128 52 16MB
English Pages 270 [272] Year 1983
Multicultural Education
A challenge for teachers
Lotty v.d. Berg-Eldering Ferry J.M. de Rijcke Louis V. Zuck (eds.)
Multicultural Education A challenge for teachers
¥
1983 FORIS PUBLICATIONS Dordrecht Holland/Cinnaminson - U.SA
Published by: Foris Publications Holland P.O. Box 509 3300 AM Dordrecht, The Netherlands Sole distributor for the USA. and Canada: Foris Publications U.SA P.O. Box C-50 Cinnaminson N.J. 08077 U.SA
The Conference on Multicultural Education and Teacher Training was organized by the Dutch Ministry of Education and Science and the U.S. Information Service to commemorate the 1982 Bicentennial of U.S.-Dutch diplomatic relations.
ISBN 90 70176 48 3 © 1983 Foris Publications - Dordrecht. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright owner. Printed in the Netherlands by ICG Printing, Dordrecht.
Preface 1982 marked the anniversary of two hundred years of U.S. and Dutch diplomatic relations. One of the events celebrating this unique record was the Conference on Multicultural Education and Teacher Training, held in Amersfoort, The Netherlands from September 27-30,1982 under the auspices of the Dutch Ministry of Education and Science and the United States Information Service, American Embassy, The Hague. Both nations cherish the right of equal education opportunities for their citizens. The demands made on educators who must function in a multi-ethnic environment are manifold. The main objective of this project was to learn from one another's experiences through an exchange of information and ideas among educators, scholars and decisionmakers. This book presents most of the papers delivered at the conference, some with modifications or additions. An introduction covering ethnic minorities and educational systems in both countries and an epilogue on practical implications have been added. We are confident that this volume will contribute to a better understanding of multi-cultural education and will be a source of inspiration to readers in both the United States and The Netherlands. William Jennings Dyess, Ambassador Wim J. Deetman, Minister of Education and Science
Acknowledgments Many people have contributed to the successful completion of this project. We should like to mention a few by name. The advice of Dr. Carol H. Molony and Dr. Joyce G. Zuck was of great value during the preparation of the conference; Dr. Rudi A. de Moor expertly chaired the plenary sessions; Rob van Ravenswaay, with help of Leonie Douwes Dekker and John van Drunen, supervised the proceedings at the conference site. During the preparation of the book Piet Kooiman and Titia de Rijcke-de Ru assisted in reviewing texts and proofs. Above all we are deeply grateful to Mickey Warners-van Veen. We do not exaggerate in saying that without her active and creative involvement the conference would not have taken place and this book could not have been published. The editors.
Contents Preface Wim J. Deetman
V and William J. Dyess
Acknowledgments The Editors
VII
Introduction Lotty v.d. Berg-Eldering
XI and Ferry J.M. de Rijcke
Part one Education policy and minorities 1. Education policy and minorities: a Dutch view W.J. Deetman 2. Education policy in a pluralistic society: an American view Elam K. Hertzler
Part two Multicultural society, ideology and education 3- The study of ethnicity: the need for a differential approach Jo E. EUemers 4. Political significance of education in a multicultural society Nathan Glazer 5. Language, ethnicity, ideology and education James A Banks 6. Political and legal issues in maintaining the vernacular in the curriculum: the U.S. experience Isaura Santiago Santiago
Part three Issues of multicultural education 7. Contextual approach James M. Anderson
to multicultural education
1 3 9
14 19 27 33
53
77 79
X 8. Four approaches to multicultural education Pieter Batelaan 9. A checklist of variables affecting L, curriculum design Charles H. Blatchjord 10. Teacher-child-parent interaction Aliene Grognet 11. Second language acquisition: natura artis magistra Irene Steinert and Siel van der Ree 12. The application of ethnographic research in multicultural education Richard L. Warren
Part four Teachers and teacher training in multicultural education 13- Surinamese children in the Netherlands: the new Pygmalions? Willem Koot 14. Teaching in multicultural settings R.P. McDermott and Shelley V. Goldman 15. Teacher Education for a multicultural, multiethnic society Frans Teunissen 16. Global citizenship, pluralistic societies, and teacher education Joyce Gilmour Zuck 17. Teacher training of minority students: a report from the field AdriénA Wolfhagen 18. Being a Moluccan is prior to acculturation A Boelens
Part five Minority women 19- Multicultural education: implications for minority women in the United States Gwendolyn C. Baker 20. Moroccan and Turkish women and girls in The Netherlands: is education interested in them? Lotty van den Berg-Eldering
89 95 105 113 121
135 137 145 165 173 191 195
201
203
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Epilogue Joyce Gilmour Zuck and Louis V. Zuck
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About the authors
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Introduction1 LOTIY VAN DEN BERG-ELDERING FERRY J.M. DE RIJCKE On the occasion of the U.S. - Dutch Bicentennial, a conference was held in Amersfoort, The Netherlands, from 27th to the 30th of September 1982 on "Multicultural Education and Teacher Training". Multicultural education is an issue of current interest for both countries. To this conference were invited social scientists, teachers from teacher training institutions and policy makers. Social science, educational institutions and the government bear together the responsibility for an optimally functioning education in a multiethnic, multiracial society. The conference was aimed at an exchange of information between the participants from both countries and at a fruitful discussion about the goals and contents of multicultural education, its political implications and about the experiments taking place and planned in teacher training institutions. This common interest in multicultural education, however, does not mean that comparisons can be easily made. Each country has its specific history of immigration, its own policy concerning racial and ethnic groups and its own educational system. Multicultural education - in The Netherlands it is often called 'intercultural education' is a relatively recent issue in the discussion about the functions education should have in a multiethnic, multiracial society. The goals and contents of this type of education are not always clear and there is yet much controversy as to the ultimate aims of multicultural education and the political consequences of it, as will be shown in the following chapters. This discussion in both countries presents on the one hand some similarities, but on the other hand many differences which are only understandable against the specific historical backgrounds of ethnic groups and in the societal context of each country. I. Immigration into the United States of America Of the 221 million Americans, about 80 percent can be classified as "white and non-Hispanic". Within this 80% there is a diversity of national origins: 12% have English origins: 9.9% German; 5.9% Irish; 31% Italian; 1.9% French; 1.8% Polish and 8% are of Russian origin, according to the U.S. Bureau of Census in 1975. Twelve percent of the 1. We feel greatly indebted to Dr. Carol Molony for her valuable comments on the first draft of this introduction.
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total population are Blacks and 5.6% are Hispanics (mostly Mexicans and Puerto-Ricans). From the outset the USA were a multicultural and multiracial country. The native population, many ethnic groups of Indians, forms a numerical minority. This is an important point of difference with The Netherlands, a country that only in the last decennia can be characterized as multiethnic and multiracial. The immigration into America took place from several regions of origin: - the immigration from European countries, - the importation of Negro slaves from West-Africa and - the more recent immigrations from Latin-America and Asia. Immigration from European countries: The immigration from European countries has occurred in several waves, according to the economical and political situation in European countries. The first European immigrants settled in ethnic colonies and set up their own communal life. After one or more generations they considered America as their home country, although they to some degree preserved their religion, their language and elements of their culture. The flow of immigration continued unimpeded for almost three hundred years, until the end of the nineteenth century. The attitude toward immigrants from religious and cultural backgrounds other than those of the dominant Protestant Anglo-Saxon groups, was ambivalent during the first three quarters of the nineteenth century. On the one hand these immigrants were welcomed as workers in rural areas, in mines and in the expanding industry. On the other hand, the arrival of Irish Catholics and of Germans with their different languages and their life in ethnic communities constituted a source of anxiety. At the turn of this century the compositon of the immigrant population changed: immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe became numerically dominant. The composition of the immigrant population has not only been determined by the political and economical situations in the countries of emigration, but also by technological factors. So the pattern of immigration into the USA was altered drastically by the change from wind-driven ships to steam ships. Immigration patterns were no longer tied to trade patterns. These developments changed both the size of immigration and the national origins of immigrants. While in 1882, 87 percent of the immigrants came from North and West Europe, twenty-five years later 81 percent came from South and East Europe (Sowell, 1981 pp. 12 ff). In these decennia, resistance grew against these and other immigrants from different racial, religious and cultural backgrounds. In 1882 the first exclusion law was passed as a result of a strong anti-Chinese movement. The Chinese immigrants, who worked on railroad projects and who later on composed more than half of the farm laborers in California, were considered as competitors and strike breakers by the white laborers. The exclusion laws and the anti-Chinese legislation not only stopped the immigration of new Chinese workers, but also forbade the admission of the wives of Chinese laborers who were already in the United States. After the turn of the century, anti-sentiments against immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe grew stronger also. A new wave of restrictionist sentiments developed on the assumption of the inherent inferiority and lack of assimilability of these groups. The goal of the restrictionist movement was to reduce the total amount of
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immigrants and to set up a formula which would favor the entry of immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. In 1921 a series of acts with national origins quota was accepted and put into practice. This practice of a national origins formula continued until after World War II. From Negro slaves to Black Americans: Most Black Americans are descendants of Negro slaves, who were imported from West-Africa mostly to work on plantations in the South, which were owned by White Americans. The importation of Negro slaves has divided America into two major racial castes: Blacks and Whites. In I860, on the eve of the Civil War, out of a population of 31.5 million, about 4.5 million were Negroes and only about 0.5 million of them were free (Van den Berghe 1967, p. 80). Most Negro slaves worked on plantations. The plantation formed an autonomous microcosm, with a rigid stratification along racial lines. An important consequence of slavery was the almost total "deculturation" of the African slaves. Only a few traces were left of their original language, culture and religion. The slave community evolved its own culture as well as its own mores, which were not merely copies of the white culture. After the abolition of slavery in 1863, freed Negroes migrated in great numbers to the cities of the South and later on to those of the North. A new phase of race relations began, when freed Negroes entered into direct competition with poor whites on the labor market. The paternalistic model changed into a system of race relations governed by conflict, competition, prejudice and discrimination. Race relations were regulated by a complicated set of rules and laws, of which segregation and discrimination were outstanding features. Segregation along racial lines resulted in a set of duplicate institutions in almost every sphere of life (churches, schools, shops, professional services). After World War I the race relations between Black and White Americans have changed under the influence of three major developments. Firstly, many Black Americans migrated from the South to the North, in the period of industrial expansion and the resulting demand for labor. While in 1910 89% of them had lived in the South, in I960 this percentage had fallen to 60% (Van den Berghe, 1967, p. 91). Secondly, after World War II, a strong movement arose for desegration in schooling. In 1954 the Supreme Court decided in favor of integration of public schools. The latest phase in the history of race relations between Black and White Americans began in the sixties with the Civil Rights movement and later the Black Power movement. These movements have led also to changes in educational policy. Originally intended to gain a greater control of existing educational and other institutions, Black Americans and Americans from Mexican and Puerto Rican backgrounds questioned the functioning of the educational system and demanded specific programs for ethnic minorities. Later they moved on to representation within the existing majority power structures. Recent developments in immigration: Since the 1950's, the national origins of the immigrant population in the United States have changed substantially. Now the immigrants are overwhelmingly of Latin American and Asian origin (Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Philippines, Vietnam, Korea). For instance, in the period from 1971 to 1977, only
XIV 20% of the documented immigrants were from Europe. Some 32% came from Asia and 45% from Latin America (Statistical Abstracts 1978, p. 88, cited in Glazer, 1981, p. 387). The number of immigrants per year increased from about 400,000 to 700,000. Besides the documented immigration, a high rate of illegal immigration has been taking place. The Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policies has estimated that between 4 million and 9 million undocumented workers are now in the country, with problems of access to education, health services and employment (Maness, 1982, p. 41). Assimilation: theory and practice: "Although the 41 million immigrants who have come to America since the founding of the nation constitute the largest population transfer of its kind in the history of the world, remarkably little explicit attention has been given by the American people to devising or discussing theoretical models which either would formulate the preferred goals of adjustment to which this influx of diverse peoples might be expected to look for guidance, or would describe the processes of adjustment as they empirically have taken place" (Gordon, 1964, p.
81).
In the course of time several ideologies concerning assimilation and integration of immigrant groups have been developed by historians, social scientists and educators. The most prevalent ideology in American history can be referred to as "Anglo-Saxon conformity". The core of this philosophy, which had its adherents from the eighteenth century onwards, was that immigrants should give up their original culture in favor of the values and standards set by the dominant Anglo-Saxon group. At the end of the nineteenth century a new ideology - the "melting pot" ideology - arose, which was based on the ideal of a new American Society, with a new indigenous culture. This culture was to be the outcome of the long experience of contacts between all diverse ethnic groups in the rural frontier situation and in the ethnic heterogeneous urban context. Experiences and reflections of the twentieth century however, also stimulated thinking in another direction, the ideology of "cultural pluralism". This ideology emphasizes the preservation of the ethnic or racial communities, but at the same time integration into the economical and political life of the country as a whole. In the nineteenth century the philosophy of Anglicization of the non-English population was prevalent. Black Americans were not considered assimilable, because of their slavery status, although they made up about twenty percent of the total population. After the abolition of slavery, their upward social mobility was impeded by prejudice and discrimination. The strong pressure for Anglo-Saxon Conformity is very clearly illustrated in the following quotation about immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe: "Everywhere these people tend to settle in groups or settlements, and to set up here their national manners, customs and observances. Our task is to break up these groups or settlements, to assimilate and amalgamate these people as a part of our American race, and to implant in their children, so far as can be done, the Anglo-Saxon conception of righteousness, law and order, and popular government, and to awaken in them a reverence for our democratic institutions and for those things in our national life which we as a people hold to be of abiding worth" (Ellwood P. Cubberly, quoted in Gordon, 1964, p. 98).
XV This philosophy, which was made more explicit after the arrival of a great number of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, led to an emphasis on "Americanization" through educational programs also. The pressure for "Americanization" was especially strong during and after World War I. But as is usually the case, there was a difference between ideology and reality. A relevant question is whether the goals of Anglo-Saxon conformity were achieved in reality. The philosophy of Anglo-Saxon conformity and that of the "melting pot" ultimately envisaged the disappearance of the respective cultures of the immigrant groups either by conformity to the Anglo-Saxon culture or by the building of a new indigenous culture. These goals, however, were not always shared by the immigrant groups themselves. As groups they worked to occupy a territory of their own and to establish ethnic communities, with their own churches, schools, newspapers, social services, etc. So cultural pluralism was a fact in rural American society and in the overcrowded urban centers long before it became a theory. The ideology of cultural pluralism, developed at the end of the nineteenth century, pleaded for a more sympathetic approach to the differences in cultural heritage of the immigrants. Advocates of this approach, usually idealistic members of the white middle class, drew attention to the negative effects of a rapid Americanization on the immigrant families (e.g. alienation between children and their parents, ethnic self-hatred, juvenile delinquency, etc.). Horace Kallen elaborated the philosophy of cultural pluralism in a volume in 1924 entitled "Culture and Democracy in the United States" and worked out the consequences of it for the education of children from these groups. It is interesting to note that the discussion about cultural pluralism, which began in the United States about a century ago, is now developing in The Netherlands with exactly the same arguments pro and contra. Arguments in support of this ideology were: the individual realizes himself and his potentialities through membership of his ethnic or racial group; the existence of various ethnic cultures has a positive value for the whole nation; equal rights include the right to be different. Arguments contra were: the impact of the group on the fate of the individual can be too strong in some ethnic traditions, resulting in a lack of choice for the individual; the absence of a workable concept of intergroup relations and of the long range goals of cultural pluralism. A crucial question posed by opponents of this philosophy was:' 'While cultural pluralism may be democratic for groups, how democratic is it for individuals?" The views of Horace Kallen, concerning education were seriously criticized by, among others, Berkson, an educational scientist. In his theory the central institution was the complementary school, which members of the younger generation would attend after public school hours and which would serve also as a kind of communal center for ethnic activities generally. In many places in the States this system has been put into practice in many ethnic groups. Until the 1960s the structural consequences of none of these theories about cultural pluralism were sufficiently worked out. Gordon has analyzed the process of assimilation which takes place when ethnic groups with a different culture are in contact (1964, pp. 70ff). According to his model, cultural and structural assimilation are the most important stages in this process. In general, cultural assimilation is the first stage and a prerequisite for structural assimilation. Thus informal social contacts between members of different
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ethnic and racial groups will usually take place, when the groups have developed common behavioral standards and cultural values. When these stages are achieved, amalgamation (marital assimilation), identifical assimilation, absence of prejudice and discrimination, will follow of its own accord. Gordon's model of assimilation, which was based on a liberal expectancy of individual social mobility, has been enfeebled by recent developments. In the sixties and seventies interracial and interethnic conflicts deepened. Ethnic and racial groups grew aware of their common interests and claimed the right to be different as defined in their own terms and not in terms dictated by the majority. They put more emphasis on collective emancipation and claimed the right to preserve their own language, culture and identity. The Civil Rights Movement rapidly moved from a demand that Blacks should get what everyone else got in education to a demand that Blacks needed, and by rights should have, something different: education suited to their specific wants. It is on the basis of the latter demand that Mexican American and Puerto Rican communities insist on bilingualism and biculturalism in educational programs. This description of immigration into the United States only gives a global picture of the main immigrant groups. But as Sowell (1981, p. 275) puts it "The blanket term "immigrants" covers over many important distinctions among the various people who came to America". It is difficult to compare the progress of these various groups who came pursuing different goals. While the Irish and the European Jews came committed to becoming Americans, the early immigrants from Italy, China, Japan and Mexico considered themselves sojourners and Americanization in language, culture or citizenship had a low priority for them. In fact return migration among these groups occurred frequently in some periods. Each group has its own unique history and even within groups of the same nationality occur wide differences in regional background, educational level and migration history. The most striking difference among ethnic groups themselves is perhaps their attitude toward learning and self-improvement and the channels they have used for upward social mobility. The Jews for instance brought a tradition of learning, whereas the Irish lacked an educational tradition and tended to be indifferent about it and the immigrants of South Italy were even actively hostile to education and they saw it as costly in terms of opportunities for the children to work and threatening their cultural values.
II. Immigration into The Netherlands The history of immigration into The Netherlands is in several respects different from that in America, and in other ways similar. The most remarkable point of difference is that immigration in The Netherlands on a large scale has taken place only in the last thirty years. Only a few migrant groups have a third or fourth generation of descendants by now. Actually most attention is paid to the so-called "second-generation migrants". Despite the short history of immigration, one can distinguish several stages in this immigration process and concomittantly a different policy concerning immigrants. Roughly the immigrants can be divided into two categories: immigrants from (for-
XVII mer) colonies and migrant workers and their families from predominantly Mediterranean countries. The immigrants from former colonies are not a homogeneous category. They can be divided into Indonesian Dutch from the former Dutch East Indies (now: Indonesia), Moluccans (military from the Royal Dutch East Indies Army and their families) also from Indonesia, and Surinamese and Antilleans from the Caribbean. These three groups are not only different as to their origins and numbers, but also did their immigration into The Netherlands take place under quite different circumstances. Repatriates from Indonesia, who came first in 1950 - 1951, immigrated in a period of industrial expansion and growth in the tertiary sector. They immigrated in relatively large numbers, about 350,000, and the Dutch government felt it her responsibility to help these immigrants to integrate as soon as possible into the Dutch society. Moreover, they not only possessed Dutch nationality and spoke the Dutch language, but they were also familiar with Dutch culture, since most of them had worked in the Dutch colonial administration or in Dutch enterprises or plantations. The facility with which the integration took place (or better said, seemed to have taken place) is one of the reasons why the Dutch government took so long to develop an active policy concerning the other ethnic groups. Moluccans: After the independence of Indonesia in 1949, the Royal Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) was disbanded. The members of this army had to choose between either enlisting in the Indonesian army or demobilizing in their region of origin. A large number of military from the Moluccan Islands refused to be demobilized in their home province because, according to their view, it was illegally occupied by the newly formed Republic of Indonesia. In 1951 the Dutch government was forced by a court decision to bring these Moluccan military and their families to The Netherlands, to await their final destination. Since these families would be repatriated as soon as possible, they were housed in camps in several parts of the country and given an allowance to live on. In the beginning of their stay in The Netherlands, many Moluccan children attended primary schools with instruction in Malay. Only after the "permanency" of their stay became clear, many Moluccan parents and school personnel began to have doubts about this and they gave up Malay in school. They believed that Dutch proficiency would lead to upward social mobility and help their children integrate in the job market in The Netherlands. In thirty years the number of Moluccans in The Netherlands has increased from 12,500 to about 32,000. Under the Round Table Conference Agreement of 1949 it was provided for that indigenous KNIL military would be able to obtain Indonesian citizenship after the demobilization of the KNIL. The new Indonesian legislation on nationality, which was put in operation on the First ofAugust 1958, stipulated that the option for citizenship would be lost if a potential citizen did not register for it within five years. Although this period was extended for another five years, only a few Moluccans have chosen to be Indonesian citizens. Actually 10 percent have the Indonesian nationality, 30 percent have the Dutch nationality and about 60 percent are stateless. These stateless citizens have the same rights and obligations as Dutch citizens with the exception of the right to vote or stand
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for election and of the obligation of compulsatory military service. About 75 percent of the Moluccan population continue to live in Moluccan residential areas, in spite of encouragement by the government to spread out their residence among the Dutch population (Penninx, 1979, ch. 2). The Moluccans are the only immigrant group, which has been located in camps and later in residential areas. This geographical concentration has made it possible to maintain essential elements of their social structure, part of which had developed in the military camps in Indonesia. After 1956, when the men were allowed and encouraged to enter the labor market, contacts grew between Dutch and Moluccans in public life, but informal social contacts remained mostly confined to the ethnic community. The continued relatively isolated position of the Moluccans in The Netherlands can further be explained by their ideal to return to an independent Republic of the South Moluccans and by the ambiguous Dutch policy vis-a-vis this ideal, resulting in their distrust of the Dutch government. In fact the Dutch government did not acknowledge the political aspirations of the Moluccans and offered them two possibilities of choice: assimilation in the Dutch society like the Indonesian Dutch, or a return to Indonesia. Not only was neither of these options acceptable for most of the Moluccans, the Dutch government in their view failed to respond to the most essential point in question. It was not until the seventies that the Dutch government began a serious discussion with the Moluccans about this dilemma. This discussion gained momentum by a series of occupations and hijackings by Moluccans, which drew attention to their problems. In the thirtyyears since their arrival, a new generation of Moluccans has been born and has grown up in "two worlds". The one world consisting of the ethnic community with its strong hierarchy, traditional values and the ideal of returning to a free Republic of the South Moluccans. The other world consisting of the Dutch society, which they have learned through the school system, classmates and through mass media. Although most of them are "bicultural" and to some degree adjusted to both cultures, neither world offers them sufficient opportunities and perspectives. The aspiration level among Moluccans is high, but most Moluccan 12-year olds are selected for lower forms of secondary education and large numbers drop out of secondary education, compared with Dutch pupils. Teachers ascribe the school problems and high rates of drop out to the limited Dutch proficiency and to environmental factors. The high unemployment rates, which lead to feelings of futility are also responsible for the lack of school success. Surinamese andAntilleans: The immigrants of Surinamese origin are the second largest group with a colonial background. In contrast to Indonesian Dutch and Moluccans, Surinamese immigration began slowly around 1950, then increased in the years shortly before and after the independence of Surinam on the 25th of November 1975. The total number of immigrants of Surinamese origin was estimated in 1981 to be 175,000. The composition of the Surinamese immigrant population has changed over the years. While the first immigrants were elite and middle class, in the seventies the majority of immigrants were lower class and unskilled. Also with respect to ethnic origins the composition of the immigrant population has changed over the last ten years; in the first decades the migrants were predominantly of Creole origin, but after
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1970 Hindustani and Javanese Surinamese were in the majority. The Surinamese immigrant population in The Netherlands, is thus a heterogeneous one, regarding ethnic origins, linguistic diversity, religious affiliation and educational level. The migration process and the composition of the immigrant population reflect to a certain degree the Dutch colonial policy and economy in Surinam as well as the emancipation of the respective ethnic groups. None of these ethnic groups are original inhabitants of Surinam. Most of their ancestors were imported as Negro slaves to work on plantations or they came as contract-laborers from British India and Dutch Indonesia. Most of the Surinamese in The Netherlands have the Dutch nationality, according to the Charter for the Kingdom of The Netherlands of 1954. During a period of ten years from the 25th of November 1975, Surinamese immigrants who were born in Surinam, or whose parents were born there, will retain the right to settle permanently in Surinam and to adopt the Surinamese nationality. The history of immigration from the Dutch Antilles is quite different from that from Surinam. The Dutch Antilles were less of a plantation economy, but much more a trading center. As a consequence of this the orientation of The Antilles has been much broader and it was not only focused on The Netherlands, but also on the United States and Latin America. Student-emigration developed slowly after World War II. The number of immigrants from The Antilles increased, when the Dutch government and industry recruited workers in the years 1964-1966. After 1970, the families of these Antillean workers also came to The Netherlands. The total number of Antilleans in 1981 was estimated to be 39,000. According to the afore-mentioned Charter for the Kingdom of The Netherlands, all Antilleans have the Dutch nationality. The majority of immigrants from Surinam and The Antilles are located in the four big cities in The Netherlands: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht (Penninx 1979, pp. 47 ff). Immigrants from Mediterranean countries: The second major category of immigrants is that composed of migrant workers and their families. Migration from the Mediterranean countries to The Netherlands started some twenty-five years ago. At first, most of the migrants came from Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia and Portugal. Later workers were recruited in large numbers from Turkey and Morocco. Now the Turks and Moroccans are the largest groups in number within the population of Mediterranean origin: in 1979 their percentage was nearly 70 percent of the total of Mediterranean origin and this percentage is likely to increase to 84 or 90 percent by 1990. This increase is due partly to the reunion of migrant workers with their families and partly to high birth rates in these families. By 1990 the number of Turkish children at primary school level will have doubled and that of Moroccan children at least tripled, compared with the figures of 1979 (Kool e.a., 1980). Although this prognosis has later been adjusted, mainly because of a decreasing amount of family reunions and increase in return migration, the rise in numbers will be considerable. (Van Praag and Kool, 1982). Only a few Moroccans and Turks have obtained the Dutch nationality. The majority intends or hopes to return to their home country. The realization of this intention, however, will be postponed as long as there are high rates of unemployment in the countries of origin. Other factors, which impede return migration, are obligations to
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send money to one's family in Morocco or Turkey, the education of their children and the high level of social welfare in The Netherlands (Van den Berg-Eldering, 1978). Dutch policy concerning immigration In 1980 5.6% of the Dutch population were foreigners who had legally entered the country. Surinamese and Antilleans are included in this figure. This was a low percentage in comparison with that of some other West-European countries: in Belgium the percentage was 8.4%, in Western-Germany 7.2%, Great-Britain 8.4%, Sweden 5.1% and in Switzerland 14.2% (Entzinger, 1982, p. 24). As we have seen in the foregoing paragraph, these immigrants came for a variety of reasons and under quite different political and economical circumstances. The great diversity of the immigrant population is an important similarity between The Netherlands and the United States. The long history of immigration, and the high proportion of ethnic groups with respect to the whole population of the United States versus the short history of immigration and the low percentage of foreigners in The Netherlands are differences, which seem relevant to the policy in general and the educational policy in particular toward immigrants in both countries. The stay of most groups of immigrants in The Netherlands, save that of the Indonesian-Dutch, was expected to be temporary. The immigrant population from the Mediterranean countries initially consisted almost completely of male workers, who left their families at home. Since I960 the Dutch government tried to regulate the flow of immigration from Mediterranean countries by bilateral agreements. The sequence of these agreements shows the importance of the respective countries as suppliers of foreign labor: Italy I960, Spain 1961, Portugal 1963, Turkey 1964, Greece 1966, Morocco 1969, Yugoslavia 1970 and Tunesia 1970. Besides these agreements substantial numbers of migrant workers came on their own to The Netherlands. This was especially the case with the Moroccans. The period of economic recession of 1967 was followed by a period of recruitment on a large scale between 1969 and 1972. These migrant workers were welcomed in the mines and the expanding industry and in later years also in the tertiary sector. In majority they settled in the Western part of The Netherlands and in the industrial centers of the provinces North Brabant, Gelderland and Overijssel. Despite the growing dependence on foreign labor, the official standpoint was: "The Netherlands neither are nor should become a country of immigration". During the seventies, however, the migrant workers from Mediterranean countries and also the immigrants from the Caribbean, in increasing number, had their families join them in The Netherlands. The official conditions for family reunion of Mediterranean migrants were: a year's guaranteed employment, approved housing for the family and a clean police record. In those years, policy regarding immigrants was ambiguous and, as we will see below, it was "two-tracked" in the field of education. No explicit goal of either integration, assimilation or cultural pluralism had been formulated. Almost all measures taken were of a temporary nature, since it was expected that the migrant workers would return as soon as political and economical circumstances in their home country would become favorable or when they would no longer be needed in The Netherlands. Although the length of residence of the immigrants increased, and
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the number of families in The Netherlands grew, it was not until 1981 that the Ministry of Home Affairs, which since a couple of years is coordinating the policy regarding ethnic groups, published a policy plan, based on the expectation that the majority of migrants from the ex-colonies and from Mediterranean countries would settle permanently in The Netherlands and should therefore be considered as immigrants{Ontwerp-Minderheden Nota 1981). The new policy focuses on actively improving the low status of ethnic groups and on realizing equal opportunities in strategic fields of public life: employment, education and housing. The migrants are no longer called migrants, but are labeled "minorities referring to their low position in the main societal institutions. Ethnic organizations strongly oppose this new label, which they consider utterly stigmatizing. As elsewhere in the world, ethnic groups in The Netherlands also have become aware of their position in society and of their common interests and have organized themselves on the basis of ethnicity. They claim the right to decide to be different as defined in their own terms and not in terms implicitly adopted or explicitly dictated by the majority. Some of these organizations have raised strong objections to a policy of mere individual emancipation, since it would neglect the cultural identity of the ethnic groups. This opposition also can be partly explained against the background of the ambiguous policy of the last decennia. In this period measures were taken, which anticipated return-migration, or at least did not exclude it; for instance Moluccans were located in camps and later in residential areas with their own social infrastructure; specific social welfare institutions for migrant workers and their families and for Surinamese and Antilleans were established and financed by the Dutch government; and migrant children from Mediterranean countries obtained, in conformity with the bilateral agreements, facilities to receive lessons in their national language and culture, often during school hours. The 1981 policy plan, based on the expectation that only a few migrants will in fact return to their country of origin, puts emphasis on more participation of individual members of ethnic groups in Dutch public institutions. If this implies that fewer finances will be available for "ethnic" institutions or for facilities to maintain the cultural and linguistic heritage of the ethnic groups and that instead priority is given to fostering the accessibility of general institutions on behalf of migrants, then the government will have to reckon with a strong opposition from ethnic associations, which have, for several reasons, vested interests in maintaining or establishing institutions and facilities on an ethnic basis. The most relevant political issue concerning ethnic groups which remains to be discussed in The Netherlands during the eighties is the degree of cultural and structural pluralism, which is desirable and realizable in society. III. Education and ethnic minorities We should keep in mind that although multicultural education is an issue of common interest in both countries, there are considerable differences between the educational systems involved. In this section we shall therefore first give a short description of the main features of both systems and then continue with a few remarks on the education policies concerning ethnic minorities.
