the most
salient features of which is the changes in US society wrought by recent large-scale
immigration.
On the educational front, we have found no evidence that bilingual education
(BE) is harmful. On the contrary, the considerable body of empirical evidence and