Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Bilingual Education 269by ‘time-on-task’ arguments in this regard. These have included Unz andTuchman’s (1998) assertion that all-English instruction was necessary forfull participation in the ‘American Dream’. 6The actual breakdown of the California results shows that abouttwo-thirds of the white voters were in favor of the Unz proposal. Thefigure was 40% among Hispanic voters, and the levels of support inthe Asian and African American communities were 57 and 48%,respectively. These are all interesting numbers, to be sure. A largeminority of Spanish-speaking voters the major beneficiaries of bilingualeducation rejected it. African Americans, in the more or less immediateaftermath of the Oakland School Board controversies (see above)remained divided over the issue. ‘Asians’, who represent a numberof language communities, and who could also theoretically benefit frombilingual education provisions, showed a little more sympathy for themthan did their white counterparts, but their voting patterns also reflecttheir well-known educational and socioeconomic success, a success thatis clearly not dependent upon any special educational programs.Even allowing for some sort of ‘backlash’ on the part of Englishspeakers, some commentators have found it strange that legislation thatmany have seen as springing from unpleasant nativist sentiment shouldhave arisen in the two most powerful Hispanic enclaves. This is acomplicated matter that I cannot delve further into here, but it should beremembered that strength of numbers allied, in the Mexican-Americancase, with proximity to the homeland does not seem to alter the basicdynamics of language shift in the United States (a point that appliesequally well to the other large minority group that remains near itsorigins: the French-Canadians of New England). The rapidity of suchshift may be affected by these factors, but its essential character, one thatis shared by all the other immigrant groups in the country, is unaltered.Thus, Porcel (2006: 107) reminds us that, while Miami Cubans ‘mighthave greater incentives and the best conditions for language maintenanceamong all U.S. Hispanics’, they still show ‘a clear pattern of transitionalbilingualism’. (It is possible, of course, that the phenomenal growth ofthe Hispanic population in the United States, and its ever-wideninggeographical distribution, may yet create an entirely new situation in thatcountry. This is the fear that motivates those agitating for English-onlylegislation at state and federal level.)There are two other very salient facts about the Miami ‘case’. First,while many other American cities have large immigrant populations, itsanti-bilingual legislation of 1980 occurred when the Florida metropolishad the largest proportion of immigrants of any of them more than