Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

‘Foreign’ Languages in the Classroom 195extra-educational factors jobs, mobility, opportunity and so on and, ifthat is so, then one might wonder why the strength of the AmericanHispanic community does not bolster the educational effort more.In fact, despite America’s multi-ethnic status in general, and itspowerful Hispanic components more specifically, we come back to acontext of anglophone dominance that obtains both within and withoutnational borders. It is a context that makes some recent comments byCarlos Fuentes (1999) seem rather naïve even though they are eminentlyunderstandable, reflective of the views of many and, indeed, attractive intheir impulse. He asks why most Americans know only English and seestheir monolingualism as a ‘great paradox’: the United States is at once thesupreme and the most isolated world power. Why, Fuentes continued,does America ‘want to be a monolingual country?’ All 21st-centuryAmericans ought to know more than one language, to better understandthe world, to deal with cross-cultural problems, y demás. Obviously,monolingualism is not a paradox, and to say that Americans ‘want’ to bemonolingual would seem to miss the point; it is simply that English servesacross virtually all the important domains of their lives.More subtly, though, it might be argued that Americans do indeed‘want’ to be monolingual, or, to put it more aptly, they see no compellingreason to expand their repertoires. In such a climate, it is easy to see whatthe consequences are likely to be for language teaching and learning atschool. Given some of the less rational ramifications of the 2001 attackson New York City, it is also easy to see that not only do languages otherthan English appear unnecessary, their use can be seen as downrightun-American, their speakers as unwilling to throw themselves wholeheartedlyinto that wonderful melting-pot, the continuing allegiance toother cultures a suspect commodity. And, of course, such broaderperceptions feed back into the educational arena, and so we return yetagain to the importance of the wider society beyond the school gates forwhat ultimately transpires within them; and, relatedly, to the importantfact occasionally overlooked or ignored that schools are most efficientas reflections of that wider society and not as innovative vanguards ofchanging attitudes and behavior.Language and ‘Empowerment’Again here, we can note the longstanding interests and manycontributions of Fishman for a recent expression, see Fishman (2006);see also Pütz et al. (2006). It is quite clear that power relationships particularly, of course, those that are markedly unequal are behind all