XXII
The United States has not one but fifty educational systems. The Constitution, when it separated the powers of the Federal government and the States, left the responsibility for education to the States by keeping silent on this subject. Since each of the States is responsible for its own system of education, they differ in almost every respect: in the way the system is administered, in the methods of financing, in the degree of control over curricula, teacher certificates, teachers' salaries, etc. Furthermore there are within most States considerable differences between schools in different local communities or counties. The Constitutions of the individual States, however, all emphasize the necessity of maintaining a system of free, public schools. One of the main characteristics of United States education is the extent to which schools are operated by local school authorities. The great majority ofthe 16,000 school districts in the U.S. are run by elected school boards of citizens. This delegation of authority allows public education programs to be responsive to the needs of the community. Parents may choose whether to send their children to a free public school or to a private school where fees are charged. The majority of students at the primary and secondary level go to public schools: in 1980 an estimated 10.9 percent of these students were enrolled in private schools. (National Center for Education Statistics, 1982 p. 52). Private schools are, save for a limited number of special services, funded completely by private sources, including religious organizations. They are subject to licensing and accreditation regulations by the respective States. Citizens of the U.S. have a range of means to influence the education their children receive. Apart from sending them to a private school (which is too expensive for most parents) they can express their opinions about education policies through elections on local, county, State and even Federal level, or they can go to court. Structural changes may come from national programs, from efforts at the State level or as a consequence of court decisions. Court decisions, both at State and at national level, have played an important role in educational change in the U.S. Since so few federal regulations exist, citizens may demand through a court decision, that schools may or may not follow certain educational practices. According to the system of common law practised, such decisions, then, constitute a legal prescription for all schools for that legislative district. Education in The Netherlands has always shown a variety of influences, foremost of religious nature. Until the end of the eighteenth century regulations concerning education varied greatly among the provinces and within the provinces the relatively autonomous towns and nobles set their own rules. One of the few elements that were found throughout the Republic was a strong alignment with the Netherlands Reformed Church. In 1795, when The Netherlands first became a unified state - until then the provinces formed a sort of federal republic - the development of a central education policy was taken up, resulting in a Primary Education Act in 1806. During the nineteenth century the structure and quality of education gradually improved. In 1848, as part of a broader liberalization process, the right of citizens to found and maintain schools outside the public school system was secured in the Constitution. However, no financial assistance was given to private schools. The latter part of the nineteenth century showed
XXIII
a vehement political and ideological struggle by both Roman Catholics and Protestants to obtain for their schools financial support equal to that for the public schools. This struggle ended in 1917 with a revision of the Constitution. Since then private as well as public schools have been funded fully from public finances. In The Netherlands, then, there is one integrated educational system, but within this there is considerable room for diversity. Approximately one third of all schools are public, under either municipal authority or, to a lesser extent and only in secondary education, under the national department of education as schoolboard. The private schools are mostly of Roman-Catholic or Protestant denomination. A small number of private schools pursue education in accordance with specific pedagogical principles (Montessori, Steiner, Jena, e.a.). In contrast to the U.S., teachers' salaries and other conditions of employment, teacher certificates, basic requirements concerning curricula, and numerous other matters are established at the national level. However, the contents of curricula are to a large extent determined by schoolboards and teachers. National policies are carefully negotiated with organizations of schoolboard and parents and with teachers' unions. As in the U.S., parents in Holland can influence educational provisions for their childeren. Sending them to a private school does not have any financial consequences for them, apart from minor contributions which some private schools might require for special activities. Also groups of parents may unite and start a new school. Provided they can guarantee a minimum number of pupils for a certain period and provided they manage to meet the national standards of educational quality, their school will be financed from public funds. Of course, parents may also seek to influence education policies through national and municipal elections. Changes in the educational structure are mostly initiated at the national level, but usually draw upon ideas and trends that originate in the schools. Their elaboration and implementation in educational practice, of course, depend upon the school boards, school staffs and the individual teachers. The religious pluralism of Dutch society has not only been reflected in education but in almost all social institutions: sports, trade unions, welfare organizations, broadcasting stations, have all been organized along the so called "pillars" (Dutch: zuilen) of Dutch society. The relative autonomy of these institutions was carefully balanced with the functions of general institutions: striving towards a consensus on basic values and an acceptance of considerable differences (provided these did not hinder other groups) have for a long time shaped the character of Dutch society. After World War Two, more specifically after I960, the process of deconfessionalization of social institutions was accelerated. This process has not affected the education system to the same extent as it has other spheres of societal life. There is no simple explanation for this. One element may be that in general the influence of parents on the denominational character of the school is rather indirect. The private school boards and their organizations constitute a stabilizing factor in this respect. Unless parents take strong, organized action- which they have seldom done- the denomination of a private school is maintained, even if a majority of parents does not really insist on a religiously oriented upbringing of their children. The confrontation of this system: (pluralistic, but rather rigid in its pluralism) with a sudden influx of children from ethnic groups with different cultural and religious backgrounds has not yet led to a new equilibrium.
XXIV
Bilingual education is not a new phenomenon in the United States. Before 1800. German parochial schools existed in many parts of the country, and during the 1780's bilingual instruction was introduced at for instance the University of Pennsylvania. Between 1840 and 1880 bilingual programs were offered in public schools, combining English with French, German, or Spanish. After that period only German-English programs remained until these also disappeared in 1917 (Pastora San Juan Cafferty, 1982, pp. 180 if.). Private schools teaching in other languages are many, and continue to the present day. However, this positive attitude towards teaching in foreign languages declined over the years, in spite of the fact that some immigrant groups had a considerable percentage of return migration throughout American history. The two worlds wars of the first half of the 20th century led to a negative attitude towards German in school. More generally, as we have seen in the first section there has been a strong pressure on new immigrants to conform to the Anglo-Saxon culture and adopt the English language. In education this meant an emphasis on monolingual English instruction while bilingual programs were considered temporary and meant to facilitate the learning of English. The 1960's started a new era for bilingual education. Spurred by civil action and judicial verdicts, at both the Federal and the State level, administrative regulations and guidelines influenced the position of ethnic groups and their language in schools and in the schools' curricula. Of the two objectives that might be distinguished, namely: equal educational opportunities for minority children, and preparation of all children for living in a multiethnic society, the emphasis in policy has been on the first. The landmark 1954 Brown decision (in which the Supreme Court declared separate educational facilities for different racial groups to be "inherently unequal") and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not challenge the cultural base of the American educational system. Instead, desegregation and integration, as means to improve educational and socio-economic opportunities, were the key objectives. The famous Lau v. Nichols decision (1974), very important to the development of bilingual education in theU.S., concentrated on educational opportunities and required schools only to make sure that these were equal for all groups. Schools might pursue this either by teaching children English quickly and effectively so that they could partake in the regular program, or by teaching them the regular subjects in their own language, or by some combination of both. (Maness, 1982, p. 44; Giles and Gollnick, 1977, p. 139). In the 1970's some Federal legislation did express the conviction that change was called for in all aspects of schools' curricula and programs. The Bilingual Education Act (Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) concentrated on the learning difficulties of children of limited English proficiency, but also included grants for, for instance, "programs designed to impart students a knowledge of the history and culture associated with their language". (Giles and Gollnick, o.c. p. 125). Title VII of the Emergency School Aid Act (1972) explicitly persuaded schools to accommodate racial and cultural diversity. The Ethnic Heritage Studies Program (1972, Title IX of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) had similar aims but went further. (Ibid, pp. 122 if.). The funding, however, of for instance the Ethnic Heritage Studies Program shows that the broad intention of the Act reflected no major change in Federal education policies;
XXV only six million dollars were spent between 1972 and 1974 on programs concerning the cultural heritage of all ethnic groups in the U.S., whereas the special needs of schools with non-English speaking minorities were met by a budget of over a billion dollars in one year. (Ibid, p. 118). This priority has not changed in recent years. (Cf. U.S. Departement of Education, 1982, p. 5). The intentions of State legislations tend to parallel those of the Federal government. Evidence from textbooks, curriculum plans and teacher training programs shows that equal opportunities also for minorities are the central point of focus. (Giles and Gollnick, o.c. pp. 143 ff.). Multicultural education for all children seems to find strong support among educational scientists - and is in some instances practised in quite an impressive way by teachers - but it is only moderately fostered by legislators and administrators. The American experience could be very useful for The Netherlands where only recently a debate has developed around the comptability of securing equal educational and socio-economic opportunities for ethnic groups on the one hand, and maintaining cultural and linguistic diversity on the other. As we have seen in the second section of this introduction, The Netherlands has experienced several waves of immigration. For the Indonesian Dutch and the Moluccans no explicit educational policy was formulated. For the Indonesian Dutch, who came committed to stay in Holland, this worked out reasonably well. A majority of the Moluccan group however did not accept the choice offered to them by the Dutch government: either migrate to the Republic of Indonesia orfitinto the Dutch society and its schools. It was not untill 1964 that the government officially admitted the existence of a problem by appointing a coordinator for the education of Moluccan children. Only in 1978 did a government paper announce explicit policies and measurements to be taken with regard to the position of the Moluccans. This paper also contained a paragraph on education (De problematiek van de Molukse minderheid in Nederland, The Hague 1978). In 1974 a government plan was published, concerning education for children in disadvantaged situations, in which also special facilities for children of migrant workers were proposed (Onderwijs aan groepen in achterstandssituaties, The Hague 1974). Policy in this respect however was ambiguous. On the one hand it was assumed that migrant children would live in Holland only temporarily, to return, sooner or later, with their parents to their home country. On the other hand it was realized, that they should be equipped to function in Dutch society for the time they were here. Hence the plan stated that children who would probably return to their own country soon, should receive more lessons in their mother tongue and culture than those who would settle in The Netherlands for a longer period of time. Furthermore, all children should be offered the chance to participate in Dutch education, and this should be achieved by extra lessons in Dutch as a second language. The problem of this two-tracked policy, especially for teachers, lay in the difficulty to predict which children belonged to the first and which to the second category. Since 1980 a new education policy has been developed (extended to include Surinamese and Antilleans), based on the assumption that the majority of ethnic groups will settle in The Netherlands permanently. In 1981 the policy plan "Cultural Minorities in Education" (Beleidsplan "Culturele Minderheden in het Onderwijs") was presented in which two major objectives were formulated:
XXVI
- minority school children should be prepared for life in Dutch society, with the possibility to function in and contribute to that society from their own cultural background; - all school children (including Dutch) should be prepared for life in a multiethnic society; this preparation was called "intercultural education", aimed at the acculturation of different groups. These objectives still stand and both are supported by financial and other means. To date, as in the U.S., the bulk of financing has gone to the first objective, i.e. the improvement of educational opportunities for minority children. The actual realization of inter- or multicultural education however is developing only very slowly, if at all, as shown by reports of the ministerial inspectorate, among others. Although in general the Dutch have a positive attitude towards pluralism, including that of the newly immigrated ethnic groups, today greater skepticism is expressed and more often the opinion is heard that equal opportunities in Dutch education and society may be hindered by an explicit policy of maintaining minority languages and cultures. The official government position remains unchanged, but the Education Ministry's recent combination of education policies for ethnic groups with those for indigenous disadvantaged groups, seems to stress the importance of success in the existing school system, rather than emphasizing the need for multicultural education for a multicultural society. (Cf. Onderwijsvoorrangsplan (Education priority plan), The Hague 1982). This discussion raises the question whether the present Dutch - and, for that matter, the American - school systems are capable of dealing with this new situation. Can schools, that in almost every respect are shaped by a Western tradition, take up all the functions of multicultural education? And even further, to what extent is multicultural education possible at all? These questions can not be decided upon by legislators and administrators alone. It is for the schools to cope with often unprecedented problems and they will have to find solutions. The responsiblity, however, is not only theirs; the consequences affect society as a whole, and therefore concern all of us. The Amersfoort conference may be looked upon as one of the efforts to get a clearer view of the issues at stake, of the assumptions underlying multicultural education and of the practical implications for schools, teachers and training institutions. While the contributions to this volume reflect different opinions, they all recognize the immense social and human responsibilities involved.
IV. About the contributions to this book Part Owe contains the speeches by official representatives of the governments of both countries: Mr. Elam K. Hertzler, Executive Assistant and Chief of Staff of the office of the Secretary of Education in Washington D.C., and Mr. Wim J. Deetman, Minister of Education and Sciences in The Netherlands. Their opening speeches offer a clear view of the present state of affairs in national education policy in the United States and The Netherlands respectively and of the considerations governing future decisions.
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Remarkably, the possibility and desirability of assimilation on the one hand and linguistic and cultural pluralism on the other, the subject of debate in The Netherlands today, still constitute, according to Hertzler, the most important issue to be settled in the U.S. In Part Two lectures are brought together that focus on the different aspects of a multiethnic society and its consequences for education. Ellemers questions the validity of the assumptions on which Dutch authorities and educational workers base their actions concerning ethnic groups. Not only do they use oversimplified interpretations of anthropological and sociological analysis, but they also apply such analysis without recognition of the differences between and within ethnic groups. Glazer also calls attention to the broader social and political context of education, when he describes the dilemma of a country that throughout its history has emphasized the common denominators and not the differences between the various groups composing its population, and now faces a growing push for maintaining and fostering cultural and linguistic diversity. Banks analyzes the pluralist and assimilationist ideologies and their merits and deficiencies. He proposes a multiethnic ideology that implies a differential approach to educational problems. The political and legal issues in maintaining the vernacular in the curriculum in the U.S. are treated extensively in Santiago's paper. Part Three covers multicultural education itself. Anderson and Batelaan write about the essential function of 'context': the former in the sense of a frame of reference for the content and concept level of educational activities; the latter in making explicit that multiculturalism concerns the total educational effort and ultimately, our total way of social life. The papers of Blatchford, Grognet and Steinert and Van de Ree concentrate on second language learning and teaching. Blatchford presents an elaborated checklist for teachers which might serve as a tool for analyzing possible influences on their efforts in teaching languages and other subjects. Grognet describes the objectives and contents of six ESL program models and shows how the demand for proficiency in the second language can be differentiated. She indicates the level of English proficiency parents should have in order to participate in their child's education. Randoe and Van de Ree make clear why traditional models of language teaching do not work in second language teaching, and what an alternative might be. Warren concludes this section with a contribution on the application of ethnographic research in multicultural education. In spite of a rich tradition in anthropology and in the sociology of non-western civilizations, educational anthropology to date has not developed in The Netherlands. Warren's contribution might induce Dutch educators and anthropologists to work together in this field. Part Four opens with a contribution by Koot on the importance of teacher attitudes in educational achievement. McDermott and Goldman examine the role of cultural differences in classroom achievement and failure, and indicate what teachers might do to give room to learning and other abilities of children instead of frustrating them. Teunissen and Zuck enter upon the consequences of multicultural education for teacher training.
XXVIII In addition to their more theoretical exposés, two case studies are presented by teachers at Dutch teacher training institutions for primary education. Boelens describes the practical meaning of bicultural education for a specific group, the Moluccans. His experiences stem from intense cooperation with schools both for primary and secondary education and from extensive contacts with the Moluccan community. Wolfhagen describes the difficult, brave start his college has made with the training of Turkish student teachers. Part Five of this volume is dedicated to minority women. The minority women, in the words of Baker, "is caught in a double bind: she is the victim of both racist and sexist behaviors". In her paper Baker gives a profile of common characteristics of minority women in the United States and she explores the strategies to meet educational needs and strengths of minority women. Moroccan and Turkish women in the Netherlands are pictured in the contribution of Van den Berg-Eldering. She sketches the diversity in backgrounds of these immigrant women and their common situation after migration. She concludes that the use of cultural stereotypes in education will certainly not contribute to the achievement of equal educational opportunities of minority girls. In their Epilogue Joyce and Louis Zuck reflect upon a number of topics raised at the conference that they believe to deserve further attention in the future. Bibliography Van den Berg-Eldering, L., 1978, Marokkaansegezinnen inNederland, Samsom, Alphena/dRijn. Van den Berg-Eldering, L., 1979, Moroccan families in The Netherlands, Netherlands Journal of Sociology, 15, pp. 73-82. Van den Berg-Eldering, L. e.a., 1980, Equal opportunity for migrant children in the Dutch school system. Paper for the Conference on Second-generation immigrants, Delphi, Greece. Van den Berghe, Pierre, L., 1967, Race and Racism. A comparative perspective, John Wiley and Sons, New York. Cafferty, Pastora San Juan, 1982, The Language Question, in: Lance Liebman (ed.) Ethnic Relations in America, New Jersey. Culturele Minderheden in het Onderwijs, 1981, Ministry of Education and Sciences, The Hague. Entzinger, H.B., 1982, Migratie- en minderhedenbeleid in Europees perspectief. In: J.M.M. van Amersfoort en H.B. Entzinger (red.), Immigrant en Samenleving, Van Loghum Slaterus. Giles, Raymond H. and Donna M. Gollnick, 1977, Ethnic/Cultural Diversity as Reflected in State and Federal Educational Legislation and Policies in: Frank H. Klassen and Donna M. Gollnick (eds.), Pluralism and the American Teacher, AACTE, Washington D.C. Glazer, Nathan, 1981, Ethnicity and Education. Some hard questions. In: Kappan,Jan. vol. 62, nr. 6. Gordon, Milton M., 1964, Assimilation in American life. The role of race, religion and national origins, Oxford University Press, New York. Gordon, Milton M., 1975, Toward a general theory of racial and ethnic group relations, In: Glazer and Moynihan (eds.), Ethnicity: theory and experience, Harvard University Press, pp. 84-111. Kool, e.a., 1980, BevolkingsprognoseAllochtonen inNederland. Deell: Turken enMarokkanen, S.C.P. Cahier, no. 19. Maness, Hilda, 1982, Multicultural education in the United States of America. Introductory essay on behalf of the U.S. -Dutch Bicentennial Conference on Multicultural Education and Teacher Training, Ministry of Education and Sciences, The Hague.
XXIX National Center for Education Statistics: The Condition of Education, 1982 Edition, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C. Onderwijs aan groepen in achterstandssituaties, 1974, Ministry of Education and Sciences, The Hague. Onderwijsvoorrangsplan, 1982, Ministry of Education and Sciences, The Hague. Ontwerp-Minderheden Nota, 1981, Ministry of Home Affairs, The Hague. Penninx, R., 1979, Towards an overall ethnic minorities policy. Preliminary study, Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, Reports to the Government, nr. 17. Van Praag, C.S., C. Kool, 1982, Bevolkingsprognose allochtonen in Nederland. Turken en Marokkanen, herziene versie, 1982, S.C.P.-cahier, no. 35. De problematiek van de Molukse minderheid in Nederland, The Hague, 1978. Pinto, David andjaap den Hollander, 1982, Cultural minorities in The Netherlands and the Dutch Education system, Introductory essay on behalf of the U.S.-Dutch Bicentennial Conference on Multicultural Education and Teacher Training, Ministry of Education and Sciences, The Hague. Sowell, Thomas, 1981, Ethnic America, a history, Basic Books, inc. Publishers, New York. U.S. Department of Education, 1982, Progress of Education in the United States of America 1978-1979 and 1979-1980, Washington D.C. Victor, G. and Brett de Bary Nee, 1972, Longtime Califom. A documentary study of an Americans Chinatown, Pantheon Village Series, Pantheon Books, New York.
Part one Education policy and minorities
1
Education policy and minorities: a Dutch view WIM J. DEETMAN
There was good reason why this theme multicultural education and teacher training was chosen in consultation between the American embassy and the Ministry of Education and Science as part of the activities to mark 200 years of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Netherlands. The reason is that within the space of a few decades Dutch society has become more and more a multicultural one; a phenomenon the nature and dimension of which are unprecedented in our history. The obvious place to look, then, was towards the United States, where centuries of immigration and the presence of ethnic minorities have produced the cultural diversity so typical of American society. The problems to which this has given rise have sometimes prompted some head-shaking in Europe. I believe I am right in saying, however, that Europe's recent experience of what a multicultural and multi-ethnic society means has made people here less presumptuous in their judgment of others. We have come to appreciate the truth of what James Baldwin once said: that in the matter of minorities Europe was not a solution ahead, but a problem behind. Nor has the United States simply left these problems to disentagle themselves, but has worked to find different solutions at different times, many of them worthy of the highest praise - an example to other nations. Recent visits and the study of publications have enabled us to learn from America's experience. We fully intend to go on learning and appreciate the opportunities presented by this conference. The situation in the Netherlands is this: shortly after World War II, large numbers of people came from the Dutch East-Indies (now Indonesia) to Holland, some more or less voluntarily (the Dutch and so-called Indo-Europeans), some involuntarily (the Moluccans). In the sixties and seventies there was a large influx of Dutch nationals from Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles as well as migrant workers from Mediterranean countries. Most of them men, they came from Turkey, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Greece, and various other countries besides. They were later joined by their wives and children, and sometimes other relatives as well. This process has not yet come to an end, even though the economic recession - a world-wide malaise which is also affecting the Netherlands - has made it more difficult for them to build up a future here. And now the second generation is growing up. Though born here, they are brought up in the ways and traditions of their parents. Local authorities, social welfare institutions, school boards and teachers were the first to become aware of the problems arising from this situation - not surprisingly, since they are in touch with the practical realities of people's lives. Teachers already had to
4 adjust to changing attitudes regarding teaching, which entailed taking greater account of individual differences between children and caused them to adapt teaching methods accordingly. They were also required to work more in teams than they had done before. Then suddenly they were confronted with the problems resulting from the feet that their classes contained children from ethnic minorities. Those problems had to do with language, communicating with the parents and their own lack of knowledge of other cultures: the schools were not equipped to cope with this new situation. The teachers responded constructively, but called upon the government to take the appropriate measures to provide them with the support they needed. At first, in the early seventies, the action taken amounted to emergency relief measures in specific cases. Foreign teachers were engaged to teach their own language and culture under the terms of treaties with the immigrants' countries of origin, and extra Dutch teachers were appointed to give the children a solid grounding in Dutch. None of this was easy for the children, who thus had to cope with an unfamiliar type of school and three sets of teachers: two from the Dutch world and one from their own. In the past ten years much more attention has been devoted to the question of ethnic minorities and education. Administrative measures have widened in scope and more facilities are being provided; moreover, the approach has gradually become more systematic and the methods adopted are more cohesive and deployed more effectively. Despite these advances, there is a greater need now than in the past to learn from the experience of other countries by reading, research and direct contacts, especially with countries which have been dealing with issues arising from ethnic and cultural diversity for a longer time and on a larger scale than is the case in the Netherlands. A point of particular importance is the solution other countries may have found to the dilemma of whether cultural policy should be geared to integration or whether it should assist people to retain their own cultural identity. We would also like to learn more about the consequences these two options have had for the educational and social prospects of individuals and groups. The United States, in particular, has wide experience of the problems connected with cultural diversity and social integration, for the country's economic and political deve lopment - and thus its demographic structure - have long made it into a multi-cultural society. There will no doubt be differences - perhaps even wide differences - between the United States and the Netherlands on questions relating to both theory and practice. It is indeed for that reason that comparison of what is being done in both countries can, I believe, be instructive for us both. We should be comparing such things as the measures being taken, the ways policy-makers respond to requests from the educational field and the roles of research and teacher education. I am delighted that this audience includes researchers, specialists in curriculum and program planning, teacher training staff, policy-makers and representatives of many other branches of education. I am convinced that educators can and must play a fundamental, albeit not exclusive role in enabling members of cultural minorities to fully participate in Dutch society. Teacher training is of crucial importance in this respect. Responsibility in this area also extends of course to the Minister of Education. He is responsible for education policy in general, and for the initial and further training of teachers, both Dutch and foreign. He must make it possible for school boards and
5 teaching staffs to achieve the objectives of education policy for ethnic minorities, and give form and content to education in accordance with the needs of those concerned. I have one or two observations to make here. First of all, the term 'ethnic minorities' refers to a large and heterogeneous group of people. Moreover it is a group for which specific measures are required if the majority of its members are not to form a new economically and socially disadvantaged section of the population. A few figures will illustrate what I mean. 600,000 people in the Netherlands, or approximately 4 per cent of the population, belong to ethnic minorities. There are almost 100,000 school children in this category: 22,000 in nursery schools, 50,000 in primary schools and 20,000 in secondary schools, mainly junior vocational schools. This picture is complicated by the fact that 50 per cent of these children are concentrated in 5 per cent of the nursery and primary schools, mostly located in the main cities. Their numbers are expected to increase to some 10 per cent of the population in the next few years, firstly because wives and children are still arriving to join the male immigrants, and secondly because the birth rate is higher. While the number of Dutch children in school is declining by a steady 3 to 4 per cent each year, the percentage of children from ethnic minorities will continue to show a spectacular rise. In the 1980-81 school year the number of these children in nursery schools had already gone up by 12.5 per cent, and those in primary school by 17 per cent. The Ministry's budget for ethnic minorities rose from 178 million guilders in 1981 to 256 million guilders in 1982. The special provisions it contains are essential and will continue to be so. This is a point I wish to stress. In a period of economic recession the brunt of the necessary spending cuts must not be borne by people who were encouraged to come here at a time when their labour was economically needed. At the same time, we have come to realise in these last few years that a cohesive policy is an absolute prerequisite for what we wish to achieve in the long term. It must be cohesive in two ways. First, educational measures must interlock with the activities planned in social welfare and housing. Second, measures designed to assist ethnic minorities must be coordinated with programmes for disadvantaged Dutch children and adults. With regard to the first point I can be brief. A cohesive minorities policy is an integral part of government policy as a whole and a start has been made with the appointment of a State Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affaires who is responsible for the coordination of policy on ethnic minorities (1). The second point requires a little more clarification. If people from ethnic minorities are to function in Dutch society, the measures designed to assist them must tie in with their educational needs. Which are their specific needs? 1. They are often insufficiently acquainted with Dutch society and its values and norms, and they speak little or no Dutch. So particular attention must be devoted to their initial period at Dutch schools and to the provision of special Dutch language programs. 2. They live in accordance with their own cultural patterns, from which they derive their identity. This means creating scope for their own language and culture in the school curriculum. 1.
Recently this responsibility has been transferred to the Minister of Home Affairs himself.
