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Editor’s note: Learning from home is hard enough but what if you are simultaneously learning the language of instruction? In this latest contribution to our series of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis, Elisabeth Barakos and Simone Plöger share how new arrival students in Hamburg, who are still learning German, their teachers, and the researchers themselves have adapted to the lock-down. The call for contributions to the series continues to be open.

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A preparatory class for newcomer students in Germany (Image credit: SZ)

Since 16^th March, schools in Germany have been closed and students need to learn from home. Learning from home is a huge challenge for many, especially recent arrivals. In Hamburg, newcomer students attend preparatory classes, where they learn German for about one year before being streamed into the monolingually oriented regular school system.

Like all other schooling, this preparatory German language learning is now supposed to take place from home. How are teachers, students, parents, and researchers adapting to these new circumstances?

Our research project – and how it has changed due to COVID-19

In January 2020 we started a research project to investigate the transitions from preparatory to mainstream classes in two secondary schools in Hamburg, with a particular focus on language learning. On the one hand, we focus on the language learning opportunities the schools implement for the students; on the other hand, we research students’ practices and experiences with a focus on how they can make use of the linguistic repertoires they bring to school.

When we started our project in January, we planned an exploration phase from March onward. The pandemic not only turned our participants’ lives upside down but also our field work plans at the school site. As our participants’ teaching and learning went virtual, so did we. We turned to methods from “virtual ethnography” (see e.g. Varis 2014) in order to get to know teachers and class contexts via emails, phone calls, and WhatsApp. This means that we use different communication spaces and digital ways in order to collect data. This way, our research continues, albeit virtually, as we adapt it to the new circumstances along with teachers, students, and parents. It also allows us to disseminate timely and novel findings on home schooling in preparatory classes during COVID-19.

Challenges of home learning faced by new arrival German language learners

Due to the school closures, the regular instruction in preparatory classes had to be changed to smartphone-based instruction. In one of our school sites, the German language teacher communicates mainly via frequent phone calls and chat groups on WhatsApp. The teacher differentiates the groups according to the students’ individual language level. Within the chats, she shares voice messages and uploads work sheets via link or photo. She also sends regular mail packages with additional learning material.

Unsurprisingly, this adaptation of teaching methods faces a number of challenges.

To begin with, the basic conditions for effective online communication are often lacking: for instance, students usually do not have their own email address; their access to computers at home is often non-existent or severely limited; mobile phones sometimes have to be shared with siblings; printing facilities are scarce and internet connections are often unreliable.

Second, communication and learning through WhatsApp-Chats and phone calls presents its own challenges. The smartphone screen is small and reading off a screen can be tiring. Furthermore, many students do not understand the task instructions as virtual explanations seem much more difficult to grasp than face-to-face ones. Teachers must therefore be highly creative when preparing lessons and adequate learning materials.

One teacher prepared this photo for students to practice prepositions

To exemplify: In order to practice prepositions and vocabulary about the topic of “home”, the teacher took photos of various objects and furniture from her own kitchen. She then sent the photos to the WhatsApp-Chat and asked each student a specific question about them (“Where is the book?” “Below the table.”).

In another example, the school used so-called cultural mediators who work as multilingual educators and support newcomer students and their families. In a phone conversation, one of them told us that she now worked as a “virtual interpreter”. When the father of a student collapsed, the family called her. She in turn called an ambulance and then translated between the medics and the family.

What the above examples demonstrate is the enormous administrative, creative and emotional labor that teachers and cultural mediators perform during this pandemic. They also show how much this type of labor and support depends on the individual person and their capabilities and investments.

Although our participants are extremely committed to their work, the examples also show the limits of distance learning: staying at home has significantly reduced students’ communication opportunities in German. Since a language is mainly learned through active communication and interaction with people, these limitations represent a great challenge for everyone involved.

The current situation demonstrates once again the importance for schools to integrate multilingual resources into their practices. As in many monolingual states, the linguistic diversity of the students is rarely taken into account in the German school system. Consequently, “one of the many lessons we need to learn from this crisis is to include the reality of linguistic diversity into our normal procedures and processes” (Piller 2020). This would mean paying specific attention to the students’ linguistic repertoires, looking for ways how to implement multilingualism in the classroom, and drawing on multilingual resources to provide information for parents and families.

Investing in preparatory classes as a space of social and multilingual learning

The work of cultural mediators as well as teachers shows that preparatory classes go well beyond language learning. Our research demonstrates that this type of class is also a social space where students meet schools in Germany for the first time. They probably meet their first friends within the new environment. In case of communication difficulties, they may resort to their classmates with whom they share their family language (which is much less common within regular classes). The preparatory class is therefore often some kind of “shelter” for the children – a place where they can arrive and find some calm and ease. In practice this also means that, in addition to verb derivation and vocabulary lists about springtime, topics such as residence permit or family reunification play an equally important role.

