Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Bilingual Education 273reaction has demonstrated, however, arguments for alterations to a moretraditional mainstream status quo typically come up against strongopposition. From surveys and other forms of public-opinion assessment,it is clear that such alterations are viewed as both unnecessary andundesirable, especially where the prevailing monoculture is a powerfulone. Such perceptions are often connected with more specific fears ofsocial fragmentation and divisiveness. Sometimes these derive from thedesire to protect the mainstream group (reasonable in some circumstances ranging on racism in others); sometimes they are expressed outof sympathy for a minority population which, it is thought, might bebetter served by being brought into the mainstream as soon as possible.I need hardly add, I suppose, that expressions of sympathy for minoritiesare often simply more politically correct cloaks for nativist sentiments; orthat a narrow concern with a particular minority group and a lack ofconcern for others is often presented under the guise of an endorsementof cultural pluralism per se.The greatest concerns and the bitterest wrangling about bilingualeducation provisions are social in nature. The existence of thosecomplexities already touched upon means that, even if purely pedagogicalmatters were the main focus, there would still be ample scope fordebates over measurements and outcomes. But they would not be sovitriolic in nature if larger questions about social mobility, pluralism,ethnolinguistic diversity and assimilation in short, about the face ofsociety itself were not intimately intertwined with cognitive andinstructional ones. People can have fierce arguments about methods, butthey only go to war over substance. Linguists and educators themselveshave always acknowledged that bilingual education is not primarily alinguistic matter. Commenting on the early American bilingual educationscene, for instance, Ferguson (1977: 43) stated thatsocial, political, psychological, economic and other factors mustsurely outweigh the purely linguistic factors in any analysis ofbilingual education efforts and in any actual policy planning forbilingual education.The bluntest point of sociopolitical debate is, I suppose, between anyeducational provision for minority groups and none at all. Podhoretz andothers may approve of the sink-or-swim approach that galvanizedsuccessful immigrants, but some will have other memories of submersionin foreign-language classrooms, and of punishments meted out forthe use of their maternal variety. Indeed, among both indigenous andimmigrant minority groups, egregious measures were often taken. In