Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Bilingual Education 253successfully re-established themselves in a new society become morepatriotic than the natives; after all, there is no true believer quite aszealous as the convert. They may, then, evolve into ardent proponents ofthe traditional American monolingualism. An observation by the rightwingcommentator Norman Podhoretz (1985) is instructive here, too: henotes that his ‘humiliating’ lack of English, in old-style submersionclassrooms, was a spur towards social mobility and success. His pointmay be entirely accurate, of course, but it is also the case that success inadverse conditions sometimes tends to the maintenance of thoseconditions, not to their eradication. On the one hand, there is often thefeeling that, if I had to struggle, why should things be made easier foryou? On the other, if I manage to progress per ardua ad astra, it may bevery much to my benefit to have my achievements remain as singular aspossible. There is a glory in having reached the peak by oneself, a glorythat will be diluted once the top of the mountain is crowded. Consider, asanalogy, the woman who, by dint of incredibly hard work and sacrifice,finally makes a place for herself in a prestigious law firm, previously anall-male bastion: is it inevitable that she will turn around and help someof her sisters up the ladder, or is it possible that she will pull the ladderup after her? (See also Chapter 6 particularly note 7.)In the contemporary American context, the single most interestingcase of an immigrant rejecting the bilingual education enterprise is that ofRichard Rodriguez. In an initial paper about his boyhood, he argues thatsupporters of bilingual education imply today that students like memiss a great deal by not being taught in their family’s language. Whatthey seem not to recognize is that, as a socially disadvantaged child,I regarded Spanish as a private language... what I needed to learn inschool was that I had the right, and the obligation, to speak the publiclanguage. (Rodriguez, 1980a: 29; see also 1980b)Rodriguez admits that he would have felt less apprehensive if teachershad spoken to him in Spanish when he first entered the classroom but, inretrospect, feels that this would simply have delayed learning the ‘greatlesson of school: that I had a public identity’ (Rodriguez, 1980a: 30).In a biographical memoir, Rodriguez (1982) described a life intransition from the son of poor Mexican immigrants, to post-graduatestudy, to a successful career as a writer of elegant and thoughtful English.Learning English at school loosened his ties with parents and relativeswho remained Spanish speaking; or, as Rodriguez puts it, a growth in‘public individuality’ (via English) was associated with a diminished‘private individuality’ (through Spanish). But he also sensed the ‘deepest