6 In the new Nursery and Primary Education Act specific provision is made for education in the pupils' own language and culture, if the parents so wish. Shortly the legal position of foreign teachers will be regulated in an amendment to the Primary Education Act which will give them a guaranteed status comparable to that of Dutch teachers. The schools must also help build up an 'intercultural attitude' among both Dutch and foreign children. Intercultural education must be designed with this in mind, and must relate to «//children and «//teachers. In addition to Dutch language courses for foreign teachers, both for teacher training as well as elementary and secondary education, curricula should be developed in each appropriate subject which will focus on intercultural aspects. Contact with the parents and the environment of the children is'an essential element of these plans. Adult education and social welfare organisations, as well as counselling and other advisory services, will have an important role to play in this respect. Intercultural education goes further than learning about each other's cultural backgrounds; it extends to creating awareness of ethnocentric behaviour and to promoting the acceptance of minorities by the majority, and vice versa. These are basic premises to be embodied in education legislation, and here, too, a start has been made. Section 9, subsection 3 of the Nursery and Primary Education Act states that the educational system is based on the assumption that children will grow up in a multicultural society. A recent draft General Administrative Order on the training of teachers for combined nursery and primary schools states that one of the objectives of this training is to prepare students to provide intercultural education and to teach children from ethnic minorities. Why do I consider it so essential to combine intercultural education for all children with education for migrant children in their own language and culture? Because, learning to understand, accept and respect one another, to appreciate each others culture or elements thereof - in short acculturation - in the long run is the only way to coexistance: valuing one's own heritage and that of other people. Only then we may request that minorities accept essential and basic elements of Dutch society. Western Europe has values and norms which are not open to discussion, even though they may not be so self-evident amongst minority groups with different socio-cultural or religious backgrounds. Corporal punishment, keeping children - especially girls - away from school and polygamy for instance are against the law and therefore cannot be tolerated. The laws of the country must be observed by everyone. In view of what I have just said about intercultural education and acculturation, to what degree, with what goal and with what future prospects in mind should our ideas concerning the language and culture of minorities be put into practice? It is my firm conviction that the acculturation which is a precondition for an integrated society is possible only through self-knowledge and full awareness of one's own identity. People who have been uprooted from their own culture cannot participate in a multicultural society. But what precisely do we mean by 'their own culture'? Cultural identity is not a static concept. The second generation, born and educated in the Netherlands and without personal experience of life in their parents' country of origin, are different in this respect from their parents. This may cause generation conflicts. Alienation from the original culture can bring on an identity crisis. On the other hand, clinging to social and cultural patterns which prevent assimilation into Dutch life and which at the same time no longer accurately reflect the country of
7 origin, is equally likely to lead to conflict with the environment and within one's own group. Generally speaking, people who hope to return some day to their own country must not be deprived of this possibility; their ties with their own culture and background must be kept intact. But those who will stay here - probably the vast majority of migrants must be able to cope with life in Dutch society and to play their part in it. It is even more difficult to say what the original language and culture means to the children of the second and third generations. The relation between children's acquisition of language and their socio-cultural development is a highly complex one, involving a variety of intricate and partly overlapping linguistic, psychological and sociological factors. The children of migrants lead a crosscultural existence in the sense that they are exposed, more than Dutch children, to conflicting external influences: from their families, from school and from the neighbourhood in which they live. The combination of intercultural education and education in their own language and culture is meant to help them to find their way, to understand the different signals which they receive. They have to develop their own frame of reference in order to try to relate their own identity to all these external stimuli. I do not have the pretention nor the authority to tell you how education in native language and culture and intercultural education should be organised to reach this goal. In any case it would be highly irregular for the Minister to concern himself with the actual curriculum, which in the Netherlands is the responsibility of the individual school boards. But I do appreciate the feet that it places a heavy burden on the shoulders of the Dutch and foreign teachers who have to implement the program. The government's task is to create the conditions in which teachers, researchers, educationalists and teacher training staff can give substance to the concepts of intercultural education and education in native language and culture. Quality control thus means built-in guarantees which will allow for changing views and future developments. Education policy in a pluralistic society must have this as one of its goals, which in turn implies that measures taken in the interest of ethnic minorities must be viewed in conjunction with other policy measures. Ethnic minorities generally have a low social and economic status. If they have jobsand many of them are unemployed - they are usually low-paid; their housing conditions are very poor; and their educational level is low. In brief, they are disadvantaged both socially and economically. Their circumstances are the same as those of deprived sections of the Dutch society. Their children attend the same schools, they live in the same quarters of the large cities, they occupy the same low-cost housing, and the go to the same health clinics. So what is needed is a policy designed to eliminate the educational disadvantages amongst the socially and economically weak in both minorities and majority. They should be accorded preferential treatment in the provision of additional facilities, and it is for that reason that my predecessor and I have taken steps to establish an education policy to give priority to the areas and localities where these problems are most prevalent: the educational priority areas. Recently I published an education priority plan embodying new ideas for the traning and inservice training of teachers working with ethnic minorities. It provides for
8 part-time courses for foreign teachers leading to a qualification to teach their own language and culture. Another part-time course will be set up to train foreign teachers as fully qualified teachers, leading to a teaching certificate recognized in this country. In addition, secondary school pupils will eventually be able to take examinations in the Turkish or Arabic language. Of course teachers must first be trained in these subjects. The plan also provides for students who are eligible for admission to a teacher training college, but whose mastery of Dutch is insufficient, to follow courses to boost their knowledge of Dutch. What we are aiming at is a teaching staff which will constitute a more or less accurate reflection of the various ethnic groups making up the Dutch population. The Education Priority Plan also contains an integrated policy frame to coordinate the separate educational facilities for other priority groups and ethnic minorities and, more than thus far, bring them in harmony with the measures concerning adult education and other sociocultural and educational facilities. To ensure policy continuity for the schools involved, legislation to regulate these facilities is under preparation. Formulation of such legislation requires careful consideration before it is proposed to parliament. Moreover, the educational world must be given the opportunity to put forward its views on the main points of the proposals, and it is for this reason that they have been outlined in the educational priority plan. Allow me to end by saying that I feel this conference will contribute to the development of theory and will give rise to practical suggestions for the further evolution of policy. I hope, too, that the contacts you make here will lead to lasting relationships and a continuing exchange of information and experience. I await the results of the conference with great interest, and wish you every success in it.
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Education policy in a pluralistic society: an American view EIAM K. HERTZLER Introduction It is indeed a pleasure- and an honor to bring you greetings from the Secretary of Education, Dr. T.H. Bell, as well as his best wishes for a successful meeting on a very important issue impacting our two great democracies: 'Multicultural Education and Teacher Training.' The History of the United Netherlands and the history of the United States have been inextricably entwined for nearly 395 years since the days of the early 17th century when the Dutch West India company first explored and then ruled the Hudson River Valley. When our young nation fought with England for the 'prize' of independence, the support of the older. Dutch republic was crucial to our victory on at least three critical occasions. - John Adams, an American agent in Paris, was sent to The Netherlands in the summer of 1780. During his two years there he achieved what the future President rather 'modestly' described as 'the greatest blowthat has been struck in the American cause, and the most decisive'. In April of 1782, Adams secured formal recognition of the independence of the United States. - Also in the Spring of 1782, Adams made the final arrangement for a substantial loan which prevented complete American bankruptcy. - On October 8,1782, Adams concluded the young republic's second Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the Dutch republic. As you are aware, the Dutch heritage is but one of the many cultures that has gone into the amalgam that has become the U.SA Indeed our nation's motto is a tribute and symbol to the very topic of this conference and attests to its importance for the United States and The Netherlands: E Pluribus Unum. Out of the Many, One. The United States has a multiethnic/multilingual heritage. The early European settlers met a variety of native Indian tribes, each with its own language and culture. These first European settlers also brought a variety of languages to North America. English to Virginia, Spanish to Florida and California, French to Louisiana, and Dutch to New Amsterdam - today's New York City. This year we are celebrating the bicentennial of unbroken diplomatic relations between The Netherlands and The United States. One of thefirstand greatest American writers, Washington Irving, focused on the profound Dutch influence in America. He
10 was especially fascinated by New York, his native city. Irving has delighted many readers since 1809 with the exploits of Master Hendrick Hudson, in the founding of New Amsterdam. Through his manuscript of the legendary Diedrich Knickerbocker, we learned of the acts and deeds of New Amsterdam's first Dutch governors. And in his 'Author's Apology' of many years later, Washington Irving set a goal for multiculturalism which may still guide us today. Listen to his words of 1848: 'I please myself with the persuasion that I have struck the right chord; that my dealings with the good Old Dutch times, and the customs and usages derived from them, are in harmony with the feelings and humors of my townsmen; that I have opened a vein of pleasant associations and quaint characteristics peculiar to my native place, and which its inhabitants will not willingly suffer to pass away...' The memories of Washington Irving's writings serve as a reminder of the Dutch contribution to our American heritage. Bilingual/Bicultural Education in the United States - From Past to Present From its beginnings, the United States has had to face the issues found in our multilingual/ multicultural society and their impact on American education. I would like to share with you today some of our history, and some of what we have learned from our experience. A basic problem we face is how to provide an equal educational opportunity to all children in the United States. The American experience has encompassed many of the possible approaches to the problem, with assimilation and cultural pluralism being the most popular. I believe the multilanguage situation in the U.S. today is best understood in the context of a great social debate between assimilation and cultural pluralism. We have in the United States many students who come from non-English language backgrounds whose limited English language skills present a great challenge in providing an equal education opportunity for them. The current bilingual/bicultural education programs in the United States have origins in the great European migrations of the late nineteenth century. Of course, earlier large immigrations occurred before the establishment of our public school system as we know it today. In any case, these immigrant groups provided the major impetus to the formation of the American 'melting pot' concept through their shared desire that their children become '100% American.' For most, this meant, first and foremost, speaking English. As the schools became laden with non-English speaking immigrant children, some groups pressed for the development of non-English speaking schools. This was particularly true of many German enclaves in large eastern and mid-western cities. Thus, prior to WW I, both the assimilationist and pluralist trends were present in American society. WW I led to nearly total dominance of the assimilation approach. Many States, reacting to fears of Germany, and suspicious of the large German-speaking enclaves, passed laws making English the only language of schooling. Assimilation was further strengthened by the isolationist period following WW I. After WW II, pluralism began to reassert itself. This came about as part of the growing wave of ethnic identity sweeping the world, and the recognition by the United States of the need for global awareness as represented by the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.
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To fully understand the current American situation, we must keep in mind that the organization of American schools is very different from the European model. In the United States, primary responsibility for elementary and secondary education lies with each of the 50 individual States. The actual management of education is carried out by some 16,000 local school districts whose residents elect the local school board, the main governing body of the schools. Additionally, the local school districts raise a large portion of the money for the schools through local taxes. The Federal government, by contrast, provides only about 8% of the total elementary and secondary school budget. In speaking of our American education system, it is important to keep in mind that we have a nation of predominantly public schools open to all of our citizenry. In our K-12 student enrollment (45,190,000), roughly 11% (5,029,000) attend private schools. Of those students attending private schools, 84% (4,226,000) attend schools of some religious affiliation. Clearly, the public school system is the route travelled by most American children. Today, there are almost 200 language groups in the United States. This poses a considerable challenge to our education system. The State of Colorado, for example, operates an English language proficiency program in 107 school districts serving children from 66 different language backgrounds, including 13 Dutch speaking students. The range of languages encountered in this one State's program is illustrated by just naming a few: Kickapoo, Nigerian and Croatian Spanish background students are by far the largest minority language group in the nation. (A large percentage of them are limited-English proficient. In fact this group accounts for almost 70% of the limited-English proficient (LEP) students in the nation.) Although LEP students are found throughout the 50 stages, they are not evenly distributed. Two-thirds live in just three states - California, Texas and New York. (Over half can be found in only 6% of the local school districts. Three-quarters of the limited-English proficient children are native born Americans, and many develop some skills in English before beginning school.) The estimate of the number of language minority students who are limited-English proficient in the U.S. ranges from a low of 1.2 million to a high of 3-6 million. As a nation, we have an obligation to meet the educational needs of these students. In 1970, the federal government notified the States and schools that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 required steps to be taken 'to rectify the language deficiency' of students whose' inability to speak and understand the English language excludes [them] from effective participation in [school].' In 1974, the Supreme Court in Lau vs. Nichols upheld the Civil Rights Act and found that simply placing non-English speaking students in a typical English-speaking class did not provide an adequate instructional program for these students. The Court concluded that the schools had to provide some kind of special instruction to non-English speaking children which could include instruction in their home language. At about the same time these developments in Civil Rights protections were occuring, the Federal government was also becoming involved in bilingual/bicultural instruction through other routes. (In 1965, the Congress of the United States passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), marking the first major involvement of the Federal government in local elementary/secondary school programs. The major component of
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ESEA was the Title I program under which the then U.S. Office of Education, now the U.S. Department of Education, made grants available to school districts for compensatory programs for disadvantaged students.) In 1968, Congress recognized the special problems of language minority students by creating an additional program, Title VII of ESEA, for bilingual/bicultural education. The Title VII program, which the Reagan Administration proposes to fund at about $95 million for the fiscal year beginning next week, is designed to help schools develop and improve their bilingual/bicultural instructional program for limited-English proficient students. Of that amount, Title VII will provide about $25 million for training bilingual/bicultural teachers, teacher trainers and other persons involved in local programs. The funds also are used to train administrators and counselors as well as parents in communities with large limited-English speaking populations. In the United States, students and teachers can receive a specialization in bilingual education. On the undergraduate level, a student can major in one aspect of education, such as elementary education, and take extra courses to secure a specialization in bilingual education. This can also be accomplished on the graduate or post graduate level. Teacher certification in bilingual education, as in all teacher certification, is the responsibility of the individual States. However, regional institutional accrediting associations often set higher standards than the States and in this manner force institutions desiring accreditation to meet their professional standards for teachers. Although the Federal government operates a sizeable bilingual/bicultural program for students, Federal spending is, under the American system, still the minor partner in funding these programs. According to a study done in 1978,42% of the students enrolled in bilingual instruction were in-locally funded programs, 36% in State funded bilingual programs, with the rest in the Federal Title VII program. In some cases, children are in programs funded by more than one of these sources. In addition to the civil rights and bilingual/bicultural activities, the U.S. Department of Education also administered an Ethnic Heritage Studies Program, between 1974 and 1982. (The Ethnic Heritage Studies Program is now part of the Education Block Grants.) This program awarded over $17 million in almost 400 grants to local schools and other educational institutions to stimulate multiethnic cooperation, and to develop greater understanding of the multiethnic character of American society. Among the many materials and forums that were used by the Ethnic Heritage Studies Program were: - workshops designed to offer comprehensive training programs for school teachers; - public conferences for teachers, students and the general public; - creation of audiovisual materials, such as films, records, slides, cassettes, and videotapes for use in the schools and communities in coordination with developing teaching materials; - development of source books, teacher guides, student workbooks, textual materials and annotated bibliographies; and - designing of kits, data banks, computer files, traveling exhibits, posters, and picture cards. The Federal role in bilingual/bicultural education then has two aspects. First, the
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Department, through its Office for Civil Rights, has the responsibility to ensure that the local school districts and the States comply with the Civil Rights Act and the Supreme Court's Lau decision by providing appropriate special help to limited-English proficient students. Ultimately, however, the responsibility for these programs is in the hands of the local schools. Second, through the Title VII and Ethnic Heritage Programs, the Federal government has provided assistance to the schools for program development and demonstration. Parallel to the developments at the Federal level, and especially following the Supreme Court's Lau decision, about 30 States have also enacted legislation that either permits or requires bilingual education programs. In school year 1981-82, 22 States allocated about $85 million to support programs within their borders. Before resuming the historical narrative, it is important to stop and note that bilingual education in the United States today is firmly rooted in the assimilation tradition. The goal of bilingual/bicultural education, especially at the Federal level, is to prepare children to function in an English-speaking country. As I have emphasized, the United States is a multilingual/multiethnic country. However, the English language clearly prevails in almost every aspect of American Life. Secretary Bell has stated, 'We are all part of a vast global system - one that is our responsibility to understand and communicate within. Indeed, no man is an island, and in these times, no nation stands alone.' At no time in history has it been more important to stress this need for better understanding between countries and people. We are more and more interdependent in this 'global system' - economically, politically and environmentally. We hope our language minority students will retain their native language while learning English. And we hope our English speaking students will learn a second language. I would like to commend you, the Dutch, in your achievements in teaching English and other foreign languages to your students. I understand that by the age of 12 (if not before), all Dutch students are required to begin studies in at least one foreign language. The emphasis you place upon teaching your students to speak in a second or third language conveys to them the importance of such an accomplishment. I admire what you have attained. To return to our recent history, there are a number of different instructional approaches that can be used to accomplish our goal of improved English skills for limited-English proficient children. The primary approaches used in the United States are ESL (English as a Second Language) and transitional bilingual education. The ESL approach focuses on rapid acquisition of English language skills. The transitional bilingual education method requires active use of the child's native language for instruction until English can be mastered. Under the last administration, Federal actions tended to reject all alternative methods but the transitional approach. In feet, a proposed Federal regulation under the Civil Rights Act, which was submitted for public comment, would have mandated that this one method was the preferred method for teaching limited-English proficient students in the United States. The proposed regulation would have required extensive justification for use of any alternative method such as ESL (English as a second language) instruction, and immersion programs in English. It is important to note that this proposal, because it was tied to civil
14 rights, brought the Federal government more directly into the instructional arena than would normally be the case under our system of governance. During the period of public comment following the announcement of the proposed regulation, thousands of Americans registered their disapproval of the effort by the Federal government to mandate any one instructional approach. A research study undertaken by the Department of Education later found that the empirical evidence did not support sole reliance on any one method. Our current Secretary of Education, Secretary Bell, withdrew this proposed Federal Civil Rights regulation, and subsequently is promoting greater flexibility in the choice of instructional methods that might be used to protect the civil rights of these children. The schools are required to provide special help to limited-English proficient (LEP) students, but it is solely the responsibility of the States and the local school districts to decide how to provide that help, given the unique circumstances of their particular community and student population. Similarly, under the Title VII program of grants to help school districts that want to implement a special program for limited-English proficient (LEP) children, Secretary Bell has proposed legislative amendmends to give more flexibility to local school districts. This would enable them to use the kind of instructional programs that best suit the needs of their children, including immersion programs that use only English in instruction. With greater flexibility for the schools, we expect to see more experimentation with a wider variety of programs than there has been in the past. We expect to see more use made of English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction, immersion in English, and of 'maintenance' bilingual programs as well as continuation of 'transitional' bilingual programs. We believe that the choice of instructional methodology is best made by the local school districts. One of the strengths of our decentralized system is in encouraging flexibility, choice, and experimentation which should lead to rapid progress in developing more effective methods for meeting the educational needs of limited-English proficient students. Secretary Bell has focused on three areas of concern regarding the education of all American students. These areas of focus are: - the importance of local school district control and flexibility; - the continued diligent protection of civil rights; and - the need to increase the quality of instruction in our schools. As you can see by the history of our language minority programs, these three areas tie in closely with our efforts in bilingual education. That then is a brief history of how the United States got to where it is today in bilingual/bicultural education.
The Lessons - What We Have Learned From Our Experience As I will now discuss where we are going in this field in the future, I must inform you about some current items already on our agenda for immediate action. Tens of thou-
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sands of our professionals in the field of language acquisition have for years been active in organizing associations for professional development and sharing of expertise. National and international conferences are held regularly, and I'm sure that many ofyou may have already attended such meetings. In February of next year, our National Association for Bilingual Education will be meeting in Washington, D.C. The theme for this year's conference is 'Bilingual Education: In the National Interest'. Secretary Bell has upon many occasions endorsed the belief that second language proficiency would indeed be an asset for all Americans, and a necessity for many. With this axiom in mind, let me highlight just a few of our basic findings in some of our more effective language programs. First, and perhaps most important, we have found that a common national consensus on the goals of bilingual/bicultural education should be reached, if at all possible. Since the early days of our public school system, the United States has been trying to reach such a consensus as the pendulum swings back and forth between the goal of the 'melting pot' and the goal of linguistic and cultural pluralism. However, this issue still is not settled today, and it gives rise to ideological disputes that greatly complicate the pedagogical issues of how to provide the desired education program. Second, instruction in English for limited-English proficient (LEP) students must be carefully structured. Predictably, we have found that LEP students are readily able to learn academic subjects taught in their home language. And depending on their level of English proficiency, they are usually able to advance in academic subjects which are taught in English. In any case, we do attempt to employ compensatory teaching methods for LEP students, and meet individual needs. Once the students become proficient in the English language, they are able to receive the full benefit of the 'regular' English-medium classroom activities. Third, we find that recognition of cultural differences can help in instruction. For example, in some American Indian tribes, it is considered inappropriate for young males and females of the same clan to converse freely. This makes it very difficult for a teacher to assign group work unless he/she knows this, and takes this into account when designating work groups. Being aware of such cross-cultural differences then may have instrumental value in improving instruction. In the area of second language acquisition, we have also drawn some conclusions. The ability of our schools to teach students a second language is impressive. Some U.S. researchers see the home environment as having the most influence in student mastery of a second language. Although the home environment is undoubtedly a contributing factor to student success on all levels, we believe the classroom is the primary contributor to student mastery of a language other than one's primary language. Our problem is to have more students motivated to enroll in these courses. We find that as educators, we can be easily overwhelmed with educational data from experts and researchers in the field of second language acquisition. Certainly, we have no lack of information in this regard - we know a great deal, and are conducting research to learn more about what methods work sometimes in some places with some students. However, we cannot prescribe with certainty what ought to be done for any one particular student in one particular school. We find that we must be flexible in our teaching methods and instructional programs - they are not 'engraved in stone.' As
16 educators, we learn that continual modification and improvement in the classroom becomes 'a way of life.' This flexibility is an integral part of our second language acquisition programs. With change comes growth - we anticipate continued growth in our work with American students learning a second language. Finally, I would like to emphasize that while we have long had serious concerns in dealing with multiple languages, we have only in recent years viewed these concerns from a national perspective. Thankfully, we have advanced - both in teaching English to limited-English proficient students, and in enhancing our resources in the area of second (foreign) language instruction. However, we still have a long way to go in attracting and requiring students to enroll in our foreign language programs. In our efforts, we have learned some things which I have presented with caution and thoughtful uncertainty. I look forward to the sharing of ideas in this important conference, and am here to listen and to learn from those of you who have been, in many instances, dealing from a multilanguage perspective longer and more effectively than we have. It is my hope that, together, we will be able to find the answers.
Part two Multicultural society, ideology and education
3 The study of ethnicity: the need for a differential approach JO E. ELLEMERS I. Let us, for a moment, imagine a conference like this taking place thirty years from now. At that conference a historian sketces the development of Dutch society during the last quarter of the twentieth century. What picture could this historian draw with respect to the development of ethnic relations? One possibility might be a very gloomy picture. Due to family reunion schemes and high birthrates, in particular among Moslem groups, the number of Mediterraneans had trebled in thirty years. Poor housing conditions, unsatisfactory educational performances and high unemployment rates, especially among the young, has caused a situation in which members of the second and third generation of ethnic groups show an increasingly problematic behavior. A policy of bicultural education has brought about a situation in which many young people feel completely disoriented. Many of them feel alienated and lapse into different forms of deviant behavior, ranging from petty crime to drug addiction and even violence. Moreover, the publicity about this problematic behavior of some members of ethnic groups has also had others adverse effects. First of all it has caused all sorts of strains and tensions between the native population and ethnic groups. But even more important, it has also had very negative effects on the self-image of most members of ethnic groups. Very few of them are really succesful and have managed to climb the social ladder. Most of them have had to put up with a more or less permanent position in the lowest reaches of society. Although several of these problems exist also in other European countries in the early 21st century, our future historian may point to another problem, which more specifically has to do with Dutch colonial history. After the Antilles had been taken over by Venezuela in the late 1980's and Brazil unilaterally declared Surinam part of its territory in the late 1990's, almost two-thirds of the population of these former colonies had moved to Holland. However, these take-overs by Latin American governments caused a lot of anxiety among the people from Surinam and the Antilles and eventually led to foundation of the Surinam Liberation Organization and the Free Antilles Movement. After interventions by the Dutch government with the governments of Brazil and Venezuela failed badly and the United Natins even refused to place these issues on the agenda, the anger and frustration of the people of Surinam and the Antilles turned against the Dutch government. They blamed the Dutch government because it had not
20 sent its navy to defend the integrity of their countries. Eventually the agression led to all sorts of violence, including repeated hijackings of trains and aeroplanes inside and outside the Netherlands. Finally there was also the problem of well over 100,000 refugees from South-Africa, who came to the Netherlands after a black majority rule was established in their country at the beginning of the 1990's. Although many of them held Dutch passports, their presence caused several problems due to their dissatisfaction with the general situation in the Netherlands and their pronounced racial prejudice. As a matter of fact the conference at which our historian reported on these problematic developments of inter-ethnic relations in the Netherlands was held at the request of the Dutch government. It hoped in this way to get some advice from foreign experts, expecially from the United States, about how to solve these problems which had become almost intolerable. There is, however, also a possibility that our future historian may sketch a completely different picture. He might indicate how at the beginning of the last quarter of the twentieth century the Netherlands seemed to be on the verge of an economic breakdown. Especially when in the 1980's the policy of industrial innovation became a complete failure, the introduction of a new system of secondary education (the so-called comprehensive 'middleschool') lowered the achievement motivation of most pupils considerably and a over-bureaucratized society seemed unable to cope with its problems, an unexpected economic recovery took place. To their amazement economists and other social scientists found out that this miraculous economic recovery was an outgrowth of what, at first, had seemed only a form of 'underground economy'. Even more important, this new economic recovery was largely the result of activities of ethnic minorities. It had started already in the late 1970's and early 1980's when several Turkish, Moroccan and also West-Indian immigrants opened businesses of their own in the restaurant industry, crafts and commerce. But a real economic take-off took only place in the 1990's, when many members of the second generation of these minorities came of age and entered the business of their parents. This caused first a boom in the tourist industry, which brought hundreds of thousands of tourists from as far away as Japan, the Philipines, India and Australia to the Netherlands. But soon many of the second generation Turks, Moroccans and West-Indians took over management of most of the bigger restaurants and hotels, while other went into electronics, biological engineering and other growth sectors. In short, according to this second view, our future historian may report that somewhere in the beginning of the 21st century Holland was again becoming a prosperous country and was entering a new 'golden age'. Like the previous golden age, in the 17th century, this new economic boom was largely the result of the influx of foreign immigrants with a high level of achievement motivation. The specific combination of Dutch Moslem and West-Indian cultural patterns proved to be an excellent breeding ground for a new entrepreneurial climate among aliens, which Dutch society was missing so badly only just a quarter of a century before. Dutch municipalities were competing with each other to get their share of foreign immigrants. They would offer them free housing and tax facilities if only they would start their businesses within the municipal boundaries. Soon also Dutch scientists and
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engineers with foreign names would bring Dutch universities and industries again on the forefront of international scientific and industrial development, as had been the case earlier in the twentieth century. As a matter of fact the conference at which our historian reported about these striking developments was organized at the request of several foreign governments, including the United States, who wanted to get more information about the 'Dutch miracle'. Both future developments may seem somewhat exaggerated. But neither of them is completely unlikely. History is usually written backwards. We can easily explain why the French revolution had to be followed by the growth of national states, the industrial revolution and colonial expansion in the 19th century. It is much more difficult, however, to explain or to make at least plausible which of the two developments, or 'scenarios' if you prefer, will become reality within the next decades. It is not inlikely that elements of both scenarios, which I have briefly tried to outline, will become reality. From the outset I want to emphasize that among many other relevant factors, I consider that 'images' and 'self-images' about and among the different ethnic groups can be crucial in determining which 'scenario' will become reality. Through processes of 'labeling' and 'self-fulfilling prophecy' such images and selfimages may be reinforced, as has been the case with other minorities and, for that matter, with many other social groups. In this respect I think that prospects with regard to ethnic minorities in the Netherlands, and probably in most other European countries as well, are not too bright. Or more precisely: if present trends continue, negative elements may easily dominate more potentially positive factors. In general journalists, social scientists and other commentators of our present society tend to pay more attention to negative developments and to people who are doing not too well. In a way one could say that misery and distress are the bread and butter of journalists and social scientists. In the case of ethnic minorities this may be even more so and more dangerous than in other cases. In the remainder of my presentation I want to indicate two factors which, in my opinion, have contributed to this state of affairs in the Netherlands. First the government policy vis-a-vis ethnic minorities. Secondly the way problems of ethnic minorities have been perceived, especially the way in which certain social scientific knowledge has become a sort of ideology serving the interests of policy-makers, welfare-workers and others who are professionally dealing with these problems. Finally I want to make some remarks about the questions: what could be done and how could these problems be dealt with differently.
II. It has taken a relatively long time before the presence of ethnic and cultural minorities in the Netherlands, in particular from the former colonies and from Mediterranean countries, has been perceived as something like a social problem. First of all the presence of most of these minorities has been seen for a long time as temporary. This has even been the case with the Moluccans although they have been in the Netherlands for twenty years. I remember stil very vividly how in the late 1960's I tried to interest high civil
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servants and eventually the Minister of Social Welfare to do research about the Moluccans. Finally the Minister of Social Welfare told me there was already an investigation on the way and besides I did not know something she knew: the Moluccans would soon leave the Netherlands. Another factor that has contributed to the delay in dealing with the problems of ethnic minorities might be the relatively succesful absorption, or integration, or whatever it may be called, of the repatriates from Indonesia in the 1950's. In fact, most of them were not real 'repatriates', but Eurasians who were born, and had lived all their life, in Indonesia. But as a whole many of them did very well in the Netherlands, although there may have been some personal feelings of uneasiness and dissatisfaction. However, this rather successful absorption of over 300,000 repatriates had a very soothing effect. Both policy-makers and the Dutch population as a whole thought they were doing very well and congratulated themselves with their efficiency and tolerance. Most people tended to forget, however, that the immigration of these repatriates took place in a period of unprecendented expansion in the Dutch economy. In particular the fast growing tertiary sector of economy offered many opportunities for the repatriates who had mostly been civil servants and white collar workers in the former Dutch East Indies. So their successful absorption, in addition to other, mostly cultural, factors, has been largely a result of favorable economic conditions. When, however, in the late 1960's and especially in the 1970's people from Surinam and Mediterranean countries started to arrive in larger numbers, an entirely different situation was developing. Economic growth was slowing down already and the presence of an increasing number of aliens was becoming a real problem. Still, it is surprising that once it was recognized as a problem, it has been largely dealt with in terms of social welfare, housing and education. Of course these are very pressing problems indeed. But until quite recently even these problems have been tackled largely in terms of temporary arrangements. For instance until just one or two years ago bicultural and bilingual education has been advocated not as an instrument of introducing alien pupils to the Dutch educational system, but as an end in itself. 'Integrating minorities, while preserving their cultural identity' has been for a long time the official credo of most policy-makers. Some of these problems, undoubtedly, will be discussed in more detail during this conference. Still more surprising is that even today the problems of ethnic minorities are hardly seen as labor market problems. Many, if not most of them, came to the Netherlands and other European countries, not because they liked the physical, social and cultural climate of these countries in particular. They came here first and foremost because they wanted to improve their socio-economic situation. But until today we know very little about their position on the labor market. Of course, it is generally known that most of them occupy only the lowest positions. Also there is an impression that today the unemployment rate among ethnic minorities, especially among the young, is high; even higher than among the native Dutch population. But it is also said that the duration of unemployment shows a considerable variation between ethnic groups. There are other remarkable lacks with regard to our knowledge and policy-making in the sphere of the labor market. In passing I will just mention two points. So far the problem of illegal employment, which has been widely discussed, has hardly been
23 tackled. Still it seems to be important to protect the labor conditions of those aliens who have already been here much longer and have a legal status. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that aliens are almost exclusively perceived as employees, although it is known that an increasing number of them are trying to make a living as independent artisans and even as small entrepreneurs. In this respect very few facilities have been made available to them, although there is nowadays much talk of stimulating small private business enterprises. Finally I want to mention that the presence of ethnic groups has hardly been seen as a political issue. Even today approximately 150,000 Dutchmen of Surinam, Antillean and Moluccan origin are eligible voters, enough to elect (at least) two representatives in Parliament. There is serious talk that in 1986 most aliens will take part in municipal elections. So far political parties and authorities have shown little interest in the potential ethnic vote. During the last municipal elections in only two cities have there been attempts - both unsuccessful - to establish new political parties based on ethnic origin. But there is no doubt that within a fewyears ethnic groups in the Netherlands will enter political life. It is only remarkable that policy-makers and national and local political leaders have not grasped the implications of these developments, which in the long run may have international ramifications as well, since several ethnic groups have also political ties with their home countries.
