Choosing The Radical Middle

Charles Glenn examines the issues at stake in schooling language minority students.

Amid all the claims and counter-claims about bilingual education and other approaches to serving language-minority students, many of those working directly in schools and classrooms have arrived at a position that I like to call "the radical middle."

Those in the radical middle put their emphasis above all on good teaching that takes into account the special challenges faced by those learning a second language. They are glad to use the home language as a support if there are staff who speak it, and they encourage their students to use both of their languages - talking, reading, writing. They focus on academic progress without letting themselves be diverted into fascinating cultural by-ways, but they show respect for and curiosity about the heritages of their students, and the ways in which families adapt their cultural habits and assumptions to the new circumstances to which they are adapting.

In short, the "radical middle" position is open and pragmatic. It recognizes the almost infinite variety among language-minority students. After all, they differ in all the ways in which majority students differ: in motivation, intelligence, home support, gender, special needs, and so forth. In addition, some language-minority students who are immigrants reach our schools with excellent academic preparation, while others have had no schooling at all. Some don't know a word of English, while others speak it fluently if not always accurately. The first language of some, and its writing system, is related to English, while for others these differ greatly from English. One could go on.

Catherine Snow and others have pointed out that there is a continuum of need and of language development which includes, at some point, every student in school and indeed every one of us. Since this is self-evidently true, it would make much more sense to abandon the labeling and educational segregation of some language-minority students on the basis of an arbitrary cut-off point.

My study of a dozen nations with large numbers of immigrant children found that only in some American states and in some highly-controversial programs in Sweden is it considered appropriate to educate these children separately from the majority for a number of years (5 to 7 is now often recommended), using a language that is not that of the school for academic instruction.

In most industrialized societies, students who do not have oral proficiency in the language of the school are typically placed in a transitional program for a year - seldom more - of intensive instruction in the language of the host society, then integrated into regular classes.

This is not, it should be stressed, intended to be a "sink or swim" strategy, though of course one can find neglectful and inept schools in any country and any program type. Generally, in other countries, language-minority students receive on-going support by specialists as they participate in regular classes, and also may participate in programs to maintain their home language and culture.

Why this insistence upon speedy integration? It is in part based upon the experience that the longer that integration of immigrant children is delayed, the more difficult it is to accomplish, as they settle into "outsider" habits and attitudes. It is also because educational segregation is more harmful to language-minority students than to any of the groups we have worked so hard to integrate__special needs students, black students, female students. Language-minority students have a compelling need to be with peers for whom English is the first language if they are to learn the language well.

They also have a compelling need to be exposed to the same educational content and held to the same standards as other students. Too often they are instead subjected to "Jim Crow" educational standards that almost guarantee that they will not be able to participate in secondary and higher education on equal terms.

Blame for these separate but unequal expectations must be shared by educational progressives and conservatives alike. Progressives have recoiled from holding language-minority children to expectations which seem culturally insensitive and threatening to their self-esteem; this has led to bilingual education becoming a sort of comforting cultural bubble-bath for too many students who deserve to be challenged instead.

Conservatives, on the other hand, have sometimes focused so single-mindedly on the acquisition of English that other academic objectives are neglected. Even as a technique for teaching English, this is unwise: proficiency in a language is developed by using it for real tasks, tasks which matter, such as mastering academic materials, not by artificial exercises.

The fundamental mistake made by both sides in the debate over educating language-minority children is to focus on language rather than education as the central issue. Effective education can be provided either through use of the home language or through "structured immersion" in the language of the school.

This conclusion is supported by the National Research Council's study on 35 years of evidence on the teaching of language-minority children. The NRC report concludes that we don't know, despite countless research studies and evaluations, that one approach is clearly superior to the other. "It is clear," they note, that many children first learn to read in a second language without serious negative consequences. These include children in early-immersion, two-way, and English as a second language (ESL)-based programs in North America, as well as those in formerly colonial countries that have maintained the official language [of the colonizer] as the medium of instruction, immigrant children in Israel, children whose parents opt for elite international schools, and many others. The high literacy achievement of Spanish-speaking children in English-medium programs all feature carefully-designed direct literacy instruction, which suggests that even children from low-literacy homes can learn to read in a second language if the risk associated with poor instruction is eliminated.

Later in the report, indeed, the authors conclude candidly that "We do not yet know whether there will be long-term advantages or disadvantages to initial literacy instruction in the primary language versus English, given a very high-quality program of known effectiveness in both cases."

Those who hold to the "radical middle" insist that the emphasis should be upon ensuring that whichever method is chosen in particular circumstances, it is implemented by competent teachers following a demanding curriculum and with accountability for clear and measurable results. There are concrete measures which make a difference:
First, the principal and teachers in each school should be responsible for planning and implementing the education of all the students in that school, with broad discretion about the instructional methods and language that they use. Since development of both oral and written language is a continuous process alongside the other tasks of schooling, only those directly involved with students should be diagnosing what each needs at a particular time and prescribing the challenges and the support which will best meet those needs. Only those working in the school can develop an effective combination of integration for common tasks and separation for special help.

To make this possible, state and federal programs to support the education of language-minority students should not prescribe teaching methods or language used, but should hold schools accountable for the measurable, steady progress of these students in all required academic subjects.
Second, this can be accomplished only if teachers and school administrators receive specific training in strategies for language development, including how to diagnose and prescribe for the needs of language-minority students. We do not need a lot more research to determine what the necessary skills are.

There is widespread agreement about good practices that promote language development; we should be teaching them to every teacher and administrator, not just to those who are preparing to work in separate bilingual programs.

The interests of language-minority children will be best served by schools which are effective for other students as well, schools that are free to problem-solve for every student without programmatic pre-conditions, and are held accountable for results rather than for procedures.

Such a strategy of school-level freedom and accountability requires, third, that language-minority students be included in all assessments of academic progress. In some limited instances this will appropriately be done through assessment in their home language, but the great difficulty of making assessments in different languages comparable, and the implicit message that students are not expected to demonstrate proficiency in English, creates a danger of returning to "Jim Crow" standards for them. In general, it is preferable to assess language-minority students through English, while making allowances in how we report and make use of the results.

Since schools will choose different strategies for language-minority students, it is appropriate that their parents be allowed to choose among schools. For some, the maintenance and development, in a school setting, of the home language will be much more important than it will be for others. Surveys have found, again and again, that Latino parents tend to want the school to help maintain their children's Spanish (though not at the expense of time devoted to English), while Asian and other language-minority parents prefer to do that at home or through after-school community programs. Parents should be able to opt for a school which supports their own educational goals.

Finally, it would be an enrichment of our schools to imitate the generous practice of other countries and provide elective and supplemental–not transitional–language support in a variety of languages to students whose parents speak those languages . . . and also to students whose parents do not speak the languages but want their children to learn them. In place of the touchy-feely multicultural activities in so many of our schools, it would be much healthier for students of different ethnic backgrounds to tackle together the difficulties and the rewards of a language, and thus to learn from one another.

These measures will not satisfy the demands of those with an ideological stake in prescribing the language used in school, but they would ensure a focus upon what is most important to language-minority parents and to the future of their children, that they receive an effective education, free of segregation and of low expectations.

References: Diane August and Kenji Hakuta, Editors, Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda, Washington, DC: National Research Council, 1997.