It is hence vital not to forget the preparatory classes and the newcomer students as Germany – and societies around the globe – discuss how to re-open schools. The teachers we speak to are worried that the preparatory classes could be disregarded. This fear is linked to previous experiences, which show that lessons in preparatory classes are the first to go whenever there is a shortage of teachers or a high level of absence due to illness. Furthermore, preparatory classes often lack reasonably equipped classrooms and digital resources. These shortcomings and the unequal distribution of resources are not new. The crisis has, however, exacerbated existing educational inequalities.

What, then, can we recommend based on our insights? For many students in preparatory classes, everyday school life signifies an important social and learning routine. In addition, they need active communication and interaction in order to continue learning German. That is why it is ever so important to include preparatory classes when gradually re-opening the schools.

References

Piller, I. 2020. “Covid-19 forces us to take linguistic diversity seriously”. A De Gruyter social sciences pamphlet: perspectives on the pandemic: international social science thought leaders reflect on Covid-19. Boomgaarden, G. (ed.). Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter.
Varis, P. K. 2014. “Digital ethnography.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, Tilburg University.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

Visit here for our full coverage of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis.

Further reading

Richards, E. (2020, 2020-05-24). Coronavirus’ online school is hard enough. What if you’re still learning to speak English? USA Today.

Colours of the alphabet

February 21 is International Mother Language Day and serves as an opportunity to discuss and promote the use of first-language medium education. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that up to 40% of the world’s population does not have access to education in their home language. This is the result of language policy, teacher training and resource issues and language beliefs. The minority language-speaking students behind this statistic face significant educational disadvantages that can have a lasting impact on their learning and participation into adulthood.

The 2016 documentary film, Colours of the Alphabet, presents this difficult situation from the perspectives of three young children in Lwimba, in rural Zambia. This film follows Steward, M’barak and Elizabeth as they commence grade one, cleverly depicting some of the challenges they face navigating their earliest learning experiences, in languages they do not know. The situation in this multilingual, post-colonial setting are anything but straightforward.

Directed by Alastair Cole, the film forms part of a larger research project led by four UK universities, which “aims to filmicly reveal the complexities of our multilingual world, specifically focusing on linguistic anthropological perspectives of minority languages use and education”. The film achieves this goal, presenting this Zambian case study, which subtly brings together opinions, policy and experiences around education in a multilingual environment where many of the students do not have the opportunity to learn in their home language. Avoiding the use of any explicit narration, the film follows the three young students, living in a predominately Soli-speaking area in rural Zambia, during their first two terms of grade one. It is a carefully combined collection of footage of the children travelling to and from school, in the classroom and playground, and interviews with the children’s teacher and another of the school’s teachers, and with the children’s parents and a local elder.

Cleverly reflecting its title, the film begins with an explanation that different coloured subtitles will be used to represent the different languages – orange for Soli – the local language, green for Nyanja – the main language of instruction, purple for Bemba – which is used during religious singing at one point in the film, and white for English. This provides a visual representation of the linguistic rollercoaster that Grade 1A faces during their introduction to schooling.

As explained in the interviews accompanying the in-class footage, national education policy requires classes to be taught in Nyanja. For many of the students, like Steward, who speak Soli at home, this causes major problems. Some face difficulty understanding even basic requests to sit down, or talk about what they did on the weekend. Their teacher, who comes from another region, speaks very little Soli and at various times we see her seeking assistance from her students to translate simple sentences for her students when they appear unresponsive to the questions or requests she makes in Nyanja.

As pointed out early in the film, Zambia’s dominant regional languages each represent a separate group of people, and their use is inherently political. In a bid for neutrality and unity, English was instituted as the official language. This means it is introduced from the very start of primary education. However, the incorporation of English-language teaching and the use of English as the medium for some lessons – and especially in teaching the children about good manners – only adds another layer of complexity. This creates a double linguistic barrier for many of the students and reinforces a hierarchy of languages in which English as national and global language is of ultimate value, followed by the regional language common in urban centres (in this case Nyanja), and finally, the local Soli.

The effects of these challenges on the students are often very clear and sometimes heartbreaking. Steward’s struggles over the course of the year are particularly touching – especially in one scene where he stays behind at the end of class, silently crying at his desk, his teacher unable to coax him into sharing his problems with her. However, the classroom footage and Steward’s own example makes it clear that the students’ face more than just linguistic barriers. Grade 1A comprises of at least forty children of various ages who attend school each morning (Grade 1B is the afternoon class, led by the same teacher). Various scenes show children squabbling over learning materials and some children not even having a pen or pencil to bring to class to do their work. Class attendance is patchy at best, with class dwindling to just seven students on the final day of Term 2. Interviews with Steward’s father suggest that his home life may also be a source of struggle for him.