III. Policy-making and perception of ethnic minorities have not only been lagging behind, they have also been subject to certain distortions. It took social scientists quite some time to convince policy-makers and the public at large that the presence of an ever increasing number of ethnic groups should not be considered a temporary problem. In feet only the violent actions of a small number of South Moluccan youngsters in 1975 and 1977 triggered a more profound concern with the problems of ethnic minorities. But then some over-reaction took place as well. Investigations and publications by social scientists made it clear that there might be certain problems, in particular among certain members of the second generation. It was pointed out that in some cases feelings of relative deprivation might create tensions which in the long run may have other unfavorable effects. Poor housing conditions, under-achievements in school and in particular lack of occupational opportunities have been mentioned as possible factors contributing to this situation. However, it has been also pointed out that such adverse effects are not uniformly present. For instance it has been established that juvenile delinquency among certain ethnic groups has been exceptionally low, even compared to Dutch youngsters. Also it has been established that not all aliens are under-achievers in school. In recent years, however, several of the earlier social science findings have been simplified and 'vulgarized' and have led to sort of stereotyped 'explanations' of the behavior of ethnic groups, in particular of the second generation. These explanations usually lack the subtilities and nuances with which social scientists reported their original findings. Of course this is not new. In the United States and in Great Britain such
24 vulgarized sociological knowledge already plays a much longer role in explaining and interpreting the behavior of minorities, in particular of black minorities. It led to the belief that deviant behavior and in particular violent behavior of ethnic groups, as was the case in the United States during the late 1960's, should be explained as the result of frustration caused by poor housing conditions, a white-middle class, achievement-oriented educational system and in particular by high rates of unemployment. Of course there is no doubt that these factors do play an important role. However, these rather simplistic frustration-aggression 'theories' do not explain why so many young members of ethnic groups in particular, are more successfull than others. It does not explain why certain youngsters, in spite of their disadvantages, do well in school and succeed in occupational life. Nevertheless these 'vulgarized' sociological notions seem to play an ever increasing role. Also in the Netherlands, like in the United States, there is a tendency to view the younger generation of ethnic minorities almost exclusively as 'victims' of racial oppression and adverse social conditions; in short as rather helpless subjects of 'the system'. This may be the case in certain ways. But at the same time it reduces all members of ethnic minorities, and especially the younger generations among them, to the status of passive subjects of societal forces that hardly can be controlled. Again, I don't say that poor housing conditions, unfavorable educational and occupational conditions don't play a role. But arguing over and again that only after all these conditions are improved can the general situation of ethnic groups be elevated is taking a rather fatalistic point of view. Moreover, such 'explanations' have also other effects. First of all these explanations increasingly determine the image, and consequently the self-image, of many members of ethnic minorities. When we and they are continuously told that they are deprived and that it is 'self understood' that they may exhibit problematic and even deviant or violent behavior, some of them may show a tendency to behave according to these expectations. In other words, the 'vulgarized' sociological 'explanations' may well become a 'self-fulfilling prophecy'. The danger of such a development is very real indeed. When we go on arguing how terrible deprived ethnic minorities are and keep saying that 'cultural conflicts' may create crime and violence, we are in a way creating the very conditions we are cautioning against. This development also has some peculiar 'Dutch' aspect, partly connected with our history, partly connected with certain characteristics of our 'welfare state'. During the past twenty years or so there has been a general tendency of vulgarizing sociological knowledge in most Western societies. But in addition to this in the Netherlands it has also led to certain forms of 'consciousness-raising'. Journalists who have been increasingly social science graduates, social scientists who have tried to popularize their research findings, politicians and other members of the opinion-making community have increasing resorted to sociological notions to explain social reality. It has also led to a new normative elaboration of these notions. At the same time there has been a change in the way Dutch society is organized and divided along denominational and ideological lines. This 'pillarized' structure, as it is called, has partly receded. In the sphere of social welfare, however, it has been largely
25 taken over by a new class of professionals, consisting of social science graduates, social workers and others who have been subject to what I have called 'vulgarized' sociological knowledge. These welfare agencies in a very wide sense, have been generously subsidized in recent years; at first mainly through the Ministery of Social Welfare, but in the case of minorities also through the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Labor. We should not overlook the fact that in dealing with problems of ethnic groups through specialized agencies for social welfare, education and other kinds of help we also have built in a tendency to stress the more 'negative' aspects of these problems. First of all, because of their vulgarized sociological perception of these problems, professionals working in such agencies tend to stress socio-economic and other structural fact6rs in explaining and solving the problems. They tend to have a less keen eye for cultural and other differences between ethnic groups and individual differences within ethnic groups. Secondly, they tend to rationalize and justify their professional activities by pointing out how many problems remain still unsolved and by stressing the need to increase the scope of their activities. Of course, much more could be said about these developments. But time does not permit me to elaborate these points.
IV. As a finale to my presentation, let me briefly mention a few points that might be taken into account. The presence of ethnic minorities has long been ignored as a social problem. Since it was perceived as a problem, there has been a tendency to single out certain aspects and to stress the more negative elements. Problems of ethnic minorities have long been perceived as problems that could be dealt with largely in terms of social welfare, education and housing. But the presence of ethnic groups should also be seen in terms of labor market and politics. Moreover, we should be aware that the problem of the various ethnic minorities are not identical. First of all a distinction should be made between different ethnic groups. They may not necessarily have the same combination of problems. Also within ethnic groups there may be striking differences, e.g. between Creole (black) and Hindustani Surinamers, between Moroccans from rural and urban areas. With regard to the situation in the Netherlands a more differential aproach would be wise. For years there has been a debate whether ethnic minorities in the big cities should be concentrated or rather dispersed. It may very well be possible that there does not exist an optimum in this respect, but that the question of concentration versus dispersion is a function of the duration of their stay in the Netherlands. The same is the case with respect to welfare facilities. Probably the need for institutional facilities on one hand and the possibilities of self-help on the other hand may have considerable variation. The problems in the labor market have been greatly underestimated so far. If the aliens in our society should acquire a certain degree of self-respect this will first and foremost depend on their opportunities in the labor market. In this respect we should not only think as employees about jobs for them, but also and probably increasingly
26 about their possibilities as independent artisans and small entrepreneurs. With regard to education and educational facilities, which is the subject of this conference, we should not focus on ethnic minorities as a whole. We should be aware of differences between ethnic groups, within ethnic groups and between individuals. It may be especially rewarding to try to find out why certain groups, sub-groups or individuals are doing better in school than others. An emphasis on 'positive exceptions' will first of all give us more exact information which cultural and other factors may contribute to educational success. Such findings may also contribute to the improvement of the self-image and the self-respect of ethnic groups as a whole. In this respect it may also be worthwhile to investigate whether ethnic groups develop alternative avenues of social mobility. Other than through enterpreneurial activities this may also be through entertainment, sports or other activities. Of course, we could go on and on and mention still many other points. The main thing, however, is that we should be aware that the phenomena we are dealing with are much more dynamic than relatively simple vulgarized sociological notions may sometimes suggest.
4 Political significance of education in a multicultural society NATHAN GLAZER
There is much that binds the United States and The Netherlands in a common cultural and political tradition. The most significant is that both societies are committed to tolerance and the acceptance of diversity. This commitment was no easy matter, in either country: The course of the acceptance of diversity was marked by wars, civil strife, intense political struggle. But both countries, earlier even than our fellow democracies of European origin, learned to accept religious diversity as normal, learned to accept political differences and to create a political system within which these differences could contend peacefully and legimately. The United States precedes The Netherlands in dealing with the diversity created by a population of different ethnic origins. But whatever the differences in history and origins, it is now the case that both contend with new kinds of diversity, diversity of a type that their previous history does not prepare them for, even though the principles created by that previous history certainly give some guidance. In the United States, which was for a long time a country of free immigration, and which since World War II has again become a country of fairly substantial immigration, we have seen since about the middle 1960's a surprising change in the source of our immigrant population. In the great period of immigration that came to an end in the 1960'S American immigrants were overwhelmingly European, with a much smaller number from China and Japan. In the period since the 1960's, they have been overwhelmingly Latin American and Asian. This introduces into the American population some population elements that have never been there in any great number - Indians from the subcontinent, Koreans, Vietnamese. It expands elements that were present but in relatively small number - Chinese, Filipinos, Haitian. It expands even more a substantial element of the American population, people from Latin America, both from Mexico and further South. We thought, in the United States twenty years ago, that we had more or less settled the question of how to deal with the education of immigrants. A consensus had emerged, which to many of us appeared fair and liberal. That consensus is broken now. We are now indeed in a period of contention as to just what is the right policy, even within our broadly tolerant tradition that accepts diversity as a normal part of American life. Let me begin by describing that earlier consensus, how it emerged, and what it was. Our European and Asian immigrants were on the whole undisturbed in their efforts to maintain culture and language in the 19th century. While there were outbursts of violence against Catholics, and even more so against Chinese, there was freedom for the
28 school conducted in a foreign language, the church conducted in a foreign language, for the maintenance of distinctive custom and habit. The United States was a big country, and many groups found in the hearts of big cities or on the Western plains opportunities to recreate - if they so wished - in remarkable detail the cultures and communities of the countries from which they came. They may have suffered ridicule and disdain, discrimination in jobs and elsewhere, but nothing in law or public practice prevented the maintenance of very distinctive cultures. It all depended on fortitude. And our Mennonites and Amish, our Hasidic Jews, still vigorous Italian urban districts, show that where such fortitude prevailed, a unique culture could be maintained. But most immigrants did not come with any vivid intention of creating or maintaining a culture: They came to improve themselves. Improvement meant learning the English language, sending one's children to the public (and English language) school, giving up habits which made one too different, changing names, changing religious practices, changing dress. In the 1880's, this benign or hostile indifference to the practice of immigrant cultures changed, and we had the beginning of laws directed against the teaching of school subjects in foreign languages, as part of an upsurge of anti-Catholic sentiment. In the 1920's, this upsurge became nastier, and we had a larger wave of state laws restricting the use of foreign languages in teaching in the public schools. The strongest of these laws were struck down by the Supreme Court. Thus, in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923), it struck down a law prohibiting teaching in a foreign language in private and public schools. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), it struck down an Oregon statute that required attendance at public schools only. In Farrington v. Tokushige{\926), it refused to allow the Territory of Hawaii to closely regulate Japanese and other foreign-language private schools and eliminate their independence: "The Japanese parent", the Court said, "has the right to direct the education of his own child without unreasonable restrictions; the Constitution protects him as well as those who speak another tongue". A compromise was thus forged between the xenophobic and suspicious demands of uniformity, and the insistence of many in immigrant communities on maintaining and passing on language, culture, and religion. The chief area of the struggle was the public schools. The churches and press had the specific protections of the Constitution, and did not suffer the instruction of state power as did the schools. But in Pierce, Meyer, Farrington, the private schools created by church and immigrant communities were protected from state regulation or state prohibition. However, in many states, teaching in a foreign language in the public schools, even if it expressed the will of a community regulating its own schools under the right of local control of schools, was prohibited. So things stood. They were scarcely modified even when, under the impact of Hitler's racism, and as immigrant communities became more powerful politically, we had a small "multicultural" movement in the 1930's and 1940's. This tried to introduce some knowledge of our ethnic subcommunities, and tolerance toward them, into the public schools. No substantial change occurred until the civil right revolution of the 1960's. To summarize what happened, in our complex Federal system, with its 50 states, 15.000 school districts, and a Federal government in which power is divided between executive, legislature, and judiciary, and each can act independently - and against the other - , is not simple. But in a word the situation of the 1920's has been transformed. The
29 right to education in one's native language in public schools, for some purpose and for some time, is now to some degree established. It is not established in Federal law. Federal law only prohibits discrimination on grounds of national origin,, and provides funds for bilingual and bicultural education, if school districts request it. It is true under the color of this law, the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education generally required until recently some assistance in one's native language for children from homes speaking a foreign language, under threat of withdrawal of Federal funds. Those who enforced this provision were backed by a Supreme Court decision of 1974, which supported them - something, the Court said, must be provided for the child without English. Until recently, Federal regulators generally wanted to see as extensive a use of native language in teaching as possible. Under the Reagan administration, Federal policy has changed. But the old regulations remain in force. But it is not only at the Federal level that a requirement for bilingual education now exists. Many states have passed laws requiring bilingual education for those from homes in which a foreign language is taught. And even in those states that have not, judges under one statute or regulation or another may require it. Thus the issue of multiculturalism in the United States seems to have met its severest challenge, in the 1970's and 1980's, in the area of the schools, just as it was in that area that the battle was most vigorously fought in the 1920's.. The development of requirements to use foreign languages has met opposition in the United States. Senator Hayakawa has proposed an amendment to the Constitution making English the official language of the United States - with what effect, is not clear. Dade County, whose dominant city, Miami, is in feet a bilingual city, has passed a law which seems to forbid public authorities to use Spanish - again with what effect is unclear. There is considerable dismay expressed at judicial requirements, as in New York City, which keep Spanish-speaking children in Spanish language classes through most of their elementary and high school years. In addition, this backlash is fed by the fact that a civil rights law passed in 1975, gives those speaking Spanish, Asian languages, and American Indian languages, the right to assistance in voting in their language. Let me now rise from the constitutional and legal tangle in which Americans seem to revel - we do, after all, have more lawyers per capita than any country in the world - to consider, is there an American consensus on multiculturalism? Or is there a serious conflict over the degree to which foreign languages and cultures should be permitted, tolerated, supported? There is a substantial area of consensus. But there is also a zone of conflict, not yet settled, which raises some serious questions. The area of consensus, which was defined basically in the 1920's, has been expanded in the 1960's and 1970's: Any ethnic or religious community is free to maintain its own schools, with a minimum of public regulation, and to teach in them language, culture, religion. It is free to make these all-days schools, substituting for the public schools - but if it does so it gets no direct (or almost no direct) support from taxes. It is free to limit these schools to supplementary schools, established to provide only a few hours of instruction a day. This is still the 1920's compromise. For more than 20 years, those private schools that provide a full curriculum as an alternative to the public schools, overwhelmingly Catholic, and educating some 10 per cent of American children, have tried to find some way to get public support to assist them in their onerous task: In hardly any other
30 country, I believe, do so many people simultaneously pay taxes for public schools, and maintain private schools for their children at own expense. Despite the fact that every Presidential aspirant assures Catholic voters that some way will be found to do this, no basic relief has been provided. Today, there is a fairly strong movement for providing relief through "education vouchers" or through a Federal tax deduction for private school tuition. Such a proposal almost made it through Congress a few years ago. Such a proposal would assist al those who, for one reason or another, want to leave the public schools. Some want to leave them because they are, in some places, predominantly black. More want to leave them, I believe, because their own distinctive religious and moral traditions are untaught, ignored, and indeed positively transgressed in the public schools. But the more significant battle occurs over what is happening in the public schools. It is already established that private schools may teach religion, or culture, or language. But what may, or must, the public school teach in response to multi-ethnic and multi-lingual diversity? Almost everyone would agree that in a country of mass immigration - and recall that 1.500.000 legal immigrants entered the United States in the last two years, almost all speaking foreign languages - there is some practical need, in the school, in social services, in government services, to deal with people in the language they know. People may disagree as to just how much practical assistance students and immigrants need, but that is really not the issue. The issue, to use a term now common in the United States, is "maintenance". Is bilingual education in the schools to be "transitional", until students learn English? Or is it to be "maintenance" - insuring, as best schools can, that they maintain fluency in their native language and and attachment to their native cultures? Congress and other legislatures think, when they facilitate or assist bilingual education, they are prescribing "transitional" assistance. But almost inevitably, those who carry out such laws, and conduct such programs, are drawn from the communities involved, and from those elements most concerned about language and culture, and they turn these programs, to the extent they can, into "maintenance" programs. Sometimes they get assistance from judges, who also think they are assisting transition - but in the debate before them as to how much transitional assistance is needed, they are often converted by those who insist on so much that in effect the transition is never completed. Is this dispute, and the fears which have given rise to it, exaggerated? One side in the dispute warns against the dangers of bilingualism and biculturalism, says, "Look at Canada", or Belgium, presents as a bad example and tries to suggest that the separatism of Quebec or the division of Belgians may some day be matched by an equally troubling separatism in our Southwest. That may seem an outlandish and highly exaggerated parallel. But let me at least try to explain why such a parallel disturbs many Americans. Our neighbour Mexico has 70 million people, and is rapidly growing. Our Spanish-speaking population, dominantly Mexican, is also rapidly growing - through immigration, legal and illegal, through natural increase, at a rate higher than any sub-group of the American population. At one of our recent Congressional investigations into immigration problems, a demographer testified that by the end of the century there would be 140 million Mexicans, and half of them would be living North of the present border. Or, as one advocate of bilingual
31
education, a Mexican-American, said at a conference: "We didn't move, the border moved". Now one must contrast these developments with the past as we have known it and celebrated it in the United States. This is a past in which immigrants from the most varied backgrounds were forged into a single nation, speaking a common language, and able to operate in the international sphere with only internal divisiveness caused by the multiplicity of our origins. One must add another feature: The United States, because of its size and power, is fated to play a large role in international affairs. Diverse as it is, this reality alone may make it more essential that some degree of commonness in orientation exist than is the case, for, for example, a smaller country, without the same international role. At the same time, we are a nation that has greatly expanded individual and group rights, through law and even more significantly judicial decree and interpretation since the 1960'S. American citizens, for example, by law cannot be tested for literacy or for the capacity to speak English before they vote. (They must still known English to become citizens; but the child born on American soil in the Southwest, of Mexican parents, is a citizen, with the right to be educated in his own language, and to vote eventually in an election in which all materials are translated for him and those similarly situated into Spanish.) A bilingual country is no tragedy, no disaster, and we all wish indeed we were as fortunate as Switzerland, with three languages living in harmony. But a country that has for hundreds of years been engaged in manufacturing a common language, a common identity, a common loyalty, out of the most diverse strands, now fears it is becoming bilingual country, not out of any public decision that this would be good for America, or that that is the way we should go, but through forces, some of which are not in the control of any American branch of government (immigration), and some of which are encouraged by a branch of government (the courts) that is not under popular control and that is increasingly powerful and independent. Much of the discussion of bilingualism tries to evade these complexities of history, demography, and geography. Who can argue with the charge that everyone of sense in the United States makes that we are too monolingual, that we are incompetent in foreign languages, and that - as Joshua Fishman has argued - we have squandered the enormous resources given to us by our national diversity by failing to support the native tongues of our people? But this is to emphasize only the potential positive effects of a vigorous bilingual policy, which certainly are there. It would be wonderful ifAmericans could finally do business in languages other than English. But there are less benign projections of the effect of a vigorous bilingual policy, and I have suggested some, without trying to define what is at present anything more than an unspecified discomfort. There is also a practical issue in the debate, one that will be familiar to The Netherlands. How will our foreign-speaking elements best prosper in the United States? In the past, immigrants from Europe and Asia have learned English, and become, economically, politically, socially, at one with the rest of the population. Some groups may have done better, some worse, but none feel they have been radically excluded from American life because of immigrant origin. What will be the effect of vigorous
32 efforts to maintain competence in Spanish in the schools, particularly with Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, most of whom are from rural and working class backgrounds? Will it be facility in two languages, as the more romantic exponents of bilingual education hope? Or will it be an incapacity in English that limits advancement in education and jobs? And if this is the effect of an education which tries hard to maintain Spanish, if it is added to the fact that this population will rise to great numbers, will be concentrated in the states adjacent to Mexico . . . Once again it is not necessary to spell out the concern. No one has. But it is inevitable it should be there. Aside from the concern with the large and growing Spanish-language groups, there is no problem in the United States. The fact that we now have large new communities of Vietnamese, of Koreans, and Filipinos, that they are to some extent to be educated in their own language in the public schools, or that we now find the languages and cultures of the older immigrant groups from Europe coming into the public schools under the new liberal dispensation, is cause for concern nowhere. I believe rather that there is in the United States a glorying in the variety of the new immigration, a relaxed appreciation of the old. There is no narrow insistence that immigrant culture and language be eliminated. Quite the contrary, we see more of it in the public schools than we ever have. Nor is there any great fear of encapsulated communities. We have enough experience of immigrant groups to know that in time they emerge from their communities, and to know that they are as eager to learn English and become part of this country economically and politically. Indeed, the real question is whether anything much will be left of language and culture by the third generation. But we have another problem, too, a political one, now no bigger than a man's hand on the horizon, that must concern us, and I have tried to explain why it does.
5 Language, ethnicity, ideology, and education1 JAMES A. BANKS
Language Diversity in a Commonwealth Language diversity creates problems in a nation-state when languages that have unequal status are spoken by groups that are stratified by variables such as race, social class, and ethnicity. In such a nation-state, specific languages and dialects are identified with groups that have differential amounts of status, prestige, and influence. Dialects and languages that are spoken by groups with the most power and influence are regarded as prestigious and standard; those that are spoken by groups with less power and influence are evaluated negatively and classified as nonstandard. The languages and dialects spoken by the most powerful and influential groups within a nation usually become the official language or languages of the commonwealth. Groups that have not mastered the standard national language or languages usually have low economic and social status and a shared feeling of victimization. These groups are frequently excluded from full participation in the body polity. Their structural exclusion and sense of language inferiority augment their sense of peoplehood, group identity, solidarity, and linguistic exclusiveness. The shared feeling of exclusion, culture, and sense of peoplehood of ethnolinguistic groups in pluralistic democracies ofter serves as a basis for political organization and mobilization. Consequently, these factors and a common language, combined with a sense of hope provided by groups with policital power, often give birth to ethnic revitalization movements in democratic nation-states. We witnessed a series of ethnic revitalizatian movements in Western democratic nations in the 1960s and 1970s (Glazer & Moynihan, 1975). These movements started with Blacks in the United States and spread to other American ethnic groups. They later spread to other Western democracies with diverse ethnic populations, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The ethnic revitalization movements of the 1960s and 1970s pushed for social and economic equality and for the structural inclusion of ethnic groups within their various nation-states. However, these movements also had important cultural components. Excluded ethnic groups called for the legitimization of their ethnic cultures that had in the past often been rejected and evaluated negatively by both themselves and the 1. The ideal-type conceptualization presented in the first part of this paper is adapted from Chapter 5 of my book, Multiethnic education: Theory andpractice. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1981.1 am deeply grateful to two of my colleagues, Professor James A. Vasquez and Cherry A. Banks, writer and consultant, for their helpful reactions to an earlier draft of this paper
34 dominant groups within their societies. They also demanded the legitimization of their primordial languages and dialects. They often saw the legitimization of their languages and dialects as an essential requisite for cultural and psychological liberation. In the United States, the demand for language legitimization was tied closely to the push for educational equality for ethnic minority and ethnolinguistic groups. A number of ethnic groups in the United States, especially the Hispanic groups, argued that their children were not achieving well in the common schools largely because the schools rejected their languages and cultures. Many Hispanic social activists and educators argued that Hispanic youths would be able to compete successfully with Anglo-American students if the school taught them in their native languages and respected their cultures (Pablano, 1973).
Ideological Responses to the Ethnic Revitalization
Movements
The schools in various nations implemented a wide variety of courses and programs to respond to the demands by ethnic groups for educational equality and the legitimization of their cultures and languages (Banks, 1978; Bullivant, 1981; Lynch, 1981; Taylor, 1981; Verma & Bagley, 1975). In the United States, millions of dollars have been spent on bilingual educational programs since 1974. Bilingual education became more widespread in the United States after it received several legal mandates in the courts and legislative support from the United States Congress. However, the legal and congressional sanctions of bilingual education in the United States have been primarily for transitional rather than for maintenance programs. In transitional programs, the child's mother tongue language is used for instruction until the child can function adequately in the national language. In maintenance programs, the goal is to maintain students' mother tongue languages as well as to teach them the national language. Instruction is given in both the children's first languages and in their national languages (Fishman, 1973). When bilingual education re-emerged as a national issue in the United States in the 1960s - its history dates back to the 1800s - (Fishman, 1966), it became highly controversial and triggered heated debates between those who favor and those who oppose it (Epstein, 1977). Bilingual education has also stimulated acid debates in other Western nations (Porter, 1975). At least two ideological positions are evident in most theoretical and research discussions of bilingual education. They can be called the cultural pluralist and the assimilationist positions (Banks, 1981). The ideological positions I am describing are ideal-types in the Weberian sense (Weber, 1946, pp. 323 f). The views of no particular writer or theorist can be accurately described by either of the two major positions in their ideal forms. However, various views on bilingual education can be roughly classified using a continuum that has the two ideologies, in their ideal forms, at the extreme ends. In this paper, I will describe the arguments, assumptions, and goals of the cultural pluralist and the assimilationist, and indicate why neither of these ideological positions, in their idealized forms, is appropriate to guide educational policy related to languages in ethnically pluralistic, democratic nations. I will then propose and describe an
35 alternative conception - the multiethnic ideology - and indicate why I think it should guide educational policy related to languages in culturally pluralistic democracies. The final part of this paper describes reforms that are needed in schools to enable them to realize the goals of multilingual and multiethnic education in pluralistic democratic societies. The Pluralist Response Cultural pluralists developed the intellectual arguments to support the basic assumptions and goals of the ethnic revitalization movements of the 1960s and 1970s (Acufla, 1972; Carmichael and Hamilton, 1967). Pluralist commentary both stimulated and resulted from the ethnic revitalization movements. The pluralist argues that each ethnic group champions its economic and political interests in a culturally diverse, democratic society. Consequently, it is extremely important for individuals to develop commitments to their ethnic groups so that they can participate in political actions of the group that seek justice and equality. The energies and skill of each member of an ethnic group are needed to help in the group's liberation struggle. Thus, the pluralist stresses the rights of the ethnic group over the rights of the individual. The pluralist also assumes that an ethnic group can attain inclusion and full participation within a society only when it can bargain from a powerful position and when it has 'closed ranks' within. The pluralist believes that because of the importance of the ethnic group in the social and psychological development of the individual, and because of the need to increase equity for ethnic youths, public institutions such as schools should actively promote the interests, cultures, and languages of ethnolinguistic groups (Sizemore, 1973). Students, contends the pluralist, have a right to an education that respects and promotes their cultural heritages and must have an education that reflects their cultural heritages in order to attain educational equity (Dickeman, 1973)- Greenbaum (1974, p. 411) argues that American society, including the schools, eradicated the cultures and languages of immigrant groups by using shame and hope: The history of assimilation in American suggests two overarching reasons why so many immigrants learned so fast, asked so few questions, and rose so rapidly during the first two decades of this century. Most important is the fact that the main fuel for the American melting pot was shame. The immigrants were best instructed in how to repulse themselves; millions of people were taught to be ashamed of their own faces, their family names, their parents and grandparents, and their class patterns, histories, and life outlooks. This shame had incredible power to make us learn, especially when coupled with hope, the other main energy source for the melting pot-hope about becoming modern, about being secure, about escaping the wars and depressions of the old country, and about being equal with the old Americans.
