Language, Power and Pedagogy

Bilingual Children in the Crossfire

Jim Cummins

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781847698445
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Population mobility is at an all-time high in human history. One result of this unprecedented movement of peoples around the world is that in many school systems monolingual and monocultural students are the exception rather than the rule, particularly in urban areas. This shift in demographic realities entails enormous challenges for educators and policy-makers. What do teachers need to know in order to teach effectively in linguistically and culturally diverse contexts? How long does it take second language learners to acquire proficiency in the language of school instruction? What are the differences between attaining conversational fluency in everyday contexts and developing proficiency in the language registers required for academic success? What adjustments do we need to make in curriculum, instruction and assessment to ensure that second-language learners understand what is being taught and are assessed in a fair and equitable manner? How long do we need to wait before including second-language learners in high-stakes national examinations and assessments? What role (if any) should be accorded students' first language in the curriculum? Do bilingual education programs work well for poor children from minority-language backgrounds or should they be reserved only for middle-class children from the majority or dominant group? In addressing these issues, this volume focuses not only on issues of language learning and teaching but also highlights the ways in which power relations in the wider society affect patterns of teacher–student interaction in the classroom. Effective instruction will inevitably challenge patterns of coercive power relations in both school and society.

Part 1

Theory as Dialogue

My purpose in writing this book is to link theory, research, policy, and practice as a means of contributing to the improvement of educational practice. I see the relationship between theory and practice as two-way and ongoing: practice generates theory, which, in turn, acts as a catalyst for new directions in practice, which then inform theory, and so on. Theory and practice are infused within each other. The role of researchers and policy-makers is to mediate this relationship. Research provides a lens through which practice can be seen and brought into focus for particular purposes and in particular contexts. Policy-makers interpret the research findings and set guidelines for practice on the basis of both the research and sociopolitical and fiscal realities.

Research can be carried out by ‘insiders’ or ‘outsiders’. Teachers, as inside participants in educational relationships, have the potential to ‘see inside’ these relationships; their ‘in-sights’ cannot be duplicated by those who gaze at these processes from the outside (e.g. typical university researchers). At the same time there are dimensions of issues and problems that are not apparent to those in the middle of a situation but potentially identifiable to those who are somewhat distanced from it.

Both insider and outsider perspectives are essential for understanding particular organizational situations and relationships. Dialogue that brings together what is seen from outside and what is felt from inside is necessary to articulate understandings. These understandings are always partial, and subject to expansion and refinement through further dialogue. Theory expresses this ongoing search for understanding. As such, theory itself is always dialogical. Just as oral and written language is meaningless outside of a human communicative and interpretive context, so too theory assumes meaning only within specific dialogical contexts. Shared understandings, assumptions, and conventions underpin both the generation of theory and its elaboration and refinement through dialogue. In this sense, theory is utterance rather than text (to borrow David Olson’s (1977) terms – see Chapter 3).¹

So what?

The ‘so what’ resides in the fact that the theory articulated in this volume does not stand as autonomous text. It has been elaborated through extended dialogue with educators and researchers in response to issues that have emerged in educational policy and practice during the past 25 years. Popular conceptions of ‘theory’ view it either as standing alone, aloof from and superior to practice, or alternatively, as being irrelevant to practice and the ‘real world’. It is common to hear ideas being dismissed as ‘just theory’ followed up by demands to just ‘show me the facts’. By contrast, I argue that it is theory rather than research (‘facts’) that speaks directly to policy and practice (see Chapter 8). It is theory that integrates observations and practices (‘facts’) into coherent perspectives and, through dialogue, feeds these perspectives back into practice and from practice back into theory. Theory addresses educational practice not only in the narrow sense of what happens in the classroom but also in terms of how classroom interaction is influenced by the societal discourses that surround educational practices. Theory can challenge inappropriate or coercive policies, practices, and associated discourses by pointing both to inconsistencies with empirical data and also to internal logical contradictions within these discourses. It can also propose alternative understandings of phenomena and chart directions for change.

Because their roots are in educational practice, the theoretical constructs in the present volume of necessity range across, and draw from, a number of disciplinary perspectives. The keys to unlock the secrets of human learning, of achievement and underachievement, are not to be found exclusively within the disciplines of psychology or sociology any more than within anthropology or applied linguistics. But each disciplinary perspective may bring certain aspects into focus, particularly when both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ research is considered.