While the choice to prioritize Nyanja and English in the classroom creates serious challenges for these young students, many acknowledge and often accept the reasons behind these choices. Teachers who do not speak Soli can obviously not use it to teach, and even those who do speak it, like another teacher interviewed in the film, may not be comfortable using it to teach concepts that they themselves learned in another language. Likewise, there is a lack of learning resources, like books, in the language. The students’ parents also speak about how important it is for their children to learn English – the official language of Zambia – and see it as fundamental to their children finding good careers and succeeding in the world. Even Elizabeth’s parents, who believe that she would learn much more efficiently in Soli, acknowledge the importance of her learning English – because “everything is written in English”.

The political and ideological reasons for favouring more powerful languages, and ultimately valuing English most highly, create a significant stumbling block. Perhaps the most poignant scene in the film is where the teacher is attempting to teach the class the Zambian national anthem. She explains a little about its background, about Zambians being proud of having struggled and being an independent nation, free from its past colonial oppressors. The teacher then starts singing “Stand and sing for Zambia, proud and free, Land of work and joy in unity…”. In English. The students stand facing their teacher, trying to copy the sounds of these words, in the official and most highly valued language of Zambia and its education system: English – the language of neutrality and unity in a country of over 70 languages, but ironically also the very same language of the country’s colonizers, the independence from whom the anthem celebrates.

While the parents and teachers acknowledge the linguistic difficulties the children face, they accept this reality and focus their energies on supporting the young students to do their best within the existing system. Yet, if we explore the beliefs, policies and influences behind this system more closely, their validity begins to fall apart. For example, research suggests that students who are introduced to English later, after having their first language as the medium of instruction in their early years of study are actually likely to do better at learning it. The inability of the teaching staff to use Soli (either because of their own linguistic background or because they did not study in this language) is arguably a result of policy rather than a mere coincidence. The absence of Soli as a language of education – including in higher education – over the course of one generation nearly guarantees its absence in the next. As UNESCO suggests, such an issue could potentially be addressed through programs emphasizing training teachers from regional areas who have the requisite languages skills.

The elder interviewed for the film shares his love for the Soli language, which he sees as having a rich tradition, and his beliefs that the language is actually growing in strength. However, the distinct domains in which these different languages have been used, along with all the other challenges dealt with in the film, mean that despite the many benefits of first language education, it may be hard for local people like him to even imagine Soli becoming the language of instruction. When the interviewer proposes the idea of Soli-medium schools, he stops to think and smiles. “Could this happen? Is it possible?” he asks. “We would love that, but can it be?” Still, once he considers this, we see his ideas quickly develop and with a twinkle in his eye he goes on to suggest that students could even go to university and get a degree in it. “It would be nice”, he says.

Colours of the Alphabet delicately presents the complexities that Steward, M’barak and Elizabeth confront in their first two terms of primary education, in a classroom where the local language, Soli, has no place. Their experiences suggest that lack of access to education in one’s own language, while a surprisingly common phenomenon on a global level, helps to create or entrench serious inequalities in our societies: at the very least, these students have to work much harder to achieve what other students learn through their first languages. This film is therefore an important one in drawing our attention to this very real and pervasive challenge, which is highlighted on International Mother Language Day.

Benz, Victoria. 2015. Dynamics of bilingual early childhood education: Parental attitudes and institutional realisation. PhD. Macquarie University.

Victoria Benz recently completed her PhD thesis about “Dynamics of bilingual early childhood education: Parental attitudes and institutional realisation.” The thesis is now available for download from Language on the Move here.

Congratulations, Victoria!

Abstract

Bilingual education in Australia is widely considered to be highly desirable but unsuccessful. This study seeks to explore this tension through an ethnographic investigation of a bilingual German-English programme at an early childhood education centre operating at two locations in Sydney. The study addresses the complex relationship between the childcare provider and its clientele in the socio-political context.

Four sets of data were collected for the research, namely documents, on-site observations, interviews with educators, directors and parents, as well as a demographic survey. The triangulation of these different data sets results in a holistic picture of the dynamics at
work in early childhood education. These dynamics include the complex interplay between parental attitudes and their expectations of the bilingual programme and language learning, as well as the childcare provider’s background, linguistic practices, orientation and public image. Based on this analysis, the research problematizes the ways in which Australia’s ideological environment influences and shapes the implementation and value of bilingual childcare in Sydney.

At the time of data collection, the childcare centres where the research took place had only recently been established. Therefore, programmes, policies and practices were still under development and in flux, while parents encountered bilingual education as a novel
experience. This allowed the research to focus on bilingual education as a dynamic set of tensions between opportunities and constraints. Sites of tension include language choice, internal policies, bilingual qualifications, parental involvement, centre marketing, and the German language.

Overall, the study finds that internal and external constraints militate against the success of the bilingual programme. The research has implications for language policy at family, institutional and state levels.

