Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

204 Language Diversity in the ClassroomMontreal/Ottawa region, the figure is about one-third, but in Vancouverit is 64% and in Toronto, 68%: thus, more than half of all Torontoschoolchildren come from homes in which neither French nor English isthe mother tongue. (Burtonwood and Bruce [1999] report that ethnicminoritypupils now constitute the majority in inner London, too, as wellas in other large English cities.) An added factor of interest, certainly notunique to Canada, arises when one considers that immigrant or‘allophone’ populations are increasingly full citizens of their newcountries; apart from the predictable crass opportunism that this createsamong politicians, the development has important implications for thevery notion of a ‘mainstream’.Canadian census figures present further details of a picture whosebroad outline is already obvious: about 20% of the population (i.e. almost6 million people) can speak a language other than French or English,and 10% speak such a variety most often at home. Immigration duringthe post-war years greatly increased the overall numbers here, but moreinteresting, perhaps, is the changing nature of the mixture of these‘allophone’ languages. In 1971, German, Italian, Ukrainian, Dutch andPolish were the most numerous varieties; in 1991, Chinese speakers haddramatically increased (from 95,000 to over 500,000), and Punjabi alsoarrived in the ‘top ten’; by 1996, Arabic and Tagalog had joined them. 3As Cummins (1998) points out, federal support for the teaching of‘heritage’ or ‘international’ languages has not been very substantial.Wary of public opinion that has never been particularly well-disposedtowards funding ‘foreign’ languages, it has usually taken the form ofsubventions to communities who as with the ‘complementary’-schoolarrangements in England organize the teaching of their languagesoutside regular school hours. Saturday-morning schools are typical here.Direct educational initiatives are provincial matters in Canada, and themost extensive programs are therefore found in regions with the greatestnumbers and concentrations of immigrant-language groups. In Ontario,for instance, well over 100,000 students learn more than 60 languages.However, the program requires both community involvement andminimum numbers of potential students and, again, classes take placeoutside the regular school curriculum. Similar programs exist elsewherein the country (see also Edwards, 1993).Notes1. I am reminded here of a similar case, one that shows the dynamics at workat a more ‘micro’ level. About 15 miles from my university in Nova Scotiais a small Acadian village. Such have been the incursions of English upon