Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Bilingual Education 263in the minds of their parents. Baker (2006) touches upon the matter, too,referring to research with indigenous populations in the Americansouthwest. And an observation by Spolsky (1989b: 451) also in asouthwestern context reminds us that many ‘ordinary’ people haveissues to deal with that are rather more immediate than language choice:A Navajo student of mine once put the problem quite starkly: ifI have to choose, she said, between living in a hogan a mile from thenearest water where my son will grow up speaking Navajo, ormoving to a house in the city with indoor plumbing where he willspeak English with the neighbors, I’ll pick English and a bathroom!These sorts of issues complicate the linguistic picture in very realways. Interestingly enough, they all have consequences for children andtheir communities at a group level, ones that involve, but also go beyond,purely pedagogical matters affecting individual youngsters.To return to the distinction: there are, of course, ideological differencesbetween those who support transitional bilingual education and thosewho argue for maintenance programs. The first group believes that thereal aim to be achieved as soon as is reasonable is a transition fromthe bilingual classroom to the mainstream one. The second envisagesprograms that contribute to a more enduring bilingualism, ones whoseobjective is the expansion of the linguistic repertoire, not the replacementof one monolingualism by another. The transitional-maintenance dichotomyis not always clear, however, the result being a further sub-literaturedevoted to the timing of bilingual education provisions. Within transitionalprograms, Baker (2006) points out, there are ‘early-exit’ and ‘lateexit’options: in the former, two years is the allotted time for bilingualeducation; in the latter, passage to the ‘ordinary’ classroom can bedelayed for another three or four years. In some circumstances, however,a bilingual program that lasted until children were nearing or at the endof primary school might be styled ‘maintenance’. Under the essentiallycompensatory provisions of federally funded bilingual education in theUSA, the tendency has clearly been to effect a transition as soon aspossible, but it is often found elsewhere, too: ‘where there is a majoritylanguage and much immigration, then education is often expected toprovide a linguistic and cultural transition’ (Baker, 2006: 222).Jim Cummins is one of the best-known specialists in bilingualism andbilingual education (and someone I have known for a very long time),and I well remember a conversation I had with him many years ago, aconversation that revealed some misapprehensions (on my part) fuelledby the transitional-maintenance distinction. Since the 1980s, my own