Children in a bilingual program in Hamburg (Source: AlsterKind)

It is a key finding of contemporary educational research that the children of migrants experience educational disadvantage vis-à-vis their native-born peers. The educational disadvantage of bilingual children has been documented in education systems as diverse as those of Britain, Germany, Japan and the USA. The discrepancy between the home language and the language of the school has been found to play a central role in educational disadvantage: while educational institutions continue to maintain a monolingual habitus, migrant children bring to school the experience of multilingualism.

Throughout the world, schools have been extremely slow to adapt to the realities of linguistic diversity; and the obsession of educational systems with linguistic homogeneity constitutes one of the great paradoxes of our time. While the benefits of bilingual education have been documented in a substantial body of research spanning a number of decades, the implementation of bilingual programs has been relatively slow, small-scale, discontinuous and often politically controversial. That is why academic monitoring of bilingual programs and dissemination of knowledge about bilingual programs continues to be important.

Much of the research about bilingual education for migrant students has been dominated by Spanish programs in the USA, and research in other contexts continues to be relatively scarce. A 2011 article by Joana Duarte about a six-year-monitoring project of bilingual elementary schools in the Northern German port city of Hamburg offers a fascinating exception.

Since the early 2000s, Hamburg has been offering bilingual programs in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish. These programs have been designed as dual-immersion programs and the aim is to enroll children whose stronger language is German or the target language in roughly equal numbers. Over a six-year period, the bilingual programs were monitored by researchers from the University of Hamburg, and Duarte’s article focusses particularly on the Portuguese program.

Like many dual-language immersion programs, the bilingual programs under examination have three key aims:

• Development of high-level bilingual proficiencies in German and Portuguese, including the ability to read and write in both languages (biliteracy)
• Achievement in content areas such as mathematics, sciences and social studies at or above grade level
• Development of intercultural competences

In order to achieve these goals about half of the curriculum is taught bilingually: German and Portuguese language classes are taught contrastively and with a strong focus on linguistic form. Social Studies are taught through a team-teaching approach by a German- and a Portuguese-speaking teacher, and Music and parts of Mathematics are taught by a bilingual teacher who uses both languages.

Didactically, there is a strong focus on explicit and contrastive language instruction, and explicit grammar and form-focused instruction is an important feature of all instruction, including subject instruction.

So, how does this kind of program work for the students? The researchers conducted a three-way comparison of students in the program with Portuguese bilingual migrant students and native German monolingual students at a ‘regular’ German elementary school, and also with native Portuguese monolingual students studying in Portugal.

To begin with, the students in the bilingual program significantly outperformed their Portuguese-speaking peers in a ‘regular’ German elementary school on assessments of academic language proficiency and subject content. Their gains were such that, over the six years of elementary school, the initial condition of linguistic heterogeneity disappeared and their performance was equal to that of monolingual German children after controlling for socio-economic background and individual student cognitive ability.

This means that bilingual education in a dual-immersion program can completely erase the educational disadvantage of migrant students.

Comparison with Portuguese students in Portugal showed an additional bonus: Portuguese-speaking migrant children in the program in Hamburg reached proficiency levels in Portuguese that are comparable to those of monolingual Portuguese children in Portugal.

Migrant children are disadvantaged in monolingual schools because they face the double task of learning a new language and new subject content simultaneously and they do so in the presence of native-born monolingual students, for whom the educational system is designed, and who thus ‘only’ face the task of content learning. Where schools level the playing field through the provision of bilingual education, as the Hamburg programs described here do, they not only overcome language-based educational disadvantage but also enable migrants to accumulate cultural capital by institutionalizing and certifying bilingual proficiency.

Duarte, J. (2011). Migrants’ educational success through innovation: The case of the Hamburg bilingual schools. International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l’Education, 57(5/6), 631-649. doi: 10.2307/41480148 (available for download from academia.edu)

PASCH Schools: Partners for the future

Last week I was privileged to attend the 3^rd Conference of School Principals of PASCH Schools in Southeast Asia. A ‘PASCH school’ is a regular secondary school with a particular emphasis on the learning and teaching of German as an additional language. PASCH schools constitute a global network of more than 1,700 schools. ‘PASCH’ stands for ‘Schools – Partners of the Future.’ Funded by the German government, the PASCH network was initiated in 2008 in order to offer opportunities to youths from around the globe to learn German and to develop a positive relationship with modern Germany. PASCH supports professional development training for teachers, provides language learning resources for schools, offers scholarships for students to study in Germany, and numerous other virtual and non-virtual exchange and collaboration opportunities, including global student newspapers.

Attended by representatives of various national ministries of education, school principals, German language teachers, industry representatives and former students from across Southeast Asia and Australasia, the conference provided an excellent opportunity to gain an understanding of the state of the art of language education in the region.