Thus, the theoretical frameworks proposed in this volume are deliberately hybrid. Educational policy and practice in linguistically diverse contexts may be based on semi-articulated assumptions about the nature of human learning, and second language learning in particular. Theory and research within the disciplines of psychology and applied linguistics can speak to the validity of these assumptions. These disciplines, however, may contribute little to understanding the social roots of patently false assumptions about language learning and bilingualism and how these assumptions coagulate into coercive discourses designed to exclude bilingual children from educational opportunities. Understanding of these processes requires a focus on societal power relations and how they determine forms of educational organization (e.g. English-only submersion programs) and influence the mindset of goals and expectations that educators bring into the classroom.

Readers will read the text in whatever way they choose. What I can do is make clear the interpretive context within which I wrote the text. In the first place, the theoretical constructs highlighted in this volume and in most of my previous work have derived from educational practice. They respond to issues and concerns articulated by educators. The purpose of articulating these constructs has been to contribute to understanding the nature of educational practice and hopefully to change problematic practices for the better. For example, the initial impetus for making the distinction between basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) came from discussions with school psychologists who were concerned about the potential for bias in their own cognitive assessment practices with bilingual children. The analysis of more than 400 teacher referral forms and psychological assessments carried out by these psychologists revealed the consequences of conflating conversational fluency in English (L2) with proficiency in academic registers of English (Cummins, 1980, 1984).

A second consideration is that I make no claim regarding the absolute ‘validity’ of any of the theoretical constructs or frameworks in the book. I do claim that the theoretical constructs are consistent with the empirical data; however, they are not the only way of organizing or viewing the data. Theories frame phenomena and provide interpretations of empirical data within particular contexts and for particular purposes. They generate predictions that are, in principle, falsifiable. Thus, any theory or set of hypotheses must be consistent with the empirical data. If a theory is not consistent with the data, then it must be rejected, or refined to achieve that consistency. However, no theory is ‘valid’ or ‘true’ in any absolute sense. A theory represents a way of viewing phenomena that may be relevant and useful in varying degrees depending on its purpose, how well it communicates with its intended audience, and the consequences for practice of following through on its implications (its ‘consequential validity’). The collaborative dialogue that I hope this book continues is with educators and those concerned with education in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts. The book is intended to generate critical and constructive ‘talk back’, and activist collaboration, in the context of the shared goal of reducing discrimination and promoting learning opportunities for students who have been excluded and silenced in our schools.

A third point concerns the sociopolitical context within which these theoretical constructs have been generated. As we enter what has optimistically been called the ‘knowledge society’, we are bombarded with contradictory discourses about virtually every aspect of education (see Berliner & Biddle, 1995; Cummins & Sayers, 1995). Yesterday’s dogma is today’s heresy. These contradictions have been very evident with respect to policies and practices regarding the education of culturally and linguistically diverse students. In the United States, for example, diversity has been constructed as ‘the enemy within’, far more potent than any external enemy in its threat to the fabric of nationhood. Within this xenophobic discourse, Spanish–English bilingual education is seriously viewed (by reasonably intelligent people) as a potential catalyst for Quebec-style separation. It is also viewed by these same reasonably intelligent people as the cause of underachievement among bilingual students (despite the fact that only a small proportion of English language learners are in any form of bilingual education, as documented by Gándara, 1999).

While xenophobic discourse is broadcast loudly across the United States, it should also be remembered that the United States has probably the strongest legal protections (on paper) regarding equity in education of any country in the industrialized world. These legal protections provide potent tools for community groups to challenge discrimination in various spheres of education. The United States also has some of the most imaginative and successful bilingual programs of any country in the world (see Chapter 8). Certainly, there is far more imagination at work in promoting linguistic enrichment in education for non-dominant groups in the United States than is evident in its northern neighbour which, behind the facade of its prized ‘Canadian mosaic’, has largely constricted its educational imagination to providing for the linguistic interests of its two dominant anglophone and francophone groups.

Discourses regarding diversity, bilingualism, multiculturalism and their implications for education constitute the social context for the present volume. Bilingual children are truly caught in the crossfire of these discourses. Xenophobic discourse is broadcast into every classroom and constitutes the primary means through which coercive relations of power are enacted. This discourse constricts the ways in which identities are negotiated between teachers and students and the opportunities for learning that culturally and linguistically diverse students experience. The potency of the indoctrination process can be appreciated when a historian as eminent as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. makes the following observations about bilingualism and its consequences:

Bilingualism shuts doors. It nourishes self-ghettoization, and ghettoization nourishes racial antagonism. … Using some language other than English dooms people to second-class citizenship in American society. … Monolingual education opens doors to the larger world. … institutionalized bilingualism remains another source of the fragmentation of America, another threat to the dream of ‘one people’. (1991: 108–109)