36 The Assimilationist Response Assimilationists and ardent nationalists often respond with surprise, alarm, and disappointment to the demands by ethnic groups for the teaching of their languages and cultures in the schools. This reaction grows out of their beliefs about the role of ethnicity in a modernized society and their genuine concern for national unity (Roeming, 1971). Assimilationists believe that ethnicity and modernity are contradictory forces and that ethnicity and ethnic attachments are fleeting and temporary within an increasingly modernized world (Porter, 1975). Ethnicity, argues the assimilationist, wanes or disappears under the impact of modernization and industrialization. The assimilationist sees the modernized nation-state as being universalistic rather than characterized by strong ethnic allegiances, tradition, and ethnic cultural characteristics (Patterson, 1977). The assimilationist assumes that the most effective way to reduce strong ethnic boundaries, primordial attachments, and ethnic affiliations within a nation-state is to provide structurally excluded ethnic and ethnolinguistic groups with opportunities to experience equality in the nation's social, economic, and political institutions. As they begin to participate more fully in the universalistic or mainstream society and its institutions, argues the assimilationist, lower-status ethnolinguistic groups will focus less on particularistic cultural concerns and more on national issues and priorities. When ethnic groups experience equality, suggests the assimilationist, ethnicity and primordial attachments will die of their own weight. Assimilationists see the continuing expressions and existence of ethnicity within modernized democratic nation-states as a 'pathological condition' (Apter, 1977). Ethnic affiliations and cultures still exist in modernized societies, argues the assimilationist, because political and economic equality for ethnic groups such as the Blacks in the United States, the Indians in Canada, and the West Indians in the United Kingdom, have been only partially attained. Thus, the assimilationist ideal is viable and possible but has yet to be completely realized. This will happen when there is an end to inequality and structural exclusion of ethnic groups, such as Afro-Americans and Canadian Indians. When ethnic groups are included in the structure of society and are able to experience political and economic mobility, ethnicity and the quest for the legitimization of ethnic languages and dialects will - for all important purposes - disappear. Some symbolic forms of ethnicity might remain, such as St. Patrick's Day and Chinese New Year, but ethnicity will not be an important social, cultural, or political force in modern democratic nations. Social class will become the primary and most important group affiliation for individuals. This is the assimilationist's argument and hope. Porter writes (p. 302 and 303): Where the status of citizenship can be acquired, as in the United States and Canada, social mobility and achievement almost imply a commitment to the values of modernism and a movement away from the ethnic community with each succeeding generation... the saliency of ethnic differences is a retreat from the liberal notions of the unity of mankind. Assimilationists are deeply concerned that if a state promotes ethnic attachments,
37 cultural characteristics, and ethnic languages and dialects, the problems of low-status ethnolinguistic groups will be exacerbated rather than reduced. By spending valuable time and effort studying their mother tongue languages, students will not become highly competent in the national language. Consequently, they will be less able to compete in the common national culture, and will become more stigmatized and isolated. If the state promotes language diversity, it will also increase tensions among ethnic groups, augment ethnic polarization, and decrease national unity and cohesion (Thernstrom, 1980). Assimilationists also believe that there is no convincing research evidence which indicates that when ethnolinguistic groups become more proficient in their first languages they achieve better in school. The inconclusive nature of much research on bilingual education makes this argument possible (Paulston, 1978). In fact, they believe the contrary is true - that making ethnolinguistic students more competent in their primordial languages will have adverse affects on their success in the shared national culture. They will function less well in school and on jobs. Assimilationists believe that the state should promote allegiance to the overarching idealized values of the nationstate and competency in the national language or languages. If ethnic groups want their children to learn their primordial languages and dialects, this should be done by private groups for themselves and not by public institutions such as schools. We should make an important distinction between the responsibilities of public institutions such as schools and the responsibilities of private agencies such as ethnic institutions. The issue of teaching ethnic languages and dialects is a private and not a public issue (Rodriguez, 1982). A primary responsibility of the state is to help individuals become competent in the language and institutions of the national culture. Whether individuals want to be ethnic and speak ethnic languages and dialects should be a private decision made by individuals and their families and communities. The state should neither support nor discourage attachments to ethnic languages and dialects. It should remain neutral on the issue of ethnic cultures and languages.
The Pluralist Ideology: A Critique Both the pluralists and the assimilationists make some useful assumptions and set forth arguments that policy makers and curriculum specialists need to consider seriously when they revise educational policy and the school curriculum. However, neither ideology, in its ideal form, is sufficient to guide the revision of the curriculum in the common schools of Western democratic nations. The pluralist ideology is useful because it informs us about the importance of ethnicity within various nations and the exent to which an individual's ethnic group determines his or her life chances in some societies. The assumptions that the pluralist makes about the nature of ethnic minority cultures (Baratz & Shuy, 1969), the learning styles of ethnic youths (Cole & Bruner, 1971), and the importance of ethnic identity to many ethnic youths are also useful to the educator (Ramirez & Castañeda, 1974). However, strong pluralists exaggerate the extent and importance of ethnicity within
38 modernized societies and fail to give adequate attention to the need to help ethnic youths develop a strong commitment to the overarching goals and idealized values of the nation-state and the compentencies and skills needed to function effectively within the shared national culture. Pluralists often fail to give adequate attention to the fact that most members of ethnic groups in a modernized society participate in a wider and more universalistic culture than those in which they have their primary group attachments. Thus the pluralist appears unwilling to prepare youths to cope adequately with the real world beyond the ethnic community. The cultural pluralist has also not clarified, in any meaningful way, the kind of relationship that is possible in a commonwealth between antagonistic and competing ethnic groups which have different allegiances and conflicting goals and commitments. In other words, the pluralist has not adequately conceptualized how a strongly pluralistic nation will maintain an essential degree of societal cohesion and help competing ethnic groups to develop commitments to national unity and goals. Pluralists such as Greenbaum (1974) often discuss the extent to which Americanization and assimilationist efforts eroded the cultures of ethnic and immigrant groups. However, they usually devote little attention to the substantial degree to which opportunities in American society eroded ethnic cultures and the extent to which immigrant groups voluntarily abandoned ethnic traits in order to enjoy the full benefits and opportunities in America. The United States allowed almost all of its immigrants, regardless of the ethnic group or nation from which they came, to become full Americans and to attain an American identity merely by making a commitment to American political ideals such as liberty, equality, and justice. The unique opportunity for citizenship in the United States allowed almost any free, white individual to become an American citizen. It also allowed white males to fully participate in the civic life of the nation. In addition to allowing most immigrants to easily acquire an American identity, the mass-culture and industrialization in the United States gave immigrants unprecendented opportunities to experience social and economic mobility. The immigrants often had to abandon their ethnic characteristics in order to fully participate in America's industrialized society and mass culture. Most immigrants found the attractiveness of American institutions and economic opportunities irresistible and forsook many if not most of their ethnic characteristics and traditions. Writes Glazer(1981, pp. 61-62), 'Most [immigrants] had come to this country not to maintain a foreign language and culture but with the intention, in the days when the trip to the United States was long and expensive, to become Americanized as fast as possible, and this meant English language and American culture'. However, the strong appeal of Americanization and American society to the immi grants does not tell the full story of ethnicity in the United States. Even among white ethnic groups, some ethnic vestiges remain after more than three or four generations. De-ethnization, even under the powerfull impact of the American Dream, has not been total or complete. Ethnicity among non-White ethnic groups in the United States remains tenacious for many complex reasons, including the fact that, historically, they were not allowed to become full Americans simply by endorsing American Creed values. However, this has become increasingly possible through the decades.
39 The Assimilatinist Ideology: A Critique As Apter (1977) preceptively states, the assimilationist vision and ideal - which Gordon (1975) calls the 'liberal expectancy' - is not so much wrong as it is an incomplete and inadequate explanation of ethnic realities in modernized, pluralistic, and democratic nation-states. Writes Apter (p. 60): Clearly [ modernizing] historical forces are at work. There is a widening of universalistic and pluralistic beliefs. However, primordialism is at work too. It pops up where we least expect it, in Scotland, Wales, and Quebec, and among the Basques, Catalans, and Bretons. Old primordialisms can fade away and yet revive. The reasons why are puzzling to pluralists and liberals, who have not expected it or have considered it to be of passing significance. A central fallacy of the assimilationist position (the liberal expectancy) is the assumption that when the 'high culture' of modernization develops within a nation-state, primordial and ethnic affiliations disappear and are no longer a 'problem' for mainstream political leaders and modernizers. States Apter (1977, p. 61), 'The enlightenment myth on which the assimilationist fallacy rests is that modern history is moving in a single direction away from provincial and local attachments and toward a greater common conscienceness of the world.' However, as the ethnic revitalization movements of the 1960s and 1970s made dramatically and sometimes poignantly clear, ethnic attachments and identifications can become cogent forces within a modernized democratic society when particular political, social, and economic events develop. The ethnic revitalization movements of the 1960s and 1970s caught mainstream social scientists in the United States almost completely by surprise and without the conceptual frameworks to either understand or adequately interpret these events. When they emerged, most established American social scientists still accepted some variation of Robert E. Park's theory of assimilation. Parks believed that race and ethnic relations proceed through four inevitable stages: Contact, conflict, accomodation, and assimilation (Park, 1950). When the Black civil rights movement of the 1960s and the consequent Black Power movement emerged in the United States, it was clear that Park's conceptualization inadequately explained ethnic relations in modernized democratic societies.
The Multiethnic Ideology Since neither the cultural pluralist nor the assimilationist ideology can adequately quide school reform in democratic pluralistic nations, we need a different ideology which reflects both but yet avoids their extremes. We also need an ideology that is more consistent with the realities in pluralistic democratic societies. We might call this ideology the multiethnic ideology (Banks, 1981). This ideology assumes that ethnic attachments and assimilation coexist within modernized and modernizing nation-states for a number of complex reasons, some of
40 which social scientists do not fully understand. They coexist in pait because ofwhat the assimilationist calls the 'pathological condition,' i.e., ethnic groups such as French Canadians and British West Indians maintain strong attachments to their ethnic groups, cultures, and languages, in part because they have been excluded from full participation in their nations' social, economic, and political institutions. However, members of these ethnic groups, as well as many members of ethnic groups such as Polish Americans and Italian Americans, maintain ethnic affiliations and ethnic attachments for more fundamental psychological and sociological reasons. It helps them to fulfill some basic psychological and sociological needs which the 'thin' culture of modernization leaves starving. Apter (1977, p. 75) comments insightfully on this point: Primordialism is a response to the thinning out of enlightenment culture, the deterioration of which is a part of the process of democratization and pluralizat i o n . . . . Assimilation itself then vitiates the enlightenment culture. As it does, it leaves what might be called a primordial space, a space people try to fill when they believe they have lost something fundamental and try to create it. Ethnic individuals also hold onto their ethnic attachments, cultures, and languages because they help them to satisfy communal and personal needs. Ethnic group membership provides individuals with a bond that enables them to consider themselves members of a group that is distinct and unique from other groups (Enloe, 1973, p. 15). Ethnic group members share a culture that binds them together. This shared culture equips individuals with a sense of belonging. Within a complex and impersonal modernized society, ethnic group identification and membership provide individuals with a 'familiar and reassuring anchor in a climate of turbulance and uncertainty' (Enloe, p. 15). Ethnic group membership also provides individuals with a foundation for self-definition, a sense of belonging, of shared traditions, and a sense of interdependence of fate. Berger and Neuhaus (1977) argue that mediating structures, such as the family, neighborhood, and community, need to be strengthened in order to help individuals to function more effectively in the national civic culture. They define mediating structures as those 'institutions standing between the individual in his private life and the large institutions of public life' (p. 2). While they feel that public policy should recognize, respect, and empower mediating structures, they argue that public institutions such as schools often alienate individuals from their ethnic communities and teach them 'concept for their families and ultimately self-contempt.' Berger and Newhaus believe that individuals often find public institutions alienating. They write (pp. 2 and 7): For the individual in modern society, life is an ongoing migration between these two spheres, public and private. The megastructures are typically alienating, that is, they are not helpful in providing meaning and identity for individual e x i s t e n c e . . . . One of the most debilitating results of modernization is a feeling of powerlessness in the face of institutions controlled by those whom we do not know and those values we often do not share.
41 The Multiethnic Ideology: Implications for Language
Education
To help ethnolinguistic youths to attain structural inclusion and to develop clarified, reflective, and positive identifications and commitments to the nation-state, the school itself should reflect cultural democracy and equality. The school should at least legitimize the concept of language diversity and respect as well as understand the students' mother tongue dialects and languages. In the words of Greenbaum, the school should give students hope but not teach them to be ashamed of their first languages and dialects. Schools in pluralistic democracies should also help all students - and not just ethnolinguistic minorities - to gain competencies in several languages. All students should develop a high level of competency in the nation's standard language or languages. In many situations it is also desirable and feasible for the school to support and improve the ability of students to communicate in their first languages or dialects. This is the case when the community has a strong interest in perpetuating the child's first language, when that language will help the student to function successfully in the common national culture and in the world community, and when the school has the resources to give instruction in the student's home language or dialect. There are pragmatic, compensatory, and 'enlightenment' reasons for using Spanish as a medium of instruction in American schools. Spanish is not only the national language of many nations in the Americas, it is also a language that many American Hispanic communities wish to maintain and perpetuate. It will help American students to function more successfully in a world context. The ability to speak Spanish has high practical utility in American Hispanic communities and in the world community. The perpetuation of Spanish in American schools also helps Spanish-speaking students to develop pride because their language and culture are legitimized by the schools. New cultural worlds also open for American students who become literate in Spanish. Situations that involve ethnic languages and dialects such as Black English (Glazer, 1981), and the languages and dialects of many small American Indian and Eskimo tribes (St. Clair & Leap, 1982), pose problems for public institutions, such as schools, that are much more difficult to resolve than the issue of Spanish-language instruction in American schools. Public institutions such as state-supported schools should definitely understand and respect these languages and dialects. Teachers should also be acutely sensitive to them and thoroughly understand how they influence the way that ethnolinguistic students think, respond, and learn (Smitherman, 1977). It is exceedingly difficult to formulate a highly specific national policy regarding these kinds of languages and dialects, in part because they are often controversial within ethnic communities. A small American intelligensia (Baratz & Shuy, 1969; Smitherman, 1981) believe that the school should not only respect, understand, and legitimize Black English, but that Black English should become part of the language of instruction, especially in primary grade reading. One of the goals of these scholars is to acquire equal status for Black English in the national American culture (Dilliard, 1972). However, many Blacks believe that Black English is a private issue and concern and that the school's primary responsibility is to teach Black students standard English (Rowan, 1979). About 200 Indian languages are currently spoken in the United States.
42 More than half of them are spoken by less than 1,000 individuals (Harris & Levey, 1975). Some Indian leaders and educators feel strongly that their tribal languages should be fostered by the schools (St. Clair & Leap, 1982). However, many Indian community people have serious questions about how much effort and how many resources should be expended teaching their students tribal languages that have limited public utility beyond their ethnic communities. Schools in American Indian communities must also resolve difficult questions about which Indian language, or which dialect of a particular language, should be the language of instruction when Indians from many tribes and dialect groups are students within the same school. This is often the case. Intertribal conflict is sometimes increased when, out of necessity, educators must select a particular tribal language or dialect over others for instruction. It is very difficult to resolve or to formulate a specific national policy for dealing with questions such as those related to the teaching of Black English and Indian tribal languages and dialects in the schools. The diversity of histories, communities, and the unique needs, experiences, and aspirations of ethnolinguistic groups make the establishment and implementation of a tight national policy for resolving these problems unfeasible and undesirable. However, when dealing with these kinds of difficult language problems and issues, the school (to reflect the multiethnic ideology) should be guided by a policy of cultural democracy. It should respect the rights of the community, consider the goals of the community regarding language maintenance, consider its resources, and make the best decision that reflects the interests of the students, the community, and the nation. In shaping these kinds of difficult language policies, a primary goal should be to respect the cultural integrity of all language and cultural groups, but also to make sure that all students gain the competencies, including the language skills, needed to function effectively in the national civic culture. Another goal should be to help all students acquire the skills, attitudes, and abilities needed to function successfully in the international community. When balancing all of these factors, the school may adopt and implement a language policy that reflects cultural democracy but that is also rooted in the reality of limited resources and the aspirations of thè community. Such a policy may result in the school respecting the legitimacy of a particular language or dialect but not providing instruction in it, either because of limited human resources and/or because the maintenance of the mother tongue is not an important goal of the ethnic community. Some school districts in the United states, for example, have at least 10 to 20 language groups within them. These districts often find that it is neither practical nor feasible to provide instruction in each of these languages and that some ethnic communities do not have maintenance of their mother tongues as major goals.
Multilingual Education for Ethnolinguistic Students Language, culture, and identity are tightly bound. Language is an important means of transmitting culture from adult to child within any culture. Many of the norms, values, and other characteristics of a culture are reflected in its language and dialects. Language
43 is also an important vehicle that helps ethnic students to maintain commitments and attachments to their cultural groups and their ethnic identifications (O'Bryan, Reitz, & Kuplowska, 1976). It is important for many, but not all, students to maintain their ethnic identifications and attachments for psychological and sociological reasons. Students from all racial and ethnic groups should be given the option to retain the skills in their home languages or dialects and be required to learn to speak other languages. However, educators should keep in mind that students are quite capable of becoming multidialectic and multilingual. Thus, to help students learn to speak other languages or dialects does not require that educators alienate them from their first languages or dialects as has traditionally been done in some nations. If students acquire multilingual skills and abilities, they will be better able to function within their nations and in the world. At least two national educational organizations in the United States have issued position statements which support students' rights to their own languages and dialects. The National Council of Teachers of English (1974) adopted a resolution that affirms 'students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language - the dialects of their [culture] or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style.' In a position statement issued in 1977, the National Council for the Social Studies (Banks et al., 1977, p. 39) supports a multiethnic curriculum that recognizes 'the reality of language diversity and promotes the attitude that all languages and dialects are valid communication systems among some groups and for some purposes.'
Multilingual Education for Majority Language Students The language ethnocentricism and language poverty often perpetuated by schools greatly harm both majority group and language minority students. Language majority students learn many inaccurate notions about language and communication in the schools and often acquire ethnocentric linguistic attitudes. A pervasive misconception perpetuated by many schools, which is often internalized by students, is the idea that the school versions of languages are the only valid or legitimate forms of communication. All students should be helped to understand that there is a wide variety of languages and dialects spoken in pluralistic nations which are valid and functional within particular cultural and social contexts. Students should learn that languages and dialects of languages that are functional and appropriate within some cultural contexts are inappropriate and dysfunctional within others. Helping language majority students to understand and appreciate the tremendous language diversity that exists in pluralistic societies will help them to become more linguistically literate, more able to function within diverse cultural settings (both within their own and other nations), and better able to understand and appreciate their own unique cultural and linguistic characteristics. Wrote Kluckhohn (1965, p. 19),' [Cultural studies] holds up a great mirror to man and lets him look at himself in his infinite variety.'
44 Language Diversity and the Commonwealth Assimilationists and nationalists feel strongly, and justly so, that a nation must have a national language or languages in which all its citizens are competent. This is necessary for all citizens to fully participate in the civic life of the nation, to maintain national solidarity and cohesion, and to develop needed consensus on national policy and goals. However, a nation can have a common language in which all of its citizens are competent as well as other languages which are spoken by only some of its citizens. Language diversity within a nation need not necessarily create problems. In fact, it can be a tremendous benefit to a nation if it is to function successfully in our highly interdependent world society of the present and future. Multilingualism in a commonwealth creates problems when groups that speak minority languages are structurally excluded from full participation in the nation's social, economic, and political institutions. Problems may also arise in multilingual nations when few members of the majority language group learn to speak the minority languages, evaluate them negatively, and become highly suspicious of them. When this situation occurs, majority language groups, that have the power to shape public and educational policies, often take steps to eliminate the minority languages from public institutions such as the schools and courts. During the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, it was not uncommon for schools in the Southwestern states, in which many of the students were native Spanish speakers, to have 'No Spanish' rules. Mexican-American students who were 'caught' speaking Spanish in the classroom or on the school playgrounds were sometimes punished (Carter, 1970). Spanish would have been more accepted in the Southwest during the 1950s and 1960S if a national policy had existed to increase the number of majority group Americans who spoke Spanish. If such a policy had existed and had been successfully implemented, Anglo-Americans may have developed more positive attitudes toward the Spanish language. It is in the best interest of a nation-state to preserve some of its language diversity because we live in a highly independent world society in which each nation must trade with and have many other kinds of relationships with other nations that have different national languages. Only languages within a nation that have international utility can be preserved for this purpose. Language diversity within a society reduces ethnocentricism and also helps a nation to deal more successfully with others. National policies that foster language diversity may promote national attachments and identifications among ethnolinguistic groups if these groups believe that the policies help to legitimize their languages and cultures. To successfully set and implement a national policy of language diversity, however, a nation must also set as a high national priority the changing of social and economic conditions that will enable language minority groups to become full participants in its social, economic, and political institutions. A nation that wishes to successfully implement a policy of language diversity must also take vigorous steps to help all of its citizens, especially members of language majority groups, to develop positive attitudes toward minority group languages, to view them as legitimate communication systems, and to learn to speak them. As long as language minority groups remain structurally excluded from the important institutions within a society, and most members of the
45 dominant language groups remain suspicious and largely ignorant of minority group languages, fostering language diversity as a national policy might exacerbate rather than reduce ethnic conflict and polarization. If only members of language minority groups become bilingual, then the future of the minority languages is bleak. In this case, bilingual education is likely to facilitate the erosion - rather than the maintenance - of the minority languages. This is why I believe strongly that bilingual and multilingual school programs should be for «//students in the nation, and not just for language minority students, and that a major justification for teaching several languages in the schools should be philosophical and pragmatic, not compensatory. A major philosophical and pragmatic goal of multilingual education is to help all students to acquire the cross-cultural skills, attitudes, and abilities that all citizens need to help the nation survive in a highly interdependent world society. These skills and abilities include literacy in several languages. Another important goal of multilingual education is compensatory, i.e., to facilitate the academic and emotional growth of language minority students.
Language Diversity and Multiethnic Education Multilingual education will be neither the national catastrophe that many strong assimilationists envision, nor will it be an educational panacea as many ardent pluralists claim. To have major impact, multilingual education must take place within the context of multiethnic education, which involves changing the total school environment so that it reflects the cultures and lifestyles of students from diverse cultural, ethnic, and language groups. Multiethnic education is a process that involves reforming the total school environment so that students from diverse ethnic, social class, and language groups experience educational equity (Banks, 1981). Schools in the United States that teach Spanish but violate the learning styles, values, and norms of Hispanic students are not likely to foster the maximum academic and emotional growth of Hispanic students. Schools that teach Spanish but do not help students to develop a deeper understanding of Hispanic cultures and more positive attitudes toward them do little to increase students' cross-cultural abilities and attitudes. Language is an integral part of culture; a language cannot be fully understood without studying the culture in which it is embedded. It is necessary but clearly insufficient for the school to legitimize a range of languages and dialects and use them as mediums of instruction. Language is only one of the important variables that needs attention in educational reform in order to help all students to develop cross-cultural skills and attitudes and to increase educational equity for language-minority students. We oversell bilingual and multicultural education when we state or imply, as was often done in the United States in the 1970s, that language is the major impediment to the academic success of language-minority students and that if we teach these students in their home languages and the school respects their languages, most of their educational problems will disappear. I do not believe this is the case. Language is only one of the important educational problems of most language-minorities. Along with improving the
46 language education of ethnolinguistic groups, we must reform the total school environment, and improve their social, economic, and political conditions. It is easy to oversell the benefits of multilingual education as well as any other kind of educational reform. Schools are probably more influential than the revisionists and many other researchers claim. Nevertheless, the 'ineffectiveness of school' theorists such as Jencks et al. (Jencks, 1972) should give us serious pause when educators make extravagant claims about what educational reforms can accomplish. Schools are more effective in the lives of children then Jencks et al. argue, but they are not nearly as influential as the strong assimilationists and ardent pluralists believe. I do not think that schools, without significant support from other major social, economic, and political institutions, can bring about equity, high levels of cross-cultural competency, and cultural democracy in a commonwealth. However, I strongly believe that schools can become more culturally democratic institutions themselves, and can play an important role in legitimizing the cultures and languages of ethnolinguistic students. I also believe, and there is some research to support this belief, that the school can help students to develop more democratic attitudes toward ethnolinguistic groups and more positive attitudes and perceptions of language diversity (Lambert, 1975). These are important, but limited and realistic, goals for schools in pluralistic democracies.
Multiethnic Education: Reforming the Total School Environment I have suggested that multilingual education, to be effective, must take place within the context of multiethnic education - which involves reforming the total school environment to make it more consistent with the cultural and language diversity within a society; which promotes equity for all students; and which helps all students to develop important cross-cultural skills, attitudes, and abilities. The following variables of the school must be reformed in order for multilingual education to occur within the context of multiethnic education. The formalized curriculum and course of study. The school should teach about and reflect the cultures in which a variety of languages spoken by a nation's citizens are embedded. To study languages without studying the cultures in which they are embedded will not help students to develop cross-cultural competency and literacy. Teacher attitudes and expectations. Studies byRist(1970), Gay(1974), Leacock(1969), and others have documented the negative attitudes and interactions that teachers often have with lower socio-economic and ethnic minority students. Teachers must exemplify more democratic attitudes and behavior toward minority youths in order for these students to experience cultural democracy and equity in the nation's schools. The school culture and the hidden curriculum. The school has a culture that reflects particular values, norms, and cultural expressions. The school culture frequently promotes ethnocentric values, languages, and attitudes; and rejects those of ethnic students.
47 Many of the school's values and norms are conveyed in its latent or hidden curriculum, which has been defined as the curriculum that no teacher explicity teaches but that all students learn. Learning styles and motivational systems Research suggests that ethnic minority and mainstream youths often differ in their cognitive styles (Cole & Bruner, 1972). Ramirez and Castañeda (1974) have found that Mexican-American youths tend to be more field-sensitive than field-independent in their cognitive styles. Anglo-American students tend to be more field-independent. Field-independent students are more often preferred by teachers and tend to get higher grades than field-sensitive students. Ethnic minority youths often differ from mainstream youths in their motivational systems and styles. Ethnic minorities such as Mexican-Americans tend to be more externally than internally controlled. Mainstream American youths tend to be more internally than externally controlled (Vasquez, 1979). Students who are externally controlled believe that they can do very little to determine their success or failure because it is primarily determined by outside factors. Internally controlled students believe that they can shape their own destinies. Most of the motivational techniques used by teachers in the United States to motivate students are more effective with internal than with external students. Community participation and input. In order to create equitable learning environments for linguistic minority students, the school should involve different segments of the community in the educational program in meaningful and significant roles. Too often, only a small minority of upper-status parents are able to influence educational policy and programs. Other segments of the community are often not involved or they are involved in symbolic and meaningless roles. The counseling and testing program. The counseling and testing program within schools should reflect the ethnic and cultural diversity within a society. Often minority students are counseled by those who have stereotypic and outdated conceptions about career roles and opportunities for minorities and low academic expectations for minority students (C.A Banks, 1981). Standardized tests, which are culturally and ethnically biased in favor of mainstream youths, are often used to place ethnic minority students in low-achievement groups and lower-ability classes. Many high-ability youths are consequently placed in low-ability classes because most standardized tests are not highly valid and reliable when used with ethnic minority students. What Merton (1968) has described as the self-fulfilling prophecy develops in lower-ability classes. The teachers have low-academic expectations for the students and communicate those expectations to them. The students internalize these low academic expectations. Consequently, their academic achievement remains low. Teaching styles and strategies. Teaching strategies should reflect the learning styles and characteristics of students in effective multiethnic and multilingual educational environments (Banks, 1979). Some ethnic minority students, such as Mexican Americans, respond more effectively to cooperative rather than to competitive learning environ-
48 ments (Ramirez & Castañeda, 1974). Other ethnic minority students, such as many Afro-American students, respond positively to active rather than to passive learning situations (Abrahams & Gay, 1972).
Summary Language diversity creates problems within a society when languages and dialects with unequal status are spoken by groups that are stratified by variables such as race, ethnicity, and social class. The structural exclusion of ethnolinguistic groups and their shared feeling of victimization often serves as a basis for political mobilization that results in ethnic revitalization movements. Cultural and linguistic revival often becomes one of the major goals of ethnic revitalization movements. Since the 1960s, we have witnessed the emergence of ethnic revitalization movements in several Western democracies. These movements have demanded that ethnic languages and dialects be legitimized and used as mediums of instruction in publicly supported schools. A variety of programs and projects has been implemented to respond to the revitalization movements. These movements have stimulated acid controversy and ideological debates among supporters and opponents of bilingual education. Using a Weberian ideal-type conceptualization, these arguments may be categorized as the cultural pluralist and the assimilationist ideologies. Pluralists believe that ethnic attachments and identities are essential for the psychological survival of ethnic individuals and for educational equity. Assimilationists, who are deeply concerned about national unity, believe that bilingual education might Balkanize the commonwealth. They also believe that bilingual education will cause ethnolinguistic students to become less, able to function in the national culture. Both the pluralist and the assimilationist make important arguments that educators should seriously consider when they shape educational policies. However, neither ideology, in its ideal form, is adequate to guide educational policy related to language in pluralistic democracies. Such policy should be guided by a multiethnic ideology that reflects the strengths of both the pluralist and assimilationist ideologies but that avoids their extremes. Language policy that reflects the multiethnic ideology respects the rights of students to maintain their cultures and languages, the rights and desires of the community, and the best interests of the commonwealth. Such a language policy must of necessity be flexible and will be manifested variously in communities with different needs, goals, and aspirations. However, a major goal of a language policy in a pluralistic nation is to help students to develop the skills and attitudes needed to be competent in the national civic culture while not alienating them from their ethnic cultures and communities (i.e., mediating structures). Multilingual education, while functional in pluralistic societies, must have modest goals. Multilingual education cannot solve the major educational problems of ethnolinguistic students; neither can it be maximally effective unless it takes place within the context of multiethnic education, which involves reform of the total school environment, so that all students experience educational equity and cultural democracy.