Most language teaching efforts across the region are, unsurprisingly, devoted to English. However, there is a clear sense that English is no longer enough. To begin with, the countries of the region are characterized by enormous linguistic diversity and mother tongue education in addition to instruction in the national language is increasingly incorporated into curricula.

Second, with the greater regional integration that the introduction of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 promises neighbouring languages are gaining in importance. While as yet weakly integrated in most curricula, their role is set to expand.

Finally, there are other international languages such as Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese or Spanish. Offering the latter in the curriculum is often a niche effort of schools who are trying to differentiate themselves from other schools and who are attempting to provide their students with an additional edge. That teaching international languages other than English is intended to create a small elite group of cultural mediators is best illustrated with the example of Singapore. There, the opportunity to study a third foreign language is offered to students who achieve in the top ten percent in the primary school leaving certificate. Only these top academic achievers are able to pursue a third language in high school by attending a Ministry of Education Language Centre (MOELC) in addition to their regular studies. The languages on offer include Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, French, German, Japanese, Malay and Spanish.

While German may seem like a relatively irrelevant language to pursue in Southeast Asia, this is in fact not true for students at PASCH schools. These highly motivated students do so with two main goals in mind: to pursue tertiary education at a university in Germany and/or to pursue employment with a German company. Speakers at the conference included a number of students who had achieved their goal and who spoke about their experiences of learning German in school, participating in exchange programs, studying at a German university and working in a role where their German skills are advantageous.

In addition to achieving personal aims, fostering German skills among a small group of cultural mediators also benefits the wider society, as speakers from various national ministries of education stressed. These benefits are related particularly to knowledge transfer. Interesting examples include partnerships with German companies to deliver an innovative automotive engineering program in a Malaysian college or partnerships between Singaporean polytechnics and German small-to-medium enterprises to deliver a dual vocational training program. In fact, attending industry representatives stressed the importance of combining language skills with strong academic and vocational skills for success in the global workplace.

Finally, a number of school representatives argued that a focus on German had improved overall language education in their school. A teacher from an Australian high school, for instance, mentioned that – in the context of Australia’s notorious ‘monolingual mindset’ – his school’s focus on German has had positive effects on language learning more generally. As students in the German immersion program have discovered the value of learning German, their desire to learn another language has also increased and the school has unexpectedly seen enrolments in its Japanese language program rise, too.

In Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, the positive side-effects of a school’s focus on German are different and relate to improved teacher quality. Speakers from these countries explained that teacher quality – both in terms of proficiency and pedagogy – was a concern. This affects predominantly English language teachers, as English is the most widely taught language. Participating in the professional development opportunities offered by the PASCH school program has helped to disseminate pedagogy training across languages and thus has resulted in improving the professionalism of English language teachers, too.

Despite their diverse backgrounds all speakers stressed that the problems facing humanity today are global problems and that the world needs to move beyond competition to become an international learning community. Linguistic diversity will inevitably mediate the success of our partnerships for the future.

Losing their heritage language decreases the earning potential of 2nd-generation migrants

In most countries of immigration, linguistic diversity is by and large ignored by policy makers. If there are language-related policies, they take a deficit view of migrants and their children and focus on improving their English (or whatever the national language may be). Many people resent even the meagre efforts that states are making to help migrants and their children learn the dominant language, and ESL provision in schools is a ready target for funding cuts, as is currently the case in NSW. Going beyond ESL provision and investing into meaningful bilingual education that would enable migrant children to reach high levels of bilingual proficiency in both their heritage language and the dominant language are, by and large, unheard of. Usually, ensuring bilingual proficiency is the exclusive responsibility of parents and thus the usual vagaries of luck and privilege apply.

Bilingual provision in schools that would allow children to reach high levels of proficiency in two or more languages is widely seen as located in the “nice to have but expensive”-basket. In an environment where ESL provision is often considered expendable, bilingual provision may seem like utopian bells and whistles that we simply cannot afford. Linguists and educators have long pointed out the educational, cognitive and psycho-social benefits of bilingualism and have argued that achieving high-level proficiency in both the heritage language and the dominant language is good for the social fabric of a diverse society. However, such non-quantifiables without an immediate dollar-value usually cut no ice with hard-nosed budget planners and the proponents of bilingual education are mostly simply ignored as idealistic dreamers.

Well, it turns out the proponents of bilingual education have much more good economic sense than your average monolingual policy wonk.

A recent study by Orhan Agirdag published in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism investigates the earnings of second generation migrants relative to their level of bilingual proficiency. Re-examining data from two large-scale longitudinal studies conducted between 1988 and 2003 in the USA, the author analysed the linguistic proficiency and earnings of 3,553 individuals. These individuals were either born to at least one migrant parent or came to the USA at a young age. In the early 2000s, they were in their mid-20s.

