Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

264 Language Diversity in the Classroomwritings had supported bilingual education provisions, but I argued fora transitional approach, on two related grounds. The available evidenceseemed to suggest that transition to the mainstream was not alwaysnecessary for the gradual development of literacy in the mainstreamlanguage, not that transition itself need be harmful. So, given theexigencies of limited resources and funds and, more importantly, thepossibilities for that ethnic ‘separateness’ that Gupta (1997) has pointedto I felt that an argument might be made, perhaps on the basis of adesirable social cohesion, for bringing all children under the onescholastic roof at some point. This went down rather badly with someof my academic colleagues, most of whom supported a continuingpluralism, in which bilingual education maintenance bilingual education,that is was seen to have an important linguistic and cultural partto play. Transitional programs were considered as cultural fifth columns.Then I discovered, through my discussions with Cummins, that whatI was advocating as transition was, in fact, what most of my colleaguesconsidered maintenance. That is, I had always rejected any facile ‘earlyexit’arrangements, always argued that minority-language-speakingchildren should be given all the appropriate help possible (see, e.g.Edwards, 1984, 1990). On the basis of practical matters having to do withresources, fairness across groups and so on, I didn’t think that bilingualeducation could be justified for a more or less indefinite term. But neitherdid the others!I felt a bit like M. Jourdain, Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme, whoexcitedly discovers that he has speaking prose all his life.Bilingual Education in America: In Transit to TroubleThe American Bilingual Education Act (1968) was largely compensatoryand transitional in tone and intent. As Venezky (1981: 201) noted, the goalwas not ‘cultural retention, encouragement of a pluralistic society, orimprovement of native languages’. Now, if a transitional intent is theofficial mandate, but a maintenance-program preference animates manyof those involved, most of the academic commentators, and some of theassessors, then we can see that, quite apart from the technical problemsof evaluation, profound philosophical differences will also bedevilaccurate assessments of program effectiveness. Although the emphasisin this section is upon the richly documented and very illustrativeAmerican setting, it is clear with another reference to Baker’sobservation, above that such ideological variation can be expected toconfound dispassionate investigation well beyond American shores.