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6 Political and legal issues in maintaining the vernacular in the curriculum: the U.S. experience ISAURA SANTIAGO SANTIAGO
Introduction While many believe that the use of languages other than English as mediums of instruction in the curriculum of public schools is a racist phenomenon, the reality is that in public and private curricula they have been a historical constant-though undoubtedly erratic in form and function. Although, unquestionably, the first half of the twentieth century witnessed decline in these practices for all of the obvious reasons, the latter half of the century has demonstrated a 'resurgence' of interest in bilingualism and bilingual education while inheriting the xenophobic myths about ethnicity and language that accompanied the Americanization movements. Bilingualism and bilingual education are complex and, indeed, volatile issues in America today. What is clear is that, since the late nineteenth century and throughout the latter half of the twentieth century (except for a short period following the launching of Sputnick and the ensuing provisions of the National Defense Education Act (1957), bilingual education, or the use of the vernacular as a medium of instruction, has been accepted in most public settings solely as a transitional, compensatory effort for linguistic minorities. Even this concession has largely been in response to political pressures exerted by ethnolinguistic minorities. Background Kloss (1963) and others including Fishman (1956), Anderson and Boyer (1970), and Leibowitz (1971) have documented the American bilingual tradition. This paper will focus on the current bilingual education movement, defined here as the effort to use languages other than English as the medium of instruction in public educational settings. Little attention is given to elite bilingual education-that is, those efforts designed to enrich the education of the economic and social elite. These groups have probably always had the options. To its detriment, as the author argues here, the bilingual education movement in the public schools of the United States in the latter part of the twentieth century has had a compensatory and transitional focus and a goal, not of bilingualism, but of English monolingualism. The resurgence of bilingual education during the latter half of the twentieth century has been the product of political and legal activity on the part of ethnic minorities in the United States. There are few who would argue the fact that politics play a role in every
54 aspect of education. In the specific case of bilingual education, however, not enough is known about the nature and relative strength of the various factors of political pressure and influence that ethnic minorities have practiced on the American political machinery. Much of the discussion here suggests that we need to know a great deal more. Support for the thesis that the roots of public educational policy change lie outside the schools is provided by Arnold Leibowitz's study ofAmerican politics and its influence on public educational policies with respect to German-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Puerto Rican-Americans, and American-Indians. In Educational Policy and Political Acceptance, he investigated the reasons behind the English-only policy and subsequent revisions of that policy. With regard to national language policy, he concluded: Superimposed upon this long-range policy question are a myriad of short-range economic and social interests which affect local attitudes toward the group and its most obvious symbol of its apartness: its language. Public officials in attempting to balance these varying interests and emotions have been caught in a series of painful decisions as they have directed and redirected policies with respect to the enforcement of English in various aspects of American life. The difficulties have been most clearly seen in the school system, where the questions of the use of English as the language of instruction to the exclusion of other languages has been a constant issue (1971, p. 2).
This paper discusses the political and legal developments that have made the progress in the last two decades possible and presents current issues and future perspectives of billingualism and the prognosis for maintaining the vernacular in the public school curriculum. Demographics A national survey of language minority children reported that there are approximately 3.6 million school-age children in the United States that have limited English proficiency (LEP). While there has been much debate on the accuracy of reported figures, the lowest and the highest estimates are substantial nonetheless. This includes children who are speakers of at least thirty languages. The largest group, however, approximately 70%, is Hispanic. Hispanics comprised between 9 and 12 million of the U.S. population in 1970 and rose to 14.6 million in 1980. (This does not include a conservative estimate of 6 million undocumented Hispanics in the U.S. and over 3 million Puerto Ricans on the island of Puerto Rico-curiously never included in national figures). There are three types of immigrants: ( 1 ) long-term permanent residents, ( 2 ) new permanent immigrants, and ( 3 ) circular immigrants. Infeet,studies show that, with the exception of Cubans, large numbers of Hispanic immigrants--whether documented or undocumented-are circular migrants. They are individuals travelling between two monolingual cultures. Since the Hispanic population is a young population (42% are under the age of eighteen) many of these are children travelling between two monolingual school systems. Many argue that new immigrants should be prepared to give up their language. The
55 reality is, however, that not all immigrants have done so. The 1970 census showed that 32.2 million Americans, roughly 16% of the population, speak a language other than English as their native language. Old myths die hard. Immigration and language maintenance patterns are changing. A 1976 national SIE survey found that Spanish was spoken in 80% of Hispanic households. This reaffirms research that has consistently reported that Hispanics have shown the tendency to retain Spanish far longer than any other groups. Given these migration trends, it would seem that one of the many important questions that must be adressed by policy makers and educators is how best to prepare Hispanic children so that they can participate fully in an English-speaking social system while living in the continental United States and in a Spanish-speaking system when living in their homeland. While this might have been a more broadly acceptable consideration under a more abundant economy, few, other than the ethnolinguistic minorities involved, are prepared to even consider the issue today. Ethnic Group Politics Ethnic group politics have played an important role in bringing about the resurgence of the bilingual educational movement. There are many good reasons for this, as will be discussed later in this paper. What merits attention here is whether ethnic group politics is are good or bad. They are neither. It is the American democratic way, and schools are not in any way isolated from the political sphere. Diane Ravitch in her history of the New York City schools, The Great School Wars, when discussing other major issues with which the schools grappled, concluded: Each major reorganization of the school system was the result of intense political struggle and each of these battles coincided with a huge wave of new immigration. Though the issues in each instance were different, the public school was the battleground where the aspirations of the newcomers and the fears of the native population met and clashed (1974; xiii).
When Hispanics are discussed; inevitably the issue of billingual education is discussed. Nowhere is the political nature of billingual educations clearer than in the issues that continually accompany its consideration. Predictably. Ouestions such as these are asked: But will they be good Americans? But isn't it faster and cheaper for them to learn English fast? In schools, the controversies inevitably center around the control of resources (or access to them). There is always concern about the political economic issues including: (1) how many children will funds be needed for; (2) who will get the jobs; (3) when would they have learned enough English to go back to a monolingual program. As Gary Orfield has shown, school segregation has deepened for Blacks and Hispanics during the 1970's. Moreover, segregation is even more severe for Hispanic students than for Black. Sixty-eight percent of all Hispanic children attend segregated schools and data suggest that the trend toward segregation is deepening. What will the outcome of this experience be? Segregation is certainly not the product of bilingual education. However, wherever bilingual education is solely compensatory, it is hard to believe it will do anything but perpetuate it. What has probably caused the greatest fear on the part of what is called the "moral majority" is the realization of the fact that the
56 current population trend suggests that Hispanics will be the largest minority group in American society by the end of the century. Fear of perpetuation of monolingual cultures in ghettoes and fear of ethnic cleavage have added fuel to other fires. The fact is that monolingual-foreign language communities do exist and have always existed in the United States. However, these are socioeconomic ghettoes as well as linguistic ghettoes. Many who fear these groups have suggested that ethnicity among minorities serves to impede coalitions among themselves and others. Yet, the bilingual education movement would probably make a weighty argument against this premise. Old myths die hard. The Federal Role: Legislative and Administrative The Legislative Role. Landmark legislation of the 1960's that have had a lasting impact on the education of language minority children included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Immigration Act of 1965, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, particularly the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) of 1967. None of these, with the exception of the BEA, referred to the rights of children of limited English proficiency; many laws were passed in the 1970's that did. The latter included the Educational Professions Development Act (1972), Education Admendments (1972), Emergency School Aid Act (1972), Bilingual Manpower Training Act (1973), and the Equal Educational Opportunity Act (1974). Federal policies of the 1960's and 1970's for educating language minority children were directly at the root of the 1974 Supreme Court decision in Lau v. Nichols This decision reaffirmed the authority of the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to promulgate guidelines interpreting the application of law to encompass language minority children and require school districts to develop special programs to meet their needs and ensure their participation in the learning process. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted in accord with the national mood resulting from the death of President John F. Kennedy. The Act seeks to guarantee rights in the areas of voting, public accomodations, employment and non-discrimination in federally assisted programs (Title VI). Though the law states that discrimination is unlawful on the bases of race, color, religion, or national origin, the intention of the legislators was clearly to erase the black-white demarcation in American public life. A close inspection of congressional reports and hearings on the bill clearly supports this. In fact there is little evidence that Hispanics viewed the Civil Rights Act any differently than most Americans--as a law for the South. The United States Congress first committed itself to a policy of billingual education in 1967 with the passage ofthe Bilingual Bducation Act, or Title VII, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (amended in 1974 and 1978). As documented by Garcia (1972), Schneider (1976) and Leibowitz (1971) the initial passage of BEA and each successive series of amendments and reappropriations were the product of very substantial political organization efforts by the Hispanic community. In fact, this level of organization and consensus across ethnic boundaries within a highly
57 heterogeneous Hispanic community had never been realized around any other issue. Shared frustration that existing educational programs across the country had not met the needs of Hispanic children (both English proficient and non-English proficient), and the accompanying drop-out rates and other disturbing evidence of underachievement, made this coalition possible. Influence group pressure and politics were fueled by shared experiences, cultural values and other movements, most importantly the civil rights movement of the period (as researched and reported by the author elsewhere; see Santiago Santiago; 1978). But it must be clear that the BEA of 1967 dit not mandate the implementation of billingual education. Rather, school districts were offered funds to develop and test bilingual models. The educational significance of the Act has centered on the fact that: (1) It was the first national recognition of the problems of educating language minority children. (2) It was the first statement of federal policy on the education of children of limited English proficiency (LEP). (3) It defined a bilingual program as one that included languages other than English in the curriculum as a medium of instruction. (4) It offered incentives to school districts that might otherwise not have felt inclined to experiment with bilingual educational models. The political significance of the Act is also substantial. (1) It established that LEP children needed special programs and that the concerns of LEP children were now of importance to federal interests. (2 ) It was the rallying cry for Hispanics on a national level and, consequently, for the first time as a national political interest group to be dealth with. (3) It was the basis for the inclusion of the interests of Hispanics in many other pieces of legislation, thereby increasing benefits to the group in a broad spectrum of areas. (4 ) It served on local levels to some extent as a mechanism by which parents were more directly involved in the education of their children, and it has probably had an affect on their participation in the politics of education as well. However other Acts have also had a significant impact. The Equal Education Opportunity Act of 1974, for instance, listed six actions that the Congress named as functioning to deny equal educational opportunity to student populations. Among these is the failure of an educational agency to take appropriate actions to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation of its students in its instructional programs. The provisions of this Act have been applied repeatedly to the policymaking process in the management of many other federally funded programs. In summary, the Federal role in the education of LEP children significantly expanded during the I960 and 70s. The Administrative Role. It falls to the executive branche of government to assure the implementation of laws, based on the broad interests of the public after due consideration of minority interests. Minority concerns may be interjected in the politics of federal policymaking in a variety of ways. Direct political pressure and power brought about by strong voter-turnout is one way. A minority group can also obtain power through coalitions or by acting as a
58 small margin in a critically close race. For instance, in the 1960's the Chicanos in the Southwest were, to a limited extent, effective in electing their own officials to local positions and built a political machine that became important to Nixon's 1972 election campaign. An article that appeared before the 1972 election documented the new political power of the Chicano community in the early 1970's. Texas and California are two of the critical states that Republican strategists hope to win in the President's reelection campaign. In 1968, Mr. Nixon lost Texas to Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey by fewer than 40,000 votes. GOP strategists figure that if Mr. Nixon had carried an additional 20,000 Mexican-American votes-about 5 percent of the state's Chicano vote at that time-he would have won Texas. Conceivably, Mexican-Americans and other Spanish-speaking voters could make up the balance of political power in Texas, California and Illinois and possibly in other states.
The executive branch is able to respond to pressures from minorities in a variety of ways. It may incorporate their views into policies regulating the implementation of legislative mandates. It can allocate direct funds for programs to support the community. It may respond by naming minority members to staff and to policy-and-decision-making positions. In the late 1960's and early 1970's, the Nixon administration named Chicanos and other Hispanic minorities to key policy positions. These communities were also the recipients of funds. Equitable or not, administrative action brought about the involvement of Hispanics, particularly in the formation of national policy. This was to be true in the area of education as well as civil rights. Implementation of the policies embodied in the Civil Rights Act is carried out by a cobweb of agencies of the federal government and by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The wide distribution of authority is due to the broad scope of the law. The functions of implementing the Civil Rights Act in the area of education are divided among three agencies. The Justice Department has the authority to prosecute school districts in violation of the Civil Rights Act. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of HEW has the authority to establish regulations and guidelines for school districts to comply with the act and has the enforcement power to cut off federal aid from districts found to be in noncompliance. This is the branch that issued the regulations and guidelines upon which Lau was decided. The Civil Rights Commission does not hold either implementation or enforcement powers. Its efforts are largely to investigate discriminatory practices and to report findings and recommendations to the Congress. It is unlikely that there exists a single court action or study in this area that does not cite one of the commission's numerous reports or hearings. In the early 1970's, it undertook a massive, multimilliondollar study of educational practices in the Southwest affecting Chicano students. It conducted a similar study in Chicago. With respect to the use of the powers of the OCR, Martin Gerry, its director, stated: Between 1954-1970, neither the courts nor the executive branch seriously attacked either the segregation of Mexican Americans, Puerto Rican, and Native American children or the insidious discriminatory practices utilized by school districts in the operation of educational programs within schools (1972).
59 The Department of HEW began to respond to the Hispanic community as a result of organized political pressures from the Southwest and Northeast. In the Southwest, where the largest continental population of Hispanic students reside, Chicanos reacted to being the pawns in school-desegregation conflicts. In the Northeast, reaction by the Puerto Rican community in the late 1960's reflected frustration over the loss of funds to more powerful political groups-Blacks at the local level and Chicanos at the national level. In 1969, there was an indication of interest by federal authorities. Title VI compliance reviews conducted in school districts with large numbers of Spanish-surnamed students "revealed a number of common practices which have the effect of denying equality of educational opportunity to Spanish-surnamed pupils" (Pottinger Memo, 1970). As a result, on May 24, 1970, the Office of Civil Rights issued a memorandum stating for the first time HEWs policy concerning the "responsibility of school districts to provide equal educational opportunity to national origin minority group children deficient in English-language skills..." (Pottinger Memo, 1970). This memorandum was issued after the conceited efforts of the Chicano organizations and civil-rights movement in the West pressured for a federal policy statement, stipulating the rights of language minority children to equal educational opportunity. The four points covered by the Memorandum (1970) were: 1. Where there are sufficient language problems, school districts must make affirmative efforts to rectify the language definiency. 2. Assignment to mentally retarded classes and exclusion from college preparatory courses must not be based on criteria which measure English language skills. 3. Tracking to meet the language deficiency should not constitute a permanent track. 4. Adequate notice of school activities should be given to national origin minority group parents in their own language if necessary.
However, in terms of enforcement, the reality is that "the potential threat of the termination of funds is more mythical than real" (Sugarman and Widess, 1974). There is no known case in which any district's funds have been fully withdrawn. In fact, under the present administration, the OCR has lost at least one-third of its staff, seen a critically reduced budget, and was directed by Secretary Bell in 1980 (as one of his first major actions as secretary of Education) to withdraw newly developed regulations which would have continued to require the use of the vernacular in the curriculum for large numbers of children in concentrated language groups on elementary school levels. These new regulations were caught up in the first tide of the Nixon administration's effort and a public clamor for deregulation of everything. They were not only pulled back but the Secretary's office has called for the preparation of new regulations-ostensibly ones that would not require the use of the vernacular in the curriculum. Deregulation, after all, was a campaign promise to the majority of the electorate. In summary, the federal government has played a significant role in the education of LEP children by policy formulation in both legislative and executive branches. While many have argued that this "intervention" has been inappropriate, the alternative question is what would have happened to language minority children if the federal
60 government had not intervened. What if it decides not to "intervene"?The past history of educational neglect, the current decline in federal support for education, the ravages of an economy in crisis, offer little room for hope. In any case, interwined in this process has been the intervention of the courts.
State Law and Bilingual Education While efforts at the federal level have been limited, the implementation of bilingual education programs at the state level has been even more limited. The majority of states that have statutes define bilingual education as a transitional process with the sole goal of facilitating the process of entering LEP student into an English monolingual system as soon as possible. Among states and territories, many (28) have no state statute at all. Some (15) do not require or mandate a program, but permit its implementation. A few (13) do require that programs be implemented. Only two states, New Mexico and Texas, define bilingual education as the preservation of the native language and culture as well as the acquisition of English language skills. Even these definitions were not formulated until the 1970's, after federal developments. Additionally, in the case of Texas, the lack of implementation of bilingual education was documented and served as the basis for suit in U.S. v. Texas. The present shift away from federal policy making suggests that states will play a more important role in defining educational policy. The question is whether language minority groups will be more successful, indeed, succesful at all, in the future than they have been in the past in asserting their interests through state level policy making processes. There is little evidence that ethnolinguistic minorities today are to any extent more effectively participating in policy making or governance structures.
The Role of the Courts Policies of racial and ethnic exclusivism in the American public school system have significantly changed during the past quarter of a century. In recent years, this change has included a reassessment of policies determining the language of instruction. In response to growing documentation of the under-achievement of racial and ethnic minority students and as a result of protest movements initiated by these excluded minorities, the highest federal and state courts have fashioned legal doctrines to defend the unconstitutionality of discrimination. Litigation based on racial discrimination was a forebear of other forms of civil rights litigation. In the field of education, this led to the Supreme Court theory of the affirmative constitutional obligation of school systems to cease discriminatory practices. This resulted in the integration movement which often included busing and other remedies. The fashioning and implementation of new practices has been an equally difficult task. This is a grey area in which the courts are still struggling to define their own powers, obligations, and limits. The 1954 Brownv. Board of Education Supreme Court decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had little impact on the education of languageminority children until the 1970's. This was because a series of legal principles had been
61 developed by the courts during the two decades that followed Brown culminating in Lau v. Nichols. These principles did not encompass any consideration of linguistic or cultural variables. Among the principles established were: the "public interest", "equal protection", "suspect classification", "past pattern of discriminating", and "equality of educational opportunity". Based on these principles is the argument that education is in the public interest because without an adequate education, an individual may become dependent on society for support. Education in the nineteenth century became a function of the state through the establishment of free common schools. The courts came into the picture when schools became compulsory. The concept that education was in the public interest was enlarged as a result of the application of the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The principle of "equality" passed through a series of interpretations and, when combined with the principle that education was a "public interest"; resulted in the assertion that states had a responsibility to provide "general educational opportunity", which, in turn, resulted in the concept of the right to "equal educational opportunity". Based on this theory, the courts have in recent years engaged extensively in educational policy making, to the degree that some observers have suggested that "During the past two decades, lawmakers have reshaped the realm of educational policy", (Kirp and Yudof, 1974). Their involvement has been both applauded and criticized. For instance, Glazer maintains that the role of the courts in most cases has gone beyond "what the constitution can reasonably be thought to allow or require in the operation of this complex process" (Glazer, 1975 p. 129). In Aspira, the Board and Aspira reached a agreement, thereby precluding the court's direct intervention in fashioning the remedy agreed upon (a bilingual instructional program). As documented in previous sections of this paper, the Puerto Rican community had been substantially unsuccessful in changing either its socio-economic condition or the quality (or quantity) of education received by its children through other traditional avenues of policy change, its relative powerlessness in the political areana brought it to seek change through the courts. The courts have been used to bring about change for other groups, including Blacks and Chicanos. The rights of groups to pursue their goals through the courts was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in NAACP v. Button. Justice Brennan, giving the opinion of the Supreme Court in the case, describes the importance and the function of the courts for minority groups: ...litigation is thus a form of expression. Groups which find themselves unable to achieve their objectives through the ballot frequently turn to the courts and under the conditions of modern government, litigation may well be the sole practicable avenue open to a minority to petition for redress of grievances.
The courts in the 1970's did not directly adress the question of the policy of language instruction, particularly regarding languageminority children, it was in the 1970's, however, that judicial principles of equal educational opportunity were broadened to enfold the constitutional rights of children of limited English-speaking ability within the
62 equal-opportunity principle. Regarding the exclusion of children resulting from policies of English as the language of instruction, the Supreme Court skirted constitutional issues and relied in Lau, solely on HEW regulations. Between 1970 and 1974, the courts established a number of precedents that were important to the litigation of educational language exclusion cases and ethnic minority segregation cases. Cisneros in 1970 resulted in a federal district court ruling for the first time that Mexican-Americans constituted an "identifiable ethnic minority with a past pattern of discrimination". This was significant because as Blacks had been able to use constitutional and statutory protection against discrimination, this ruling opened the door to other ethnic minorities, this including Puerto Ricans, whose socioeconomic plight and underachievement had been well documented. In a later case, United States v. Texas, the same court rules: "We see no reason to believe that ethnic segregation is any less detrimental than racial segregation". The ruling particularly affected Chicanos in the Southwest, since many desegregation cases already were being litigated or were in preparation at that time. As is standard practice in such cases, the courts required school districts to draw up plans that would eliminate such discriminatory practices. But school districts were ineffective in formulating such plans; they continued to consider Black and Hispanic schools desegregated. The Supreme Court ruled against this practice in Keyesv. School District No. 1, declaring that "Negroes and Hispanos in Denver suffer identical discrimination in treatment when compared with treatment afforded Anglo students''. When remanded to the lower court for fashioning of relief, the final order included an educational plan for bilingual-bicultural education. Therefore, the mandate of special instruction for children of limited English-speaking ability had two roots. Two court cases that played particularly important roles in introducing the vernacular in the curriculum were the Supreme Court ruling in Lau v. Nichols and the court-ordered agreement in Aspira v. Board of Education. In 1974, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Lau, a case brought by a class of 1,800 Chinese children against the San Francisco school district, that federally aided school districts that did not provide for the language needs of children of limited or no English-speaking ability were denying these children their rights under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its promulgated regulations. Subsequent to this decision, the Board of Education of the City of New York, which supervises the largest population of children of Spanish-speaking backgrounds, entered a court-ordered agreement with Aspira of New York and the class of children plaintiffs. The consent decree stipulated that a broad-based bilingual instructional program would be provided to children of limited Englishspeaking ability who the court determined were entitled to the program. The Court in Lau did not require that bilingual education had to be provided. In fact, they fashioned no remedy; that was left to the lower courts. However, the opinion in the case was based on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It argued that precluding children from participating in the entire curriculum, particularly subject matter taught only in English, by requiring that they first learn English (and ostensibly sit in on subject matter classroom sessions given by teachers they do not understand and with books they cannot read), puts them at a discernable disadvantage with their peers. While this might not have been the product of purposeful design, they argued, the effect was clear.
63 Subsequent to the Lau decision, the Office of Civil Rights fashioned the Lau Remedies (1975). These were essentially guidelines for school districts to develop programs for meeting their obligations to LEP children. While the guidelines provide districts the opportunity to develop other than bilingual programs on the lower levels (middle and high schools were not required to implement comprehensive bilingual programs) the OCR clearly advocated bilingual education. Neither the Supreme Court ruling nor the Lau Remedies were implemented without a good amount of resistance. The San Francisco school district took two years to develop a plan. In New York City the Aspira plaintiffs won contempt of court proceedings against the Board of Education for non-compliance two years after the consent decree was signed. This has been followed by repeated charges by plaintiffs that programs have not been provided as stipulated for all entitled children. In fact, as late as 1978 the OCR intervened in New York City because the program was not being provided to other language minority groups. The Board signed an agreement to begin to do so. Many suits have followed these. Resistance on the part of school districts has focused on the issue of the use of the vernacular as the medium of instruction as the sole and best remedy. Additional evidence of the resistance of school districts lies in the fact that since 1964, the OCR acting on its authority to implement the Civil Rights Act, has intervened in hundreds of school districts throughout the country on the basis of evidence or complaints of non-compliance. In many cases, school districts have been repeatedly investigated and found in non-compliance. Plaintiffs have also moved to hold districts accountable through the courts for effective programs. Rios v. Read, Castañeda, U.S. v. Texas are among the cases raising issues related to implementation. Another related case was that involving Doe, where the Department of Education of Texas argued that it was not obligated to provide a free public education to undocumented children-much less provide bilingual education. The Supreme Court ruled, however, that the Department was obligated to do so. Probably no decision by the courts in this area, more than this, has provoked such public outrage. It is, nevertheless, not within a pluralistic context that these courts have acted but rather an assimilationist one. The courts have not made bilingual education a right. Nor, it would seem, are they the proper policy-change mechanism to obtain such an end. They have served only as a mechanism to protect minority rights. They ensure access to and participation in the educational process. It coyld be argued, then, that the courts have not served to change the national policy that English is the language of instruction in American schools as many would think, but have consistently supported program designs in which children who are of limited English-speaking ability are given access to the curriculum. The role of the courts has been criticized by many. Lance Leckman, for instance, has warned: The asserted threat arises when legal outcomes-whether statutes or court decisions-grant rights according to ethnic or racial classifications. This is the issue now posed at the forefront of equal protection analysis. (1982 p. 163).
However, given some of the discussions outlined in this paper, there may be basis to doubt the viability of the alternatives he suggests:
64 To avoid the courts' entrance into a realm traditionally unassociated with judicial activity, shouldn't either paits of government do more and better? After all, courts rarely seize power; they fill gaps left by the inadequate work of other institutions. (1982 p. 161).
Current Issues and Conflicts: Future Perspectives The use of the vernacular in the curriculum, even within a compensatory, transitional mode, is under assault in the United States today. This is the product of many factors, the relative weights of which are far too difficult to measure. Prominent among these are (1) The fact that inflationary economic trends are exerting pressures on the educational system, coupled with decreasing enrollment, are pitting one political interest group against another for control and resources. (2) The national psychology of crises has resulted in witch hunts and ethnic backlook. (3) The search for unilateral models of bilingual instruction that have high predictive value of effectiveness has been contradictory and convinced the American public that there is no evidence that bilingual education is effective. The reality is that in the political struggle for power and control ethnolinguistic minorities remain just that-minorities. The economic crisis will undoubtedly affect them more than others. Their interests will be served in the schools no less than by probably any other sector of society. Ethnic backlash is also to be expected. Take, for instance, the current "immigrant problem". It becomes a crucial national concern mostly in times of economic or political crisis. The extreme case today is that while "open boarders" are rarely an issue, they have become so during the current inflationary crisis economy in which reactionaries have lead the witch hunt in the marketplace to jobs held by undocumented workers; this, despite evidence that they hold jobs others don't want and won't take. As discussed here, in response to the nation's inability to enforce immigration laws, an entire state moved to keep children out of school - the crises always come to the schoolhouse door! Another example of concerted fear on the part of the American public is found in a recent statement by Glazer: The 'melting pot' is now attacked not only on the empirical ground that it really did not melt that much or that fast but on the normative ground that it should not have been allowed to do so. And on the basis of this attack, Americanization becomes a dirty word, and bilingualism and biculturalism receive government support (1982 p. 149).
He goes on to argue: I doubt that this is wise. Without endorsing the rigors of the Americanization programs of World War I and the succeeding decades, one can still see the virtue of forging a single society out of many stocks and can still see that this process deserves some public guidance (1982 p. 149).
While it is understandable that some would like the comfort of this "homogeneity", there still remains (irrespective of the amiable merits of his goal) the evidence of the history of the United States and other countries of Europe and the world that, despite many attempts, none have been succesful in reaching the goal described.
65
Future Perspectives. The question of whether there is a future of bilingualism and bilingual education does not lie in the question of whether the country will continue to support compensatory transitional efforts (though, as documented here, there are clearly efforts to reverse this trend), but rather whether the country will determine that it is in the interest of aUtbaX bilingualism be encouraged for all children. There is some hope in this area. The President's Council on Foreign Languages, the Controller General's Report on the Need for Foreign Language Skills in Government, and the National Commission on Excellence in Education have found an appalling decline in the foreign language skills of Americans. They have argued that this is a threat to America's ability to play a role, an effective role, in international affairs and the international marketplace. Providing the atmosphere in schools and societies that will encourage effective foreign language learning or maintenance will require that America establish a national language policy that will lay to rest old myths and fears.
Bibliography Published
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72 "Study: City Layoffs Savage Hispanics, Blacks and Women". Daily News, 15 April 1976. "Anker Takes Charge in Ethnic Survey Row". New York Post, 28 April 1976. "Racism Charges to School Boards". New York Times, 5 June 1976. "Principals Face Contempt Charges". Long Island Press, 22 June 1976, p. 16. "New York City Schools Weather Fiscal Crisis But a Study Shows that Impact was Felt by Entire System in the Academic Year". New York Times, 21 June 1976, p. 1. "Bilingual Education Stirs Debate in New York City". New York Times, 21 June 1976. "Principal Defies Court on Ethnic Data". New York Times, 23 June 1976. "Latest School Row: Seniority". New York Post, 16 July 1976, p. 9. "Bilingual Licenses Now Separate Tenure Areas". Don Peyo, 24 September, 1976, p. 1. "Bilingual Danger". New York Times, 22 November 1976, Editorial. "Discrimination Against Puerto Rican Teachers, Supervisors, and Children". Don Peyo: La Voz Del Educador Puertorriqueño, 24 November 1976, p. 3"Bilingual Instruction is Thriving but Criticized". New York Times, 30 January 1977. 'Tests Find Lag by Hispanic Pupils". New York Times, 22 May 1977. "Study Questions Bilingual Education". Washington Post, 19 April 1977. "Bilingual Battle: Should Washington Finance Ethnic Identities". Washington Post, 5June 1977, p. c4. "Bilingual Bicultural Education 'on the Backburner'," Un Nuevo Dia, Bulletin on the Chicano Education Project, 3 Summer 1977, 1. "Assignment of Teachers by Race Stirs Apprehension Among Them and Administrators in New York City". New York Times, 23 September 1977, p. 22.
