Many presume bilingual education can level the academic playing field for English learners, but one °”TV professor calls foul on current practices.
In a new paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association on April 20, education professor Chris Faltis argues that âcolorblindâ approaches to multilingualism in education mask agendas that privilege the dominant, or âwhitestream,â culture.
Drawing upon research first done by Jodi Melamed of Marquette University, Faltis argues that scholarship on bilingual education during the past 25 years has âstrategically erased raceâ from bilingual education. In its place is âcoded language that bilingual education serves mainly poor, Spanish-speaking children and youth; children of undocumented parents; and brown people.â
Racial beliefs about Hispanic children accepted as social reality
Because many bilingual programs are cast as a means âto close the achievement gap between white and Hispanic children,â according to Faltis, the false notion that race and academic achievement are causally linked gets perpetuated. âWhen bilingual education is presented this way, racial beliefs about Hispanic children are accepted as a social reality.â
Worse still, Faltis says research and practices in bilingual education âignore the role of social language in learning, destroying local language practices in bilingual communities,â and positioning academic English as superior to Spanish.
âWhile there are arguments for using color-blindness as a promising approach to advocate for bilingual education,â said Faltis, âin the long run, erasing race from bilingual education scholarship ultimately enables racism to fester and racial injustice to persist.â
Faltis offers an alternative âRace Radical Visionâ that resists race-erased âofficial anti-racist policies and programsâ and places greater value on the ability of local language communities to advocate for social justice and resist racist language and practices.
Faltis is presenting âChallenging Race Erased Perspectives of Language in Whitestream Bilingual Education: Toward a Race Radical Visionâ at the annual meeting of the AERA in Chicago today.
Media Resources
Karen Nikos-Rose, Research news (emphasis: arts, humanities and social sciences), 530-219-5472, kmnikos@ucdavis.edu
Donna Justice, School of Education, (530) 754-4826, dljustice@ucdavis.edu