Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Bilingual Education 275Overall, the best evidence shows that bilingual education can bepedagogically useful and, in its (‘late-exit’) transitional format, can beeasily justified. It can quite reasonably, then, be presented to the generalpublic as a sensible and fair reaction to linguistic heterogeneity at school.Given appropriate resources and contexts, any return to ‘submersion’approaches is unconscionable and this conclusion logically permitsanswers to many of the questions posed in the last two paragraphs. Themore active proponents of societal diversity and pluralism have objected,however, that transitional bilingual education formats, even in their moreenlightened forms, actually expedite assimilation and should thereforebe replaced with maintenance programs. They make a pedagogicalargument, as well. It is claimed that maintenance bilingual education isnecessary for the maximization of English proficiency a point of viewthat still seems counter-intuitive to some, but one predicated on theassumption that a firm and continuing support of children’s maternalcompetences is the best foundation for mastery of mainstream varieties.Here, I have already suggested that the matter is a bit more subtle: thereis no compelling evidence for the necessity (on mainstream-languageproficiencygrounds) of maintenance education; on the other hand,‘mainstreaming’ may not be necessary for such proficiency. This allowsus, then, to move on to considerations of maintenance education on othergrounds: as a support for ethnolinguistic pluralism and a force againstassimilation. We return, in a word, to broader sociopolitical themes, andthis means that debates emerge more from ideological assumptions thanfrom dispassionate considerations of ‘data’. It would be incorrect,however, to conclude that there are in fact no ‘data’ of interest here.First, there is no evidence to suggest that, in liberal-democraticsocieties, many markers of ethnic-group identity (including language)can be significantly maintained through formal intervention unless thegroup concerned is a voluntarily self-segregating one. (If a group hassegregation forced upon it a morally indefensible situation thenintervention is obviously in operation.) Some aspects of ethnicity,particularly symbolic and private ones, may remain for a long time,but they are not markers susceptible to formal efforts at sustenance (seeEdwards, 1985). Macro-level language shift, on the other hand, isinevitable for most minority groups. Second, the idea that programs ofbilingual education can significantly affect the larger social landscapepresumes an altogether too powerful role for the school. When socialpressures and historical developments have created a situation in whicha community is seen to be at risk of language shift, we cannot expect