In Practice

This is in response to Alex’s comment on my last post. The comment pixies are not letting me comment on that post, and the comment was long enough to make another post, so here it is…

Alex, thank you very much for comment, you bring up some excellent points.

First, the answer is in part of your question,

growing up bilingual (which usually meant one of your parents was British, and the other from the continent) was definitely a GOOD THING

There is a theory on the social value of languages. I’ve heard a bit about it as an instructor of language learners, so if others know more, please chip in. Some language have more value than others. Usually, economic power has a big influence. Those continental languages (French, German, etc.) had and have value, others do not. So in the U.S., English is more valuable than Spanish. In Canada, French is trumped by English (in spite of good intentions, and a lot of policy interventions). I and most proponents of this theory are not arguing in favor of this hierarchy of language, just pointing out that it exists. Based on this, I would guess that in Britain, Urdu, Pashto, and variants of Persian and Arabic are not looked on as a desirable to acquire language when compared to German and French. Please correct me if I’m wrong in that assumption.

Because of this “low” value, part of why students in those lower value languages do poorly is self-perception. Another part is that if you come to the U.S. from Germany or France, you have had a solid education in your home language. If you come the U.S. from Mexico, your education was probably more spotty. If you came from a Thai refugee camp and are Hmong, you may have had no education, and your home language may have an alphabet, but that is recent innovation. Your culture is wise in many ways, but essentially pre-literate. As you point out, if your parents are not literate, educated, etc. and helping you to learn language acquisition in your home language, that will further contribute to starting out “behind”.

The traditional way to deal with this was to give academic instruction in the student’s home language at school, to give them a solid basis that you could then base your English instruction off of. This is still seen as the most desirable method of instruction in the U.S. by experts, but not by the general public.

Now for some context, this “value” of languages has had a big influence on language instruction in the California. Keep in mind we exceed the size, population, and economic power of most countries in this state. We have the largest school population in the U.S., and ~40% of those students are classified as language learners. That means their parents said they speak a language other than English at home. In 1998 California voters passed Proposition 227, which limited instruction in the state to English only.

Now, to comply with federal law parents must have the option to request bi-lingual instruction. Most parents don’t do this. Based on my anecdotal conversations, parents put a higher value on English, and want their child’s instruction in that language to begin as soon as possible. They don’t understand that kids can transition better to English on a solid base of their home language. So both the White/English speaking population and parents have largely eliminated bi-lingual instruction in the state for most language learners. There is still bi-lingual instruction, but most kids are taught by teachers with a specialty emphasis to teach English immersion such as what I have.

Many schools are loathe to have the programs because although you have long-term gains, their scores suffer in the short term. Elementary bi-lingual programs usually have a dip in their third grade (8 yo) scores, but climb after that. Also, cluster of language learners can hurt a sites scores (see story here: http://www.sacbee.com/education/story/998583.html). So, testing exacerbates this problem. The reality is that we are teaching language learners English more rapidly, and better than at any point in the past, but it’s just not good enough, especially with the numbers we have in my state.

Thank you for making me explain this, and for bringing up an important point.