On the basis of participants’ self-reported proficiency data, the author identified three groups:

• High-level bilinguals, who had high levels of proficiency, crucially including the ability to read and write, in both English and their heritage language
• Low-level bilinguals, who had low levels of proficiency in both English and their heritage language
• English-dominant, who had high levels of proficiency in English but low levels of proficiency in their heritage language (or no proficiency at all)

No one will be surprised to learn that the English-dominant accounted for more than half of the participants, as that is what the US school system (as most others) is designed to achieve. With a bit over 20%, the numbers of low-level bilinguals are also unsurprising: these are the young adults who would have needed special ESL provision in school but presumably didn’t get it; while unsurprising, it is disturbing to see that more than 20% of migrant kids can go through their entire schooling career in the US without achieving adequate proficiency in English. The percentage of high-level bilinguals in the sample is very similar to that of low-level bilinguals (ca. 22%). These are the lucky kids who either lived within the catchment area of a bilingual immersion program or whose parents put in the effort of teach them how to read and write the heritage language after school and on the weekends.

Now which of these three groups do you think earned the most? According to the logic of the education system, it should be the English-dominant kids who fare best in the labour market. Well, they don’t!

High-level bilingualism was robustly associated with higher earnings of around $3,000 per year and the effect held even if other variables that are known to influence earnings were controlled for (e.g., gender, parental socio-economic status, educational achievement). The effect also held across language groups, even if some languages were more valuable than others (e.g., Chinese-Americans were found to earn more than other migrant groups but within the group of Chinese-Americans those with high-level bilingual proficiency earned more than those who were English-dominant or those who had low-level bilingual proficiency). Interestingly, when other variables were controlled, there was no earnings difference between those who were English-dominant and those who were low-level bilinguals.

Higher earnings of $3,000 per year when everything else is kept constant are a sizable effect. Additionally, the actual financial advantage of high-level bilingualism is likely to be higher due to indirect effects which are obscured by keeping other variables constant such as the link between high-level bilingualism and educational achievement (i.e. high-level bilinguals are more likely to achieve high levels of education and thus they have a compounded earnings advantage).

We all know that imposing English monolingualism on migrant children is bad for them educationally, cognitively and socio-psychologically. Thanks to Agirdag’s research, we now also know that it is bad for them economically. Beyond the economic disadvantage suffered by individuals who have been forced into linguistic assimilation, their linguistic assimilation through the education system is bad for the economy and thus for everyone: decreasing the earning potential of second-generation migrants through linguistic assimilation will, inter alia, lower the tax base and increase the demand for social services. Conversely, those who earn more, spend more.

Bilingualism has these earnings benefits because high-level bilinguals can access two labour markets: the mainstream labour market and the ethnic labour market. My guess is that the labour market advantages of high-level bilingualism are likely to further increase in the future: as the global economy becomes ever more connected, multilingual proficiencies will become ever more central to labour mobility.

In sum, bilingual education is good for the economy. It’s high time our leaders did their sums and showed some good business sense!

Orhan Agirdag (2013). The long-term effects of bilingualism on children of immigration: student bilingualism and future earnings International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2013.816264

Panel devoted to Jeju Global Education City (Source: Jeju Weekly)

Now that Psy’s “Gangnam Style” has become a global hit, I wonder if you know what Gangnam is? The dictionary definition of ‘Gangnam’ is the southern part of Seoul – the capital of South Korea – but in actuality ‘Gangnam’ is much more than a place name: it refers to the most affluent and exclusive area of the country. “Tower Palace,” a luxury residential apartment complex, is the pinnacle of its exclusivity. Built in the most prestigious section of the Gangnam district by Samsung between 2002 and 2004, it is literally a palace, in that its occupants are among the wealthiest and the buildings are equipped with amazing amenities ranging from a library, spas, a golf range, banks, and, yes, high-end boutique shops such as Channel.

Education is part of Gangnam’s attraction: South Korea’s best schools are located in Gangnam. And that includes English-language education. Gangnam parents are wholeheartedly devoted to their children’s English education, as English proficiency is a key status marker in 21^st-centry Korea. They led the trend of sending children abroad for English learning (known as jogi yuhak) either alone or accompanied by their mothers as guardians beginning in late 1990s. The number of jogi yuhak children, which peaked at 27,331 in 2008, has been on the wane since 2009. Apart from the Global Financial Crisis, family breakups as well as readjustment issues found among the first-generation returnees are cited as reasons behind the decline.

Undeterred, Gangnam parents are now setting a new trend in English education of Korea: they have found a way to immerse their children in an English-Only environment without actually going abroad. English language immersion is now available on Jeju Island, the country’s largest island. As part of Korea’s globalization drives, the government launched 940-acre Jeju Global Education City, a self-contained community, in 2011. Designed as an English-only district, there are currently three international schools operating within Jeju Global Education City.

