新澳门六合彩内幕信息

Colorblind bilingual programs can perpetuate bias, study finds

Many presume bilingual education can level the academic playing field for English learners, but one 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis 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 鈥渃olorblind鈥 approaches to multilingualism in education mask agendas that privilege the dominant, or 鈥渨hitestream,鈥 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 鈥渟trategically erased race鈥 from bilingual education. In its place is 鈥渃oded language that bilingual education serves mainly poor, Spanish-speaking children and youth; children of undocumented parents; and brown people.鈥

Racial beliefs about Hispanic children accepted as social reality

Because many bilingual programs are cast as a means 鈥渢o close the achievement gap between white and Hispanic children,鈥 according to Faltis, the false notion that race and academic achievement are causally linked gets perpetuated. 鈥淲hen bilingual education is presented this way, racial beliefs about Hispanic children are accepted as a social reality.鈥

Worse still, Faltis says research and practices in bilingual education 鈥渋gnore the role of social language in learning, destroying local language practices in bilingual communities,鈥 and positioning academic English as superior to Spanish.

鈥淲hile there are arguments for using color-blindness as a promising approach to advocate for bilingual education,鈥 said Faltis, 鈥渋n the long run, erasing race from bilingual education scholarship ultimately enables racism to fester and racial injustice to persist.鈥

Faltis offers an alternative 鈥淩ace Radical Vision鈥 that resists race-erased 鈥渙fficial anti-racist policies and programs鈥 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 鈥淐hallenging Race Erased Perspectives of Language in Whitestream Bilingual Education: Toward a Race Radical Vision鈥 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

Secondary Categories

Society, Arts & Culture Education

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