The claims that ‘bilingualism shuts doors’ and ‘monolingual education opens doors to the wider world’, are laughable if viewed in isolation, particularly in the context of current global interdependence and the frequently expressed needs of American business for multilingual ‘human resources’. There is also an inexcusable abdication of intellectual responsibility in the fact that Schlesinger feels no need to invoke any empirical data to support his claims. As the data reviewed in this volume and many others illustrate, far from ‘shutting doors’, bilingualism is associated with enhanced linguistic, cognitive and academic development when both languages are encouraged to develop. Schlesinger simply assumes that ‘bilingualism’ means inadequate knowledge of English despite the fact that a simple one-minute consultations of any dictionary could have corrected his assumption. He also blithely stigmatizes the victim rather than problematizing the power structure in American society which, he asserts, dooms those who use some language other than English to second-class citizenship. He is presumably not against the learning of ‘foreign’ languages by native speakers of English, but he evades the obvious question of why bilingualism is good for the rich but bad for the poor.

Schlesinger’s comments become interpretable only in the context of a societal discourse that is profoundly disquieted by the fact that the sounds of the ‘other’ have now become audible and the hues of the American social landscape have darkened noticeably.²

Xenophobic discourses about linguistic and cultural diversity, exemplified in Schlesinger’s The Disuniting of America, express themselves differently in different social contexts. However, beneath the surface structure differences, these discourses generally serve the purpose of limiting the educational options that are seen as ‘reasonable’ for bilingual students from non-dominant groups. They make it more difficult for policy-makers to appreciate what the research is actually saying and to imagine educational initiatives that view linguistic and cultural diversity as individual and societal resources. The theoretical constructs in the present volume, derived from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, attempt to talk back to this discourse. The theory aims to provide educators and policy-makers with intellectual tools to understand the nature of the discourse on the education of bilingual children, to identify obvious internal contradictions in this discourse, and to construct a counter-discourse that simultaneously transcends and undermines the Us versus Them framework upon which xenophobia depends (see Chapter 9).

In the first chapter, I provide a sketch or a collage of recent incidents, debates, and problems from around the world which illustrate the concerns and confusions of educators and policy-makers charged with educating bilingual children. All of the issues sketched in this chapter are addressed either directly or indirectly in the present volume. The problematic assumptions that are rampant in contexts around the world (among both opponents and advocates of bilingualism and bilingual education) highlight both the relevance of theory and the urgency of theoretical coherence for policy and practice.

The issues sketched in the first chapter can be roughly grouped into the three major themes of the book:

• the relevance of power relations for understanding policy and practice in culturally and linguistically diverse educational contexts (Chapter 2);

• the ways in which ‘language proficiency’ is conceptualized and assessed in multilingual contexts and how policies and practices with respect to language teaching and testing are rooted in patterns of societal power relations (Chapters 3–6); and finally,

• the ongoing controversies regarding bilingualism and educational equity, specifically the potential of various forms of bilingual instruction to promote a transformative pedagogy that challenges patterns of coercive power relations in both the school and society (Chapters 7–10).

These issues range across a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives, from applied linguistics and cognitive psychology to sociology and sociolinguistics. Few volumes have attempted to bring this range of issues together within a unified and coherent theoretical perspective. The attempt at theoretical coherence in the present volume derives from the fact that the basic unit of analysis across all of the issues sketched above is the immediate interpersonal interaction between educator and student. What educators bring into the classroom reflects their awareness of and orientation to issues of equity and power in the wider society, their understanding of language and how it develops in academic contexts among bilingual children, and their commitment to educate the whole child rather than just teach the curriculum. To educate the whole child in a culturally and linguistically diverse context it is necessary to nurture intellect and identity equally in ways that, of necessity, challenge coercive relations of power.

In short, the starting point for the analysis in the present volume is the claim that interactions between educators and students represent the direct determinant of bilingual students’ success or failure in school. These interactions can be conceptualized coherently from within a single isolated disciplinary perspective (e.g. sociology); however, if change in educational practice is the goal of the analysis (a perspective implied by a dialogical approach to theory), an adequate conceptualization of teacher–student interactions requires an interdisciplinary analysis that draws on, and integrates, different disciplinary perspectives.

To illustrate, in Chapter 1, I note the fact that ‘superstar’ ice hockey goaltender Dominik Hasek announced his retirement (short-lived as it happened) in the summer of 1999, partly on the grounds that his son was forgetting his native Czech language as a result of growing up and being schooled in the United States. By itself, this may seem like a piece of trivia until it is placed in the context of research, such as that carried out by Lily Wong Fillmore (1991), showing that loss (or lack of continu...