Tuition fees in Jeju Global Education City are hefty. If accommodation is included, parents pay between 31,000 and 48,000 US dollars per year for schooling there.

Despite these high fees parents have little control over their child’s education once they are enrolled in a school in Jeju Global Education City. A recent report on a bullying case in one of the three schools there exposes what happens behind the ambitious global education project. The family of a victim student, who had been bullied by his roommate for one and a half years, was helpless at the school’s inaction. While that may not be unusual, what is unusual is that the victim’s family could not take this matter to the Korean education authorities or to police, since the school is “international” in nature and thus not subject to the Korean laws. International schools operating in Jeju have neither internal dispute settlement systems nor a teacher-parent committee to discuss such issues as bullying, as such measures are merely recommended, not required. As is the case in other countries, the Korean anti-bullying regulations stipulate that primary, middle, and high schools put in place an anti-school violence committee composed of various education stakeholders of whom parents should take up a majority. In the absence of such schemes, parents take to the media to air their grievances.

The absence of a requirement to follow Korean laws is even more extraordinary when one considers that the Korean government made a huge financial commitment to woo foreign schools to Jeju. For example, North London Collegiate School Jeju is committed to pay 56 million US dollars in royalty to their parent school North London Collegiate School in the U.K. over the next 21 years. In fact, the government even promised to find money from tax revenues (paid by all citizens) in case the school (which caters to a tiny elite who can afford to send their children there) runs into deficit.

The bullying cases reported above occurred in an extraordinary constellation of a globalization-driven Korean government, commercialized international schools, and education-obsessed parents. Who is the ongoing expansion of Western schools in Asia actually serving? As seen in the Jeju case, international schools even get away with not protecting the children in their care from harm as they are granted exclusive powers to resolve any ‘internal’ matters.

Whether you can afford going Gangnam style or not, it is a losing game for everyone in South Korea. In their search for exclusivity, Gangnam parents have ended up being excluded from their children’s education in the island. As for non-Gangnam parents who work hard to pay for their children’s extracurricular English education on land, they are doing so without realizing that their hard-earned money might only fatten the pockets of schools faraway.

Who profits from an early start in English language learning?

不要讓你的孩子輸在起跑點上 (Don’t let your children lose out at the starting point.) is one of the most popular slogans whenever English education in Taiwan is discussed. The notion that, when it comes to English language learning, younger is better, is widely accepted by Taiwanese people.

As a result, Taiwanese children are compelled to learn English as early as possible. In 2004 Taiwan’s Ministry of Education mandated all public elementary schools should start English courses from Grade 3 but the majority of schools actually begin to teach English in the first grade. Some private language schools even offer all-English programs for toddlers as young as one-year-old. Thus, there can be no doubt that both the public and private sectors subscribe to the argument that English should be taught at an early age.

The belief in the importance of an early start in English is widely promoted by private language schools, as in this video clip, which likens young children to the earth in which English is planted like a seed. The short text in Mandarin Chinese introducing the video explains the principle as follows:

埋下一顆種籽

教育，在孩子的心裡埋下一顆種籽

在往後的人生中發芽、抽枝，

終至成為綠葉成蔭的大樹。

自然而然的讓語言活起來！

 

Plant a seed

Education (English) – plant a seed in children’s minds.

It will germinate and eventually it will grow into a big tree with large green leaves.

Let language grow naturally! (My translation.)

This text implies that age is the critical factor in successful English language learning  as an early start will enable “natural mastery” of English. One of the central themes of the commercial is the repeated assertion that children have an extraordinary ability to learn English and that they will acquire English naturally through English-Only immersion methods taught by native English-speaking teachers. The video also suggests that English can be learned in a “joyful” way at an early age in the school’s playful learning environment and that this “natural method” will achieve extremely positive outcomes.

The commercial drives this point home with testimonials by parents interspersed throughout the video: they claim that their children became “more confident”, “more active” and “more opened-minded” through learning English. Reaffirming points made by the parents are native English-speaking teachers basically promising that Taiwanese children will see the whole world differently as English will give them a global perspective. The overarching concepts of the text and video are that English should be learned at an early age and in doing so English learning will transform Taiwanese children into “global” individuals.

As mentioned earlier, although public schools officially start teaching English from 3^rd grade, the language school market pressures Taiwanese parents to send their pre-school children to language schools to get a head start. Language schools market English language learning to mirror first language acquisition. In other words, age is considered the primary determinant in successful English language learning. This directly links to the widespread belief that there is a critical period in language learning and that children are better second language learners.

However, there are many studies that contradict the premise of “the earlier, the better.” There is ample evidence to suggest that language learners who have a firm foundation in their native language, in this case Chinese, will fare better in second language learning. Nonetheless, in Taiwan there is no shortage of over-eager parents sending their children to language schools or bilingual kindergartens to obtain an English education at a very young age. Given the English learning hype they are prepared to ignore the possibility that their children might be disadvantaged eventually for being deprived of basic knowledge in their first language.