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73 Executive Branch U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. I960 Census of Population: Subject ReportsPuerto Ricans in the United States. PC (2)-lD. 1963. U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. Current Populations Reports-Persons of Spanish Origin in the United States: March 1972 and 1971. p-20. No. 250. April 1973U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. United States Census of Population: 1970. Vol 1. General Social and Economic Characteristics-United States Summary. PC(1)-C1. June 1972. U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. 1970 Census of Population: Subject ReportsPersons of Spanish Ancestry, Supplementary Report. PC(Sl)-30. February 1973U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. 1970 Census of Population Subject Reports: Puerto Ricans in the United States PC(2)-1E. June 1973U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. 1970 Census of Population: Subject ReportsPersons of Spanish Origin in the United States. PC(2)-1C. June 1973U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. 1970 Census of Population: Subject ReportsPersons of Spanish Origin in the United States: March 1975. P-20 No. 283- August 1975. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Office of Education. Programs Under the Bilingual Education Act, Title VII, Elementary and Secondary Education Act: Manual for Project Applicants and Grantees. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, April 1971. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. A Process Evaluation of the Bilingual Education Program, Title VII, Elementary and Secondary Education Act vol. 1. Prepared by Development Associates for the United States Office of Education. December 1973U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. National Institute of Education. MultilingualBicultural Division. Fiscal Year 1976 Program Plan. Aspira of New York files. U.S. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A Socio-Economic Profile of Puerto Rican New Yorkers Regional Report No. 46. July 1975. U.S. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The New York Puerto Rican: Patterns of Work Experience. Regional Report No. 19. May 1971. U.S. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thejobs Puerto Ricans Hold in New YorkCity, by Lois Gray. October 1975. U.S. Office of the Controller General. Report to the Congress, Bilingual Education: An Unmet Need May 1976. Reprinted by The State Education Department, Bilingual Education Unit. Albany, New York. U.S. President. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States Washington, D.C.: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Service, 1937. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1941. Independent Agencies U.S. Immigration Commission. Report on the Children of Immigrants in Schools. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911. Reprint ed., Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1970. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Mexican American Study. 5 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. April 1971 to February 1974. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Hearing: New York, February 14-15, 1972. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1972. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Testimony of Albert Shanker, President of the United Federation of Teachers, pp. 102-117. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Summary in Lieu of Testimony ofJ. Stanley Pettinger. Director. Office of Civil Rights. Department of Health Education and Welfare, pp. 725-737. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Statement of Ewald Nyquist, Commissioner of Education of New York State, pp. 691-723.
74 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Counting the Forgotten: The 1970 Census Count of Persons of Spanish Speaking Background in the United States. Washington, D.V.: Government Printing Office, April 1974. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Illinois State Advisory Committee. BüingucU/Bicultural Education A Privilege or a Righß May 1974. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. A Better Chance toLeam: Bilingual-BiculturalEducation. Pubn. 51. May 1975. Reprint ed., New York: The University of the State of New York. The State Education Department. Bilingual Education Unit. January 1976. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Puerto Ricans in the Continental United States: An Uncertain Future, October 1976. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1976.
Memoranda Gerry, Martin H. Deputy Director. Office of Civil Rights. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Office of the Secretary. Memorandum to Richard L. Fairley. Director. Division of Compensatory Education. Office of Education. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Washington, D.C.: 13 November 1974. Henderson, Lloyd R. Director, Elementary and Secondary Education Division. Office of Civil Rights. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Office of the Secretary. Memorandum to Directors, Office of Civil Rights Regions I-X. Elementary and Secondary Education Branch Chiefs, Regions I-X. Subject: Application of Lau Remedies. Washington, D.C.: 8 April 1976. Pottinger, J. Stanley. Director. Office of Civil Rights. Department of Health, Education andWelfare. Memorandum to School Districts With More Than Five Percent National Origin-Minority Group Children. Subject: Identification of Discrimination and Denial of Services on the Basis of National Origin. Washington, D.C., 25 May 1970. U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Office of Civil Rights. Memorandum. "Task Force Findings Specifying Remedies Available for Eliminating Past Educational Practices Ruled Unlawful Under Lau v. Nichols, Summer 1975". Commonly referred to as "Lau Remedies".
Laws and Court Cases Laws United States Laws Bilingual Education Act of 1967. Statutes at Large, vol. 81 (1968). U.S. Code, vol. 20 (1968). Civil Rights Act of 1974. Statutes at Largely (1964). U.S. Code, vol. 42 (1970). Educational Professions Development Act, Statutes at Large, vol. 86 (1972). Education Amendments of 1972. Statutes at Large, vol. 86 (1972). Voting Rights Act of 1965. Statutes at Large, vol. 79 (1965). U.S. Code, vol. 42 (1973). Emergency School Aid Act. Statutes at Large vol. 86 (1972). Bilingual Education Act of 1974. Statutes at Large, Vol. 20, sec. 241.484-613 (1974) Code, vol. 20, sec. 241. Bilingual Manpower Training Act. Statutes at Large, vol. 87 (1973). Equal Educational Opportunity Act. Statutes at Large vol. 88 (1974). U.S. Code, vol. 20.
75 New York Laws New York. Constitution. Education Law PA. 65, sec. 3204; Art. 89, sec. 4401; sees 102-104; sees, 207, 301, 305, 310; sec. 2590-H 2590-j-3, 2569, 2573 (2), 2566 (8). New York State Legislature. Senate. Proposed Bills S6519-A8084 slip law, May 17,1973. Not enacted.
Court Cases Arroyo v. Tucker, 73 Civ. 2247 (E.D.Pa. March 25, 1974). Aspira of New York, et al v. Board of Education of the City of New York, et al 72 Civ. 4002 (S.D.N.Y. filed 1972). Aspira of New York, et al. v. Board of Education of the City of New York, et al Complaint, (S.D.N.Y. September 20, 1972). Aspira of New York, etal. v. Board of Education of the City of New York, etal Consent Decree. (S.D.N.Y. August 29, 1974). Unreported. Aspira of New York, et al v. Board of Education of the City of New York, et al Opinion (S.D.N.Y. August 29, 1974). Aspira of New York, et al. v. Board of Education of the City of New York, etal Memorandum Ordering Notice of Decree. (S.D.N.Y. August 29, 1974). Aspira of New York, et al v. Board of Education of the City of New York, et al Opinion of Special Master. (S.D.N.Y. February 26, 1976). Unreported Opinion. Aspira of New York, et al. v. Board of Education of the City of New York, et al 65 F.R.D. 541 (S.D.N.Y. 1975). Aspira of New York, et al v. Board of Education of the City of New York, et al Opinion. (S.D.N.Y. October 22, 1976). Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Chance v. Mercado, 70 Civ. 4141 (S.D.N.Y. 1973). Chance v. Mercado. Brief Amicus Curiae Submitted on Behalf of Aspira of America, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. October 20, 1970). Cisnerosv. Corpus Cristi Independent School District, 5 Cir. 1972,467 F. 22d 142,148 (en bac), cert. dehied, 1973 413 U.S. 920, 93 S. Ct. 3053, 37 L Ed. 2d. Giffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956). Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970). Green v. School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430 (1969). Guadalupe Organization v. Temple Elementary School District No. 3, Civ. 71-435 PHX (D. Arizona). Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641 (1966). Keyesv. School District No. 1 Denver, 313 F. Supp. 61 (D. Colo. 1970), 413 U.S. 189 (1973). Lauv. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974). Lau v. Nichols, Order. (Civ. No. C-70-627 LHB, N.E. Conf. May 26, 1970). (App.) Lau v. Nichols. Memorandum for the United States of the Solicitor General of the United States at 27, Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974). (Unreported Memorandum.) Lau v. Nichols Complaint, 483 F. 2d 791 (oth Cir. 1973), cert, granted 93 S.C.T. 2786 (1973). Lau v. Nichols. Opinion of the Appellate Court, 483 F. 2d 791 (9th Cir. 1973). NAACPv. Button, 83 S.C. 328 (1963); cfNAACP v. Alabama ex. rel. Flowers 12L.Ed.2d 325 (1963). Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217 (1971). Puerto Rican Organization for Political Action v. Kusper, 490, F. 2d 575 (7th Cir. 1973). Rodriquez v. PerceU, 74 Civ. 1430 (S.D.N.Y. 1975).
76 San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriquez, 411 U.S.I. (1973). Sernav. Portates Municipal Schools, 351F. Supp. 1279 (N.D. Mex. 1972), affd, 499 F. 2d 1147 ( 10th Cir. 1974). Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969). Swannv. Scharlotte-Mechlenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971). Torres v. Sachs, 73 Civ. 3921 (S.D.N.Y. September 26, 1973). United States v. Texas, 342 F. Supp. 24 (E.D. Tex. 1971), affd per curiam, 446 F. 2d 518 (5th Cir. 1972) (On appeal (5th Cir.) July 1982). Vetere v. Allen, 251 N.S.S. 2d 480, affs 258 N.Y.S. 2d 77. Watson v. City of Memphis, 373 U.S. 526 (1963).
Part three Issues of multicultural education
7 Contextual approach to multicultural education JAMES M. ANDERSON
Introduction Historically, the approach to multicultural education has been to treat multiculturalism as a problem-something to be treated, cured, or ignored until it eventually went away. The traditional focus of multicultural training programs has been to put the primary emphasis on the teaching of language skills, the presentation of data and historical information, and the development of values common to the dominant culture. The desired outcome of this approach has been the preservation of an implicit dominant culture coupled with a temparary tolerance of minority cultures. The primary focus of teacher training has been cognitive and conceptual instruction aimed at the rapid assimilation of students into the "regular" curriculum and the general society. This approach has met with uncertain succes and has had a great social and educational cost. The approach outlined in this paper suggests the utilization of a three-tiered typology in approaching multicultural education. The typology helps to distinguish between instructional foci and their consequences. Level I of the typology is content oriented and includes the presentation of data, events, people, and the story of different cultures. The content level is essentially a cognitive domain that provides the "what" about a culture. It is the level at which most of the multicultural education of students now occurs. Level II is conceptual The conceptual level includes both cognitive and affective domains and provides the "why" about group behavior or historical events. Theories, explanations, and discussions about belief systems fall within this category. A lot of what is currently done now in the training of teachers for multicultural education fells within this category. The third level is contextual This level is totally affective and can only be learned experientially. Most teacher training curricula place little emphasis on development of affective or contextual level skills. The contextual level is important because it is the level in which individuals begin to develop meaning related to group values and to understand motives for group behavior.
Background The contextual approach is concerned with how an individual holds or internalizes the subject matter. This varies from person to person, culture to culture, and country to country. Problems arise when assumptions are made that others share a similar view-
80 point or attitude, or that an experience or technique in one setting will necessarily work in another. Another problem is that there has been a tendency in educational literature to confuse the categories of immigrants and ethnic minorities. European educators have often looked to American research and policies related to the education of Blacks and other minorities and have attempted to apply them to the education of their recent immigrants. Although the categories of immigrants and ethnic minorities overlap, they are nonetheless distinct. There is probably little similarity between the educational needs of recent Moluccan or Southeast Asian immigrants to The Netherlands with fifth generation American Blacks or second generation Mexican-Americans. Although the differences can be explained cognitively, the most important distinction from an educational standpoint is contextual. These distinctions relate to the relationship between the minority culture and the dominant culture of the host country. This relationship is characterized by two things. The first is the context in which the dominant culture views immigration and cultural minorities. The second are the motives or reasons behind the immigration in the first place. American society is unique in that for years it operated under the concept of itself as a "melting pot". Under this quasi-theory, America welcomed almost unlimited immigration and perpetuated the myth of equal opportunity to all of its newcomers. Within this melting pot approach, immigrant groups were expected to eventually lose their native cultures as they assimilated totally into an Anglo-Saxon-dominated American culture. During the past century, millions of immigrants have come to America fleeing political oppression and/or seeking greater economic opportunities. Some groups were quite successful in "melting" into the American society and achieving the American economic dream. Economic and sociological data, however, clearly indicate disproportionate rates of success in the ability of even European immigrants to socially and economically assimilate into the American culture even after several generations. The "melting pot" theory totally breaks down when non-European ethnic minorities are considered. Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians were not able to assimilate successfully using the model that worked only marginally for groups that were physically and culturally more similar to the dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestant role model they were expected to emulate. Even the concept ofan Anglo-Saxon majority in American has been a myth. Currently, only about 14% of American society has an Anglo-Saxon ancestry and the percentage is dropping. If current immigrations trends continue, 34% of the population will be foreign-born or the children of foreign-born by th end of the century. If current immigration and birth rates continue, a century from now 50% of all Americans will be Black, Hispanic or of Asian origin and 40% of all Americans will have been naturalized after 1980 or will have been descendants of those naturalized after 1980.1 In Europe, the experience is quite different. Recent immigration is common and Black Africans, Asians, Caribbean and Arabic-speaking peoples now form about 4% of the populations of France, Great Britain, The Netherlands, and West Germany. The projected immigration rates for the future will still keep the immigrant percentages relatively low. The immigration of racial minorities from colonies or former colonies is quite different from the experience of American Blacks, Asians, or Hispanics, some of whom may have American descendants going back five or more generations. The European countries have much more homogeneous and older cultures with a different
81 relationship to their current immigrants. Most of the current European immigration has been stimulated by economic motives on the part of the immigrants and by the need for workers on the part of the host countries primarily in unskilled or lower paying jobs. Also, most of the immigrants come from areas where there have been long-standing historic links through trade or colonization. Most current immigrants are not invited with the promise of equal opportunity to "melt" into the society as in America, but rather as temporary guests who will work for a while and then presumably return to their country of origin. In Germany, for example, immigrant workers are labeled "Gastarbeiter" or guest workers and have restricted rights and opportunities. In England, there is an official distinction between Black-Britons who have full legal status and permanent residency and non-white recent immigrant groups who do not. Another significant difference in the approach to multicultural education between the United States and Europe is the subject of language. In America, 85% of all bilingual education is in Spanish-English. Billingualism and foreign language education in general in the United States has not been wide-spread. Immigrant groups have always been expected to develop a fluency in English with or without the help of the educational system. It was not until the mid-1960s that bilingual education became an official part of U.S. educational policy and even then it was because it was court-mandated. On the other hand, multi-lingualism in Europe is the rule rather than the exception. The attitude toward second language learning in dominant cultures in Europe is much more accepted than it is in the United States. Also, the range of languages necessary to conduct bilingual education in Europe is far more varied than it is in the United States. There are significant in the context of multicultural education as it is practised in the United States and as it is practised and being developed in Europe. It is not enough to look at a model that may have worked or foiled in one country and assume that it will have the same success or failure in a different context. Any multicultural education method, resource or technique is necessarily infuenced by the culture of the teachers who use it and the cultures of the students upon which it will be used.
Three Levels of Multicultural Education As stated above, all approaches to multicultural education can be put into one of three levels or categories: Content, Concept, or Context. The content level essentially explains the "what" about the subject. The conceptual level provides the "why", and the contextual level can be thought of as "because". There is a general, yet not binding, hierarchical relationship between the three levels, with the content level being the lowest and the contextual level being the highest. For example, in the education of children, we start out by having them memorize facts. Dates, famous people, and important places and events are all committed to memory. As the student matures and progresses through the educational system, explanations are provided along with the facts. Theories are presented to tie the explanations together. Often, this is where the process ends. Although in higher education we may go on to "bigger and better concepts", this does not represent a hierarchical improvement. None of these facts or theories have any meaning to the student outside of his or her context. It is at the level of
82
context that attitudes, beliefs, and values are formed. Ultimately, it is the individual's experience of the concepts and facts that is retained. In a multicultural classroom, it is easy to forget that each person is necessarily viewing the facts and explanations presented by the teacher through the filters of his or her own cultural context. It is when we lose sight of these contextual differences or when we begin to operate out of the assumption that others share our viewpoint on the information being presented that we begin to have trouble in the classroom. I believe, along with Archibald MacLeish, that "there's only one thing more powerfull than learning from experience, and that is not learning from experience." Chart I outlines the characteristics of the typology being proposed. Actually, the chart is more circular than it is linear, and some of the categories overlap more than one level of the typology. The second chart indicates some of the ways in which these overlaps may interrelate. Cultural differences may be rooted in history or different political or religious belief systems, which are at the levels of content and concept. What is important about cultural differences is not the difference itself nor is it the theories we have about differences and their consequences. What is important is how people internalize their differences and to what extent the social environment accepts or rejects the differences. The importance is at the level of context and only at the level of context. Yet, we behave as if what is important is the facts. A "fact" is not as factual as we think it is, and truth depends on a good bit more than stating a fact in isolation. In a two-car race between Americans and Chart I: A typology of multicultural eduction Attribute
Level Content
Conceptual
Contextual
Primary foci
Facts; Data; Story
Explanation; Theory
Meaning; Attitude; Experience; Expectations
Domain
Cognitive
Cognitive/Affective
Affective
Relationship to beliefs
Specific beliefs of groups
Systems of beliefs; Religions
Individual beliefs
Values
Identification of specific values
System of values
Individual values
Primary level of learning
Memorization
Understanding
Empathy
Relationship to power
Forces
Dominance/ submission
Acquiescence
Interrogative
What
Why
Because
Action
Static
Dynamic (group action)
Dynamic (individual action)
Objectiveness
Objective
Subjective
Subjective
Relationship to time
Past
Past
Present
Form
Tangible
Intangible
Intangible
Identification
Labels
Labels
Reality
83 Chart II: Inter-level multicultural approaches
Russians, PRAVDA once reported: "The Russians came in second, while the Americans were next to last." True - and deceptive.2 It is a basic premise of this paper that whenever there is a cultural difference within the educational process, problems will necessarily develop in four separate areas.3 The severity of the problems that develop are directly related to the degree of similarity or difference between the cultures that are present in the classroom. The solutions to the problems are a function of the approaces used, the training received by the teacher, and the willingness of the participants to achieve a solution. The four problem areas are as follows:
84 1. PROBLEMS OF PERCEPTION Examples: . Perceptual dissonance . Unperceived events , Unfulfilled expectations . Attitudes about "the problem" . Values identification . Language comprehension
(Seeing the same thing in a different way) (Not seeing what others see at all) (Both of self, by and of others, and of the situation) (Can it be solved? Is it a problem?) (Self, others, group) (Understanding what others are saying, receiving nonverbal communications)
2. PROBLEMS OF EXPRESSION Examples: Self-expression Language usage Interpersonal expression
(Not having the ability to express oneself in a given context, choosing inappropriate communication forms, etc.) (Incorrect pronunciation, sentence structure, choice of words, grammar, etc.) (Not having the ability to interact appropriately with others, not using accepted rules of conversational interaction and listening behavior)
3. VALUE SYSTEM CONFLICTS Examples: . Attitudes towards life values; God and religion; institutions and their representatives; expression of hostility; expressions of love, affiliative ties, sexual morality and mores; peers and peer groups - and outgroups; those judged to be superior or more powerful such as certain staff and teachers; certain staff and students, etc. 4. CONFLICTS OF INFORMATION Examples: .Differences in how teachers are trained to teach; different approaches to the subject matter; conflicting sources of data and information. There has been s o m e attempt to cover contextual differences through values clarification exercises or simulations. Both of these are effective at evoking affective and attitudinal changes. The problem is that many trainers and teachers stop at the identification of the value or belief being experienced. This approach treats the contextual as a static or unchanging level. In fact, context is dynamic and changes continuously. According to Milton Rokeach, the average person holds dozens of values, thousands of attitudes, and tens of thousands of beliefs. 4 Moreover, attitudes and beliefs undergo a continuous process of change and tend to vary somewhat from one group or individual to another. The existence of the factors of change and variation makes it extremely difficult for members of any society to identify, and agree upon, those patterns which may b e considered characteristic of their own and other groups. Thus, context is a factor that needs to b e focused upon continuously and re-examined for each attribute that is presented at the levels of content and concept.
85 Teacher-Trainer Applications: The contextual approach is intended as a supplement to existing training methods and materials. Many excellent resources are available. The intent of this paper is not to suggest new methods or materials but rather to transform the way in which existing approaches are implemented and existing materials are used. For example, James Banks includes strategies and models for getting at the contextual level although this is not emphasized.5 On the other hand, Donna Gollnick and Philip Chinn in their just-released text do not include the contextual level at all.6 A good text that incorporates all three levels with relatively equal emphasis is Margaret Pusch's Multicultural Education: A Cross Cultural Training Approach? Many other good materials are available in the areas of values clarification. Contextual teacher training approaches go beyond the mere presentation of data. They also go beyond theories and explanations of educational phenomena and approaches towards teaching and learning. The contextual approach is one that builds tolerance within the learner, creates empathy for other groups and changes attitudes. Often this can be done in conjunction with the presentation of data or information. Simulations, games, and the field of values clarification are areas in which content is presented in contextual ways. The Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, developed his unique approach to literacy education as a form of contextual education. His approach involved not only the teaching of literacy skills but more importantly the development of attitudes toward the power of literacy that totally transformed the expectations of the learners. In Freire's case this approach had political repercussions which turned out to be unpopular with the government in Brazil. However, the literature overwhelmingly supported the success of his approach. Within the field of values clarification there are hundreds of examples and approaches of current readily available contextual materials that can be used as is or modified for multicultural teacher training. Almost any attitude that a teacher or student would hold has some bearing on their cultural value systems. Examining these values and differences is an effective first step in building understanding and tolerance of cross-cultural differences. Citing or simulating examples from third cultures is often a useful technique to diffuse conflicts between other cultures. For example, conflicts between blacks and whites can often be dealt with most effectively by focusing on another group or a hypothetical culture. This kind of approach tends to diffuse the emotions of the actual conflict situation by creating an abstract or third party system in which to examine the issues without directly exposing or examining the personal values involved. The stimulation "Star Power" is a very popular one that is used for looking at the majority-minority power relationships in society through an abstract yet very powerful situation. Other simulations, such as "BAFA BAFA", the "Ethnic Mix" exercise or the "X-ian" exercise, have been used many times quite successfully in training teachers and others in contextual areas. In examining the four problems areas cited earlier in this article, is a helpful first step to determine which specific problems are to be addressed in a teacher-training situation. Once those specific problems are decided upon as being the primary area in which training is to be focused, then specific approaches can be developed to address those
86 problems. In dealing with something such as perceptual dissonance, for example, it is extremely important that the learners have experienced their dissonance before any attempt is made to eleviate it. Most learners are unwilling to admit that they have problems in this area or their perception of the problem maybe that it is possessed by others and not with themselves or that the problem is different than it actually is. In other words, there will be perceptual dissonance in receiving perceptual dissonance. Having an experiential situation that gives all of the learners a common experience if the problem opens up avenues for discussing it and presenting cognitive information about it. Given a common experience, data can be presented and concepts developed to explain what has just been experienced. From a learners perspective the actual problem topology is not important and not likely to be remembered. Some of the data may be remembered and the learners are likely to think that it is the data that is important. What will be remembered, however, is the experience and in my opinion it is the only thing that is realy important. This last point is important since learners, particularly professional educators, are not likely to see immediately the value of contextual learning. We as educators have been conditioned to value content and concepts and little else. It is important therefore to present data and concepts in conjunction to the developments of contextual experiences in order to reassure the learner that they are "learning something". In summary, the contextual approach is not dependent upon materials or methods. It is a continuous examination of the ways in which the content and concepts we teach are being presented and the ways in which they are received. Without it, we are condemned to perpetuating miscommunication, ineffective teaching, and widening the gap between cultures.
References 1. White House Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, January 1982. 2. This premise is based on research done in 1981-82 under the direction of the author under the sponsorship of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates. Thefinalreport is available from the author. 3. Harris, Sydney, The Detroit Free Press, July 20, 1981. 4. Rokeach, Milton, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values: Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, California, 1969. 5. Banks, James A., Teaching Strategiesfor Ethnic Studies, University ofWashington, Seattle: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., Boston, 1975. 6. Gollnick, Donna M. and Philip C. Chinn, Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society, The C.V. Mosby Co., St. Louis, Missouri, 19837. Pusch, Margareth D., Multicultural Education: A Cross Cultural Training Afproach, Intercultural Network, Inc., LaGrange Park, Illinois, 1979. 8. Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Seabury Press, New York, 1970. 9. Star Power and BAFA BAFA are simulations written by Gary Shirts and are published by Simile II P.O.Box 910, Del Mar, California 92014. 10. Ethnic Mix is a simulation developed by the Michigan Ethnic Heritage Studies Center, 60 Farnsworth, Detroit, Michigan 48202. 11. The X-ian exercise was developed by the Intercultural Relations and Ethnic Studies Institute, Rutgers Graduate School of Education, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
87 Bibliography
Batchelder, Donald and Elizabeth G. Warner (eds.). Beyond Experience. Brattleboro, Vt.: Experiment in International Living, 1977. Blubaugh, Jon A. and Dorothy L. Pennington. Crossing Difference Interracial Communication. Columbus, Oh.: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., 1976. Brembeck, Cole S. and Walker H. Hill (eds.). Cultural Challenges to Education: The Influence of Cultural Factors in School Learning. Lexington, Ky.: Lexington Books, 1973Condon, John C. and Fahti Yousef. An Introduction to Intercultural Communication, Indianapolis, 1975. Curt, Carmen Judith Nine. Teacher Training Pack for a Course on Cultural Awareness. Fall River, Ma.: National Assessment and Dissemination Center for Bilingual Education. 1976. Ferguson, Henry, Ph. D. Manual for Multi-cultural and Ethnic Studies. LeGrange Park, III.: Intercultural Network, Inc., 1977. Gold, Milton J., Carl A Grant and Harry N. Rivlin (eds.). In Praise of Diversity: A Resource book for Multicultural Education. Washington, D.C.: Teacher Corps, Association of Teacher Educators, 1977. Hall, Edward T. The Silent Language. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1963Hall, Edward T. The Hidden Dimension Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1966. Hall, Edward T. Beyond Culture. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1976. Hoopes, David S. and Paul Ventura (eds.). Intercultural Sourcebook, "Cross Cultural Training Methodologies." Washington, D.C.: Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research; Intercultural Network, Inc.. 1979. Hoopes, David S. (ed.). Readings in Intercultural Communication, Vol II, "Selected CourseSyllabi in Intercultural Communication. " Pittsburgh, Pa.: Intercultural Network, Inc. and Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research, 1977. LeVine, Robert A and Donalt T. Campbell. Ethnocentricism: Theories of Conflict, Ethnic Attitudes, and Group Behavior. New York, N.Y.: John Wiley and Sons, 1972. Rich, Andrea L. Interracial Communication. New York, N.Y.: Harper and Row, 1974. Ruben, Brent D. and Richard W. Budd. Human Communication Handbook: Simulations and Games Rochelle Park, N.Y.: Hayden Book Company, Inc., 1975. Stone, James and Donald deNevi. Teaching Multi-Cultural Populations: Five Heritages. New York, N.Y.: Van Nostrand Co., 1971. Weeks, William H., Paul B. Peterson and Richard W. Brislin. A Manual of Structured Experiences for Cross-Cultural Learning. Washington, D.C.: Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research, 1977.
8 Four approaches to multicultural education PIETER BATELAAN For the principals in our institutes multicultural or intercultural education means no more than education for children from cultural minorities. For us - who have read a lot of literature on inter-, multi- or bicultural education, including the report of the ACLO-mother tongue1: "Education in a multicultural and multiethnic society" and the "Policyplan" of one of our former ministers of education-multicultural education is much more than education for cultural and ethnic minorities. In all this literature you are confronted with many good intentions, political and philosophical statements, but when you look for instance at the practice of second language teaching in our schools you will see that this practice leaves much to be desired. A tradition of intercultural education does not exist and that makes it very difficult for teacher trainers to plan courses on multicultural education. Where to begin? What are the priorities? In this report I will try to make some distinctions in the field of multicultural education. I hope it will help teacher trainers who are working in this field, with the development of their courses. Curriculum development is the planning of teaching and learning activities. Planning implies the making of choices. Therefore you need criteria and you have to be aware of the possible positive (and negative) effects of those activities under the existing conditions. The involvement of teacher trainers in multicultural education should start with a consideration of the problems of the teacher in the school who has to work with children from cultural and ethnic minorities. Problems like how do I teach children who don't understand Dutch. What should I do when Turkisch children are teased by other children or are beaten by their parents. Teachers ask for remedial and additional activities to help them cope with these problems. In this report I distinguish four approaches to multicultural education activities. 1. The teacher will try to compensate for the deficiencies of his pupils: remedial activities. 2. The teacher will try to keep the effects of his normal teaching from producing conflicts in the classroom. (l)"ACLO" stands for "Advies-Commissie Leerplan-Ontwikkeling" (Advisory committee on Curriculum Development). The report (with English summary) was published by the SLO (Foundation for Curriculum Development). Enschede, 1982.
90 3. The teacher will try to promote mutual understanding. 4. The teacher will connect his activities with the social and political reality. He will contribute to the emancipation of minority groups. I shall explain what I mean by these four levels and how they relate to each other. 1. Remedial
activities. Compensatory
activities.
Children with a linguistic and cultural background different from that of their Dutch classmates have problems with their learning activities: they do not understand their teacher; they are not used to the way education is organized. In education teachers do not take into account what the children know; only what they do not know. The teacher organizes activities to compensate for the deficiencies, often with the help of assistants from the same country as the children's parents. Activities on this level are: - second language teaching: - introduction to the Dutch school and society; - information to the parents; - mother tongue teaching for transitional reasons; - provision of bilingual learning materials. Schools and teachers undertake these activities because they want to acknowledge the special educational needs of their pupils. The quality of those activities will increase when teachers are more aware of the knowledge, the skills and the cultural background of their pupils. The quality therefore can only be judged by educational criteria. All these activities can be conducted in a good way and in a bad way. It is the responsibility of teacher education that those activities be done in a proper way. But if nothing else happens, the effect of these activities will be the assimilation of the children.
2. The conflict-avoiding
approach.
When a teacher does not know anything of the values and vulnerabilities of minority groups, he risks hurting children. Therefore he should avoid creating conflicts. For instance in homeeconomics he will not teach the cooking of an English breakfast to moslim children who are not allowed to touch pork. He will try to remove racial bias in textbooks. If he has the courage to do so, he will interfere when majority children are insulting children from minority groups. He will try to create an atmosphere that is not threatening for the children. Therefore, the teacher needs knowledge about the values and vulnerabilities of children from minority groups. This knowledge may improve his teaching. The children will feel themselves protected in the classroom and this protection is necessary. But it will not help the pupil outside the classroom in a society which is becoming more and more hostile towards "foreigners". The quality of the efforts to create a good atmosphere in the classroom will - like the
91
remedial activities - be measured with educationalsxanáarás. It is again the responsibility of teacher trainers to provide their students with the skills to do it.
3. Promoting of mutual
understanding
In multicultural classrooms many activities are organized to promote mutual understanding. Children learn about the culture of the home countries of their classmates. Teachers organize projects about food, clothing festivals, arts, markets, and religion in different countries. Projects like these can be very usefull. They suit the ideas of intercultural education. Activities like these can also be dangerous if the teacher does not have the skills to avoid stigmatization. He has to take into account that it can be very difficult for children to show something of their own culture. For the teacher it is very difficult to introduce the cultural features of the groups to which his pupils belong, because he can only describe them from his own point of view. The teacher must first become aware of his ethnocentrism. He has to imagine the situation of the children in his classroom: being introduced in your own culture by a "foreigner" in the language of that "foreigner". That will make him aware of the possible negative effects of his sincere intentions. When he is aware of his own ethnocentrism it will be easier for him to look at the ethnocentrism of the contents of his teaching, of his textbooks, etc. When we were talking about the activities on the first and the second level of multicultural education, we were also talking about knowledge and skills that the teacher needs. But for the promotion of mutual understanding the values of the teacher are at issue, for mutual understanding demands from the teachers (and their trainers) a certain attitude and that makes it much more difficult to prepare teachers for multicutural education. Promoting mutual understanding does not only have to do with cultural differences, but also with the fact that our classrooms (and society) are multiethnic and multiracial. The fight against racism nowadays involves much more than just protesting about anti-Semitism, apartheid and discrimination in other countries. We have to recognize the phenomena of racism in our own society, in our own institutions and in ourselves. I will resist the temptation to go into detail about ideas on multiracial education. You will find a lot of literature on this issue in England and in the United States. I only hope that it will be clear that the effective promotion of mutual understanding requires much more than simply giving lessons about cultures. Teacher trainers have to pay attention to racism.
4. Education for a multicultural society I come now to the fourth level. Up till now I have mentioned activities that can be undertaken by every teacher in every school. What he needs is expertise. (The expertise is unfortunately scarce, even in the institutes of teacher education. The number of people involved in multicultural education is relatively small. But I do not want to complain now.) The activities I have mentioned heretofore are all directed to the decent reception of children from cultural and ethnic minorities. If nothing else is done the
92
effect will be assimilation of minority group children. They will lose their identity and thereby all those activities will have hardly any positive results! Minority groups do not want to give up their cultural identity. In theory the government does not want a policy of assimilation either. In his policy plan the Minister of Education writes about integration and the enrichment of our own culture by the cultures of the minorities. Multicultural education cannot be left to teachers, teacher trainers and researchers. Political measures have to be taken, and that is the fourth level of multicultural education. On this level not only educational but also political arguments are in force. The organization of our society is under discussion! What kind of society do we have in mind? How serious do we take civil rights of minorities? How do we provide equal opportunities? How important are resolutions of the U.N. or the EC for us? How do we abolish the social disadvantages of minority groups? How do we educate teachers, social workers and executives from minority groups? Do we admit representatives from minority groups into our decision-making process? Up till now they have not had any say in the matters of multicultural education. Do we give them not only the right but also the opportunity to maintain the language that they consider as their culture language and their culture? If we do, how do we integrate activities in this field into the curriculum of our schools? All these questions cannot be answered by teachers and teacher trainers. The authorities have to give the answers. I shall give two examples of issues on which the authorities have to make decisions before anything can be done in teacher education: 1. The education of teachers of minority groups. 2. The opportunity for education in the minority groups' own languages. In my opinion the success of multicultural education is conditional on suitable provision being made in both areas. Dutch teachers have to cooperate with teachers from minority groups. The composition of the staff must reflect the population of the school. For minority children it is important that they can identify with teachers from their own groups. Therefore it is necessary for the government to make provision for students from those groups in institutions for teacher education. Besides this, it is important for all our students that they learn during their training to cooperate with colleagues from minorities. The second issue, the teaching of mother languages of minority groups, will only be effective when the teachers are trained in our institutes. Up till now no such provision has been made. Education pretends to prepare young people for functioning in society. When society changes, education too has to change (by definition!). The distinguishing mark of the fourth level of multicultural education is that it is another type of education, not only an addition to the existing educational practice but another approach altogether. Another salient point is that the teacher must be aware of the political implications of his work. This awareness also qualifies his work on the three previous levels. Therefore, the curriculum in the institutes for teacher education must contain activities that will give him a deeper understanding of the society in which he is going to teach. The four levels of activities in multicultural education that I have described are all
93 important with the understanding that one cannot restrict oneself to only one level. If teachers restrict themselves to discussions about what the authorities have to do, they do wrong to their students. If they limit their activities to second language teaching, they will not educate successful teachers. The levels are lined up with each other. I hope that the differentiation that I have made can serve as a framework for development of a curriculum that will prepare our students for multicultural education.
9 A checklist of variables affecting curriculum design CHARLES H. BIATCHFORD
While many teachers of a second language (Lj) are handed a syllabus to follow for a particular course and others from experience know what to teach because of the exam to be given, there are still others who have to plan their own course syllabus or even plan a curriculum for several levels of instruction. Just as there can be no pat answer to the question of what the best method of teaching is, there can also be no universal specifications for the best course outline. The "best" course or program is one that accounts for and is responsive to the variables of the learner, the teacher, and the setting in light of what is known from research studies in language teaching, learning, and acquisition. The particular constellation of variables may augur what the right course to follow is, and ideally it is only each teacher or planner who is in the position to determine what plan to follow for his or her own class. The purpose of this paper is to provide a listing of many variables which can be considered in realistically assessing conditions and arriving at a right curriculum for a particular school or class. That constellation may not be appropriate for other schools or classes where the variables are dissimilar. This listing departs from systems analysis and provides no easy flow chart depicting raw material sucked in at one end and a finished product extruded from the other. Such scientizing does not work, at least for me, when the number of variables is as enormous as it is in a school setting; further, a model often becomes too inflexible expecially in view of the fact that the constellation of variables is constantly changing and the make-up of each factor is constantly evolving; and finally, when the "raw material" is human beings, I find it inimical to become too objective. Ultimately, the decisions are, or should be, determined by the human judgment and humane wisdom of the people who have considered the variables. A further purpose of this paper is to allow those responsible for instruction to feel that when they have honestly pondered and taken action, they are on the right track toward providing the learners with success in learning. The paper does not presuppose that there is an ideal configuration of variables, that a particular method is predicated, or that some variables should be changed. Rather it presupposes that in any setting certain variables must be acknowledged and accepted as givens. The trouble I find in listing these variables (which are given in the form of questions) is that the suggestion is made that they are either positive or negative and the reader may assume that he can do nothing if something implied to be desirable is absent or if something implied to be pejorative is present. The challenge lies in doing more than what is thought possible within the parameters each situation manifests. A variable which is in one.place a
96 seeming obstacle to learning may well be a facilitator in another. The existence of certain variables should neither be a cause for despair nor a cause for smugness, for any course can be improved. The point is that the existence or lack of a particular variable should not be used as a handy excuse for poor language instruction, but rather that it should be met head-on and discussed openly. A teacher or administrator working alone may be powerless, but if a teacher can talk with another or if a group meeting can be called for open discussion of thorny problems, a united effort may dispel anxiety over a problem and it may then not be as impossible to solve. Pretending that something is not there will not make it go away; acknowledging it may dispel the anxiety it causes. The checklist has been designed from my experience with the teaching of English as a second language, but the same questions maybe applied in other teaching fields as well. Further, the questions are put down with the risk of being accused of discrimination, or even invasion of privacy. That is not the intent. Such knowledge may be crucial in some cultures. For example, why does one need to investigate the question of race or sex of teacher? While in the United States one would like to think it does not make any difference, in other cultures a female teacher may be completely unacceptable to a group of male students of a certain age. The focus of the questions may provide some trouble; it may not be clear whether the questions are asked in order to implement a curriculum, or in order to assess a situation in order to plan a curriculum. Ignore the questions inappropriate to your task. Further, it may not be clear whether the checklist will be used by an administrator, a teacher, or a materials writer. I have not separated the questions because in many settings, one person may be acting in all three roles. Ignore those that are inapplicable. Caveat. With respect to assessment, this checklist is not intended to be used as an administrator's means of judging teachers. Any such use would constitute a misuse from my point of view. The questions which follow fall within three main categories-variables concerning the learner ( 1), the teacher ( 2), and the setting ( 3-15). Some questions may seem obvious; others irrelevant, but all are included in order to make this checklist as useful to as many different conditions as possible, and in order to spark the reader's own recall of variables which influenced the success, failure, or modification of his own curriculum design. 1 1. 2. 34. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Learner variables
What is the learner's age? What is the state of the learner's physical, mental, and emotional health? Does the learner have any physical handicaps (e.g., deafness, nearsightedness)? What is the learner's language background? What is the learner's cultural background? What is the learner's literacy level in his native language? What is the learner's present facility in Lj? How many years has the learner studied L,? Have those years been in sequence, and in what intensity? 9. What expectations about learning does he bring from past experience?
97 10. 11. 12. 1314. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 3334. 35. 36.
2.
What expectations about learning does he bring from hearsay? What are the learner's particular attitudes toward school? What are the learner's particular attitudes toward language learning? What are the learner's particular attitudes toward this L,? What are the learner's particular attitudes toward teachers? What other language learning experience has the learner had? What is the learner's social status-or that of his family? What is the learner's socio-economic status-or that of his family? What is the learner's religious background? What is the learner's sex, and feelings toward people of the same or different sex? What is the learner's race and nationality? What is the learner's physical and social environment? What are the learner's life goals? What are the learner's goals in studying Lj? What are the salient personality traits of the learner? What types of learning strategies does the learner use? What are the learner's hobbies and special talents? What are the learner's special needs? What are the learner's extracurricular activities? What is the learner's general life experience? Is the learner aware of any applicable "student rights"? What is the learner's IQ? What is the learner's academic performance to date? Is the learner a good student, a trouble-maker, etc.? actually? reputedly? What is the learner's proficiency in other subjects? What is the learner's motivation regarding learning Lj?
Teacher variables
1. What kind of teaching experience has the teacher had? (e.g., language or other subject matter, in what kind of school, with a class or private tutoring, etc.). 2. What is the teacher's rapport with learners in and out of class? 3. What is the teacher's professional knowledge of the field of language teaching? 4. Is the teacher a native speaker of the Lj being taught? 5. What is the teacher's proficiency and knowledge of the learners' native language(s)? 6. What is the teacher's attitude toward learners in general? 7. What is the teacher's family status? 8. What is the teacher's life experience and world view? 9- What is the teacher's life style (socially, politically, religiously)? 10. What is the salary or wages for the teacher's position? 11. What additional benefits (e.g., accommodations, health, retirement) does the position offer?
98 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 3. 1. 2. 34. 5. 6. 7. 8. 910. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
What is the teacher's morale? Does the teacher work full-time or part-time at this job? What is the teacher's work load, including other duties? Does the teacher have job security? What is the status of teachers in this society? What are the conditions under which this teacher works with regard to teacher-teacher, teacher-student, and teacher-administration relations? Is the teacher's work evaluated? What is the teacher's philosophy of language teaching with regard to theory, approach, methods and techniques? What abilities does the teacher have in using instructional aids? What abilities does the teacher have to adapt to new situations? What aspects of imaginative teaching does the teacher demonstrate? What is the teacher's interest in being a teacher? What outside pressures from.administration, parents and community are there for the teacher to conform to? Is the teacher professionally au courant? Are the teacher's objectives and aims consistent with the learners'? Is the teacher interested in professional self-improvement? What are the teacher's attitudes toward the text materials he uses? How much freedom does the teacher have in selecting texts, materials, etc.?
Setting variables - The School
Is the school private, public, government-subsidized? Is the school religious or secular? How many grades does it have? Is it a profit-making or non-profit-making institution? Is it licensed or accredited? What are its tuition fees? In what district of the city or town is it located? Is its budget for instruction adequate? What are its physical plant facilities? What is the size of its student body, faculty and staff? What are the criteria for admission of students? What are the criteria for selection of faculty? What is the school's reputation? What are the school's broad educational goals and type of curriculum? What are the school's standards for dismissal of students? What is the school's policy on class size, the examination system, and whether learning a second language counts for success or failure? 17. What is the medium of instruction in the school? 18. Is there parental involvement in the school? 19.
99 4.
Setting variables - The L^ Class
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 910. 11. 12. 1314. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.
What is the number of students in the class? What is the teacher-student ratio? What time does the class meet? How many hours of class meetings are there per week? What is the level of proficiency of the class? What are the ages of the learners? What is the experience of the teacher? What are the expectations of the teacher and the learners? What kind of learner-learner relationship is there? What is the nationality of the teacher and of the learners? What is the sex of the learners and of the teacher? What is the attitude of the class toward learning Are there physically handicapped learners in the class? What is the length of class-time? What is the length of the course? What materials are available to the class? What is the level of class participation? What is the educational, occupational, and cultural make-up of the class? What is the race of the class? What is the race of the teacher? What is the immediate objective of the class? Is the native language of the students homogeneous? Is the L, taught bilingually?
5.
Setting variables - The Course
1. 2. 34. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
Is the course elective or required? Is it related to other subjects taught in Lj, if any are? Where does this course fit in the school's language curriculum? Does the teacher of this course teach other levels of L¡? Does this course place emphasis on a particular language skill? Is this course coordinated with other sections of the same course? Does this course require the use of I? outside of class? Does this course encourage participation in extra-curricular activities, e.g., an Lj club, a multi-cultural club? What in the relationship between the teacher of this course and the teachers of other language and non-language courses? Does the course give credit? Is the course drawn up by the government or set by the school? Where does the L, course fell departmentally?
100
6. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 910. 11.
Setting variables - Other Course Offerings What is the range of other I? courses in the school? What is the medium of instruction in other non-language courses? What is the enrolment in other courses? What proportion of the school budget is given to y Are other courses in Lj required or optional? How many other courses in are offered, and how many levels? Does the school schedule accommodate a student interested in studying several courses in this L, concurrently? What is the orientation of courses (e.g., specific skill, literature, conversation, tailor-made program)? Can a learner arrange for individual work with a teacher as a course? What are the criteria for entering and leaving a course? Are other course offerings advertised to students?
12.
7. 1. 2. 34. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
Setting variables - The Texts and Materials How available are classroom texts? Is there a choice in the class text? Who chooses the class text? Is the text bilingual? Is the text compatible with the learner's educational goals? Is the text compatible with the learners' culture? What is the quality of the texts and materials used (e.g., are they well-written, durable, readable, current, accurate)? Is there politics, propaganda, or morality in the texts? Are the texts practical to use? Do the materials reflect a bias toward a particular mode of learning? Are the learners interested by the text? Do the texts meet learners' psychological needs? Are the texts compatible with the teacher's methodology? Are the texts easily adaptable or subvertible? Are the texts the learners' or the school's property? What is the format of the lessons? What is the price of the books? Are workbooks or supplementary materials available and are they consumable? Are commercial packages of materials (films, tapes, workbooks, texts) available and utilized? What is the condition, quantity, security, and relation to instructional goals, of general achievement tests?
101
8.
Setting variables - Instructional Aids and Realia
Songs, music, records, tapes, radio, TV, videotape, pictures, flashcards, magazines, posters, newspapers, advertisements, objects, field trips, penpals, I^-speaking visitors, language lab, blackboard, bulletin board, films, cartoons. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Which of these is available to supplement learning from the text? When available, does the teacher make relevant use of any? What is the teacher's facility with equipment? What is the administration's attitude toward use of equipment? What is the learners' attitude toward use of these aids? Does the teacher use these aids with variety?
9.
Setting variables - The Budget
1. 2. 34. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
What is the source of funding? Is the budget subject to political vogue on local, state/provincial, or national levels? What is the actual amount of money and is it adequate? What is the amount of tuition? Are Lj classes self-sustaining? revenue-producing? or deficit-making for the school? To whom is one accountable, and what is the basis of accountability? Who makes up the budget for L, classes? Is there outside control of how the budget is spent? Does the school receive donations of books or materials? Is the school eligible for and does it receive grants from agencies such as UN1CEF or UNESCO or foundations? Is there scholarship aid for students? Is there a fund for extracurricular activities such as trips? What is the economic state of the greater community? To what extent are L, classes responsible for expenditures for personnel, plant maintenance, direct student subsidies? Are the health and welfare of the students and staff part of the budget? Is there a self-supporting local program, e.g., baking, gardening, printing, in the school for producing revenue? Where do I^ priorities lie within the educational system?
11. 12. 1314. 15. 16. 17. 18.
10. Setting variables - The Library 1. Is there funding for a library collection of I^ books? 2. Is there a physical space for a library? How much study area, reference area, lounge area?
102
3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 910. 11. 12. 1314. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19-
Is the library available to students and faculty? Is the library open during school hours only, or after hours? What is the size of the collection? Is the library staff voluntary, paid, or professional? Is there a cataloguing system? Who selects the books? Must acquisitions be approved by the administration? Is it a lending library? Are other libraries available to students outside of school? Is the library multilingual or monolingual, in the language of the community or in the language of study? Does the library contain texts used in class? Is the L, level of the books compatible with the school level? Does the library contain audio-visual and other educational aids, e.g., mimeograph, paper, tapes? How secure is the library collection? Are students trained in the use of the library? Is there provision for maintenance of the books? What is the attitude of the public toward libraries? Are donations made to the library?
20.
11. Setting variables - Policy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 1314. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
Who governs the school? Are teachers or students or parents involved in any policy decisions? Are the policy-makers responsive to student needs? Is the policy of the school dependent upon public politics? What are the school's objectives? What are the objectives of the I^ program? Are the policy-makers the same as the budget makers? Who determines the minimum and maximum size of classes? Who reponds to demands of students, of teachers, of parents, of the community? Is there a tradition at the school or in the community about how education is done, which affects the conduct of Lj classes? What are the school's grading policies? What are the school's policies on discrimination? What are the school's policies on L, teaching? What are the school's policies on streaming or grouping students? What are the school's policies on homework? What are the school's policies on experimental teaching? What are the school's policies on further education of teachers? How rigid are the policies stated above? Who can propose changes, and how complicated is the mechanism?
103 12. Setting variables - The Physical Plant 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 910. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.
How much space is there in the school building for L^ activity? Are the classrooms secure? What safety equipment is there in the school? Who takes care of the rooms and how well? Are the classrooms uniform? What other facilities are there, e.g., library, cafeteria, auditorium, gymnasium, bookstore? How are classrooms furnished, movable or fixed furniture, tables, desks and seats as a unit or separable, portable or permanent blackboard? Is there storage space? Is there air conditioning and heating? Are the buildings permanent or temporary? Is there provision for adequate maintenance? Are the classrooms aesthetically pleasing? Do teachers have their own classrooms? How are classrooms assigned? What utilities are available in the classrooms? What is the amount of space provided for teachers' offices or desks? Was the building designed with the climate in mind? E.g., are there desirable morning classrooms which become intolerable in the afternoon? Does outside noise render a classroom impossible for conversation?
13- Setting variables - Climate 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
What is the range of temperature and humidity? Are there seasonal fluctuations in the climate? What is the amount of snow, rainfall, wind, sunshine, dust, sand? What is the altitude? What is the geographical location? What are the hours of daylight? Do tides affect scheduling?
8.
14 1. 2. 34. 5.
Setting variables - The Community What is the value system of the community? Is the community large or small? Is there community reinforcement of the L/bilingual program? How do economic conditions in the community affect the Lj/bilingual program? Are there racial, religious, and language (dialect) differences in the community?
104 6. To what extent are parents concerned about L^bilingualism? 7. To what extent has education become a bureaucracy? 8. What opportunities are there in the community for Lj acquisition, compared with L, learning in the school? 9.
15. Setting variables - The Nation 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Is the nation advanced or developing? Is it industrial, agricultural, commercial? Where does education lie in its national priorities? Where does bilingualism lie in relation to nationalistic feelings? What is the economic condition of the nation? What is the linguistic character of the nation? What are the prevalent moral values vis-a-vis education? What is the nation's history as far as colonialism is concerned?
10
Teacher-child-parent interaction ALLENE GROGNET
There are two different ways to approach the main themes of this conference: in long range terms (planning how the world ought to be) and short term goals. Both are needed, but in this presentation I will address only the short term goals - immediate action for affecting interaction between parents and schools. I wish, I could come before you with the results of research studies which give us insights into both programmatic and policy decisions. I cannot. There has been only one longitudinal study of parental interaction in bilingual education, and the results are far from conclusive. They mainly tell us what we already know anecdotally: that interaction between parent and teacher in minority language situations is not good, if present at all. What follows will be a look at some of the problems, and a discussion of one solution: adult competency-based ESL "parenting" education. First we must consider the expectations adults have of each other and of the child. What follows is meant to be typical and not all inclusive. The American teacher in an American school expects of the child that he/she will learn, will question, will participate in the classroom, and will, to some extent become American. The teacher expects of the parent (both majority and minority) to prompt the child toward good study habits, question the teacher about the child's performance (however, not the teacher's performance), and participate in parent-teacher functions. On the other hand, the minority parents expect of their child that he/she will be attentive in school and learn, will be obedient and not question the teacher; and wiU not, to a large extent, become American. The parents expect of the teacher that the teacher will teach, will inform the parents if the student is not behaving, and will no? expect the parents to participate in the school, or the educational life of their childeren. Obviously there are conflicts inherent in these differing expectations. It is usually the child who gets caught in the middle, and gets tossed between these conflicts. In school, the child is expected to move, as quickly as possible, to behave like the majority child. (I am assuming here that the minority child is also a minority in the school, and not a majority in the school as in parts of Texas, California or New York.) In the family, the child is expected to fulfill traditional roles, while venturing out in the larger culture for educational and sometimes economic gains. Not only is the child operating in a tension created by his family and schoolrules, but
106 he himself is in cultural transition just by the fact that he is not growing up with all the traditional support structures of his homeland. Most often, these children would be as uncomfortable in their (or parents') country of origin, as they are in their new environment. It is obvious, then that both the parent and the teacher must change some behavior patterns if the child is to be helped toward educational maturity. The teacher must understand, either through pre- or in-service training, or first hand experience the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of their minority students. Contrastive analyses of minority languages with English, and minority cultures with American values and systems, are scant, and are only available in bits and pieces. Teachers can ferret these out, and while it is important to do this, it would probably be easier to experience first hand, the cultural environs of the students. The most desirable would be a good crosscultural training program, with adequate materials and experiential knowledge. It is important that the teacher gains a sense of the school from the parents' point of view, so her intervention with the child can be more closely allied with the parents' expectation of child behavior in school. The school also has an obligation to use the parents' native language in informing them about the schoolprograms and educational policies. Not only is it important to use the home language, but it must also be done in traditional information imparting styles, and must be given orally as well as in writing. This means that the school must employ, if only on a part-time basis, bilingual/bicultural personnel to act as a go-between or rather "bringer-together" of the home and school. While I feel the major burden must be placed on the school, the parents must move too. If the school takesfivesteps to approach the parents, the parents must take at least two to move a little closer to the school. One way for parents to participate more fully in their child's education (and indeed participate in educational policy) is for the parents to be able to communicate, however haltingly, in English. While English language learning has in the past been a painfully long process for the non-academic adult, this is no longer true. In an attempt to meet the diverse needs of non-academic adult students, programs in adult ESP ( = English for Special Purposes, Eds.) have evolved. At least six program models for adult ESP were identified and described in a small, national working conference which brought together adult ESL ( = English as Second Language, Eds.) teachers and program administrators who had grappled with the problems of curriculum development for L, students ( = Second Language Students, Eds.). The participants identified commonalities of effective adult program design but more important, specified the distinctive features of adult ESL program offerings. The six program models are: 1. Survival/Coping Skills ESL 2. Literacy ESL 3- Prevocational ESL 4. Basic Skills/GED ESL
107 5. Vocational ESL/VESL 6. Home Management ESL We will discuss each of these briefly and then illustrate how they can be integrated into a competency-based curriculum. The first is the program which was most widespread: Survival/Coping Skills ESL Although there were few texts which addressed this area, programs were forced to provide basic survival ESL. Survival ESP is the English an adult needs to be able to survive in the United States: the English of getting a job, enrolling children in school, managing a bank account, buying food, clothing the family, taking care of medical needs, and so forth. It is essentially the language that is needed to function in the various settings in the U.S. Survival ESL attempts to teach only minimal skills, or minimal competencies in an effort to help adults to cope at a basic level. The emphasis is on getting by, not on producing grammatically perfect and descriptive sentences. (Instead of "I need ten pounds of rice," just "rice, please" or "big bag rice" are sufficient). The second program model is Literacy ESL, which evolved to meet the needs of the large numbers of Hmong, Mien, Haitians and other pre- and non-literate groups who have come to the United States recently. We have probably had non-literates in our adult ESL classes for many years, but only recently have we designed many ESL programs specifically for them. These programs also teach survival skills, but with an important distinction: they first address what it means to be a student, and what it means to read, write and compute. (Literacy here includes numeracy). Many adult ESL programs realized that in grouping students, previous education was a more criticial factor than the level of English proficiency. Having been students, knowing what is expected of them, and being able to read and write, are more important criteria for placing people in the ESL classroom than the amount of English they know. For a country that has done so little formal literacy training, we are having to learn fast how to do it, and to integrate it into second language classes. The third model to be considered is Prevocational ESL, also called General Occupational ESL It teaches the English people need to get a job, to keep a job, and to advance in a job. These are not job-specific but rather generalizable skills; i.e. being able to read want ads, to understand signs on windows that say "Help Wanted", to ask and answer basic questions about a job, to identify one's qualifications, to fill out a job application form, and finally to understand fringe benefits, pay checks, time clocks, work and safety rules, etc. In addition to teaching the necessary English skills, this program also provides an introduction to the world of work and the American work ethic and clarifies concepts such as upward mobility and the American tradition of working and studying simultaneously. The fourth model is the Basic Skills/GED ESL This may be a carryover from the more traditional Adult Basic Education (ABE/ESL) ESL, preparing people to go beyond their limited formal education, generally to get a GED, or to get into a two-year college. Basic Skills ESL provides adults not only with the reading, writing and oral language skills necessary to compete as students, but also with computational skills. Although this model has been in existence the longest, in some ways it is the least clearly defined, perhaps because it comes closest to Adult Basic Education in general and to general ESL
108 preparation. There are also no special GED/ESL textbooks; instead programs use a GED preparation text and a general ESL text and hope somehow these two will be compatible. The fifth program model is Vocation ESL, VESL, or Occupation-specific ESL. This is the one that traditional ESP practitioners, people who work in English courses for doctors and engineers or for other professionals, recognize as ESP. The difference in this case, of course, is that the focus in VESL is on semi-skilled or skilled occupations. These include electronics assembly, welding, carpentry, auto-body repair, upholstery, clerical, cosmetology, and some of the health care para-professional areas such as practical nursing or respiratory therapy. VESL tries to do two things; to teach the English which is needed for vocational training and, also, the English needed to do the job. These are not necessarily the same. In fact, often the English needed for vocational training is more complex than that required to actually perform on the job, expecially in reading and writing skills. The sixth model is Home Management ESL, which is intended primarily for women or the elderly (of both sexes) who are homebound. The purposes of such an ESL focus range from helping people to defend themselves in their home, being able to answer the telephone or report an emergency, and being able to do the few tasks that are required outside of the home which includes interaction with school if they are parents. In reference to the latter, women usually acquire principal responsibility for enrolling children in school; thus they need to understand their role as it relates to the teacher and the American school system. Some of the more innovative Adult ESP programs are those that are helping women who are terrified of going out into the community to progressively move outside of the home until finally they feel competent in using the bus system, going shopping, going to their children's school and eventually in presenting themselves at some center where they can continue their education. Often Home Management ESL courses are held in people's homes or in apartment houses, where women do not have to worry about child care and where they are in a familiar setting. These six different program models, and others have demanded that ESL professionals refocus and reorganize curricula, not to mention develop and publish a whole new set of texts, materials, and tests. This has occurred while Adult Basic Education was in general becoming increasingly competency-based. It is not surprising then, that adult ESP curricula would develop into competency statements, breaking language learning down into manageable and immediately meaningful chunks. What is a competency-based curriculum? It is a performance-based outline of language tasks which leads to a demonstrated mastery of the language of basic life skills, or vocational skills, or prevocational skills, etc., necessary for individuals to function proficiently in the society in which they are living. Several factors led to the development of specialized adult ESL competency-based curricula. During the 70's a number of relevant trends from within the field of language and linguistics itself and within the broader field of adult education converged and contributed to the formulation of competency-based curricula in adult ESL. Within the field of adult learning theory, Malcolm Knowles, among others, stressed the importance of making all adult instruction learner-centered, of treating the adult as someone with a complex set of responsibilities, needs and goals, involving social, political, economic and religious roles. Knowles saw that all effective training depended to a great extent on
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