Furthermore, even when Taiwanese English learners begin at an early age, they rarely exhibit perfect mastery of English. In reality, age is only one of the many factors that contribute to an individual’s language learning. Second language or foreign language acquisition involves a number of complex learner variables, such as student motivation, attitudes towards learning, learning styles, aptitude, conditions for English teaching and learning and the goals of English education. Furthermore, these are all embedded in the broader political, social, economic and teaching contexts.

The aim of an earlier start for English is assumed to lead to modernization and internationalization in Taiwan but before achieving this lofty ideal English creates an unequal relationship among the people in contemporary Taiwanese society.

In light of the evidence that an early start in English is not necessarily beneficial and may have negative consequences even for the individual and in light of the heavy social cost of Taiwan’s English craze, Taiwan may need to re-evaluate its current beliefs and think about restructuring its failing English learning system. Just because children start early, does not mean they will reach the finish line faster. In fact, when it comes to English language learning, there is no absolute finish line …

Carrie Chen’s successful chalk-and-talk method

In my previous post, I discussed the celebrity status of star teachers in Taiwan. Although their good looks and personality do play a key role in a star teacher’s popularity, this is only part of the story. These star teachers also possess the knowledge, skills and abilities to teach students in a way that helps them reach their goals. Interestingly, they usually do not employ the much-lauded Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach when they teach nor do they follow the monolingual English-Only Immersion Method. These teachers prefer to use more traditional and local approaches, such as grammar-translation and/or teacher-centered methods. This is due to the fact that the purpose of language teaching in cram schools is different.

In the case of star teachers, they are teaching in buxiban that are focused on assisting students with standardized exam preparation. The star teachers know that more traditional approaches to teaching are the best methods for helping students to pass standardized tests. Clearly, good teaching is context-dependent. It is impossible to separate English teaching methodology from the contexts in which it operates.

I will use the example of a highly successful star teacher, Carrie Chen, to demonstrate how a star teacher teaches their students. Let’s take for example Carrie’s approach to teaching English vocabulary.  Armed with only a blackboard and chalk, Carrie relies on her confidence, enthusiasm and teaching skills to motivate her students.

She begins her class (in the video 05:20) by saying the supposedly longest word in the dictionary, ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.’ She then writes it down quickly on the board to demonstrate her vocabulary expertise. This way she contends that English becomes fun and easy if students study with her saying and they won’t forget the content she teaches them.

Carrie employs a highly traditional and nowadays unconventional method of English teaching, i.e. no teaching aids and teacher centered. She uses Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction and the main focus of teaching is employing techniques (association, cognates, comparison …) to help students memorize English vocabulary. Using a combination of her witty humor, off-color jokes and personal anecdotes to make English vocabulary memorable rather than just being a bunch of syllables and sounds strung together.

For example, she makes fun of foreigners who do not know how to pronounce ‘謝謝 – xie xie (thank you)’ and ‘不謝 – bu xie (you are welcome)” in Mandarin Chinese correctly, instead they might say ‘shit shit (xie xie)’ and ‘bullshit (bu xie)’ to Taiwanese people. An off-color joke she used in the video described above is her strategy to memorize the word ‘phenomenon:’ she explains that ‘phe’ means a female elephant or a fat girl. If a girl is fat, ‘no’ ‘men’ are interested in being ‘on’ her. Hence an easy way to memorize the spelling of ‘phenomeon’ as ‘phe no men on.’

During a speech at a National Taiwan University, Carrie listed some keys to being a successful buxiban English teacher including: a smart and neat appearance, good command of English, and devotion and enthusiasm. She continues by emphasizing the need for encouraging students and remaining positive at all the times and incorporating humor and active learning techniques to motivate and sustain students interest.

The test-oriented method used in buxiban is not exotic or fancy. The secret lies in the way the star teachers conducts the class. The celebrity status of star teachers and their popularity does seem to be skin deep. Without their looks these teachers would not be able to pull in the students into the buxiban. Still, it is interesting to note, that although a lot of their popularity is premised on their good looks and charisma, many of these teachers do in fact know how to teach English very well. If they don’t teach well, their looks will not be enough to keep them their job and star status.

The quality of their teaching methods is reflected in the high scores their students achieve on the standardized tests given for admission into high schools or universities.

Promoting English language learning: billboard for private early English instruction in Wuhan

Knowledge of English has come to be seen as the key talent of the 21^st century, a way to perfect an individual’s character and to modernize societies; a central facet of global development. China, for instance, introduced an ambitious universal English language teaching program in 2001 and English language teaching, including the use of English as a medium of instruction, has since been increasing at an ever faster rate. English has become a gate-keeper at various turns and determines access to good high schools and university entrance (see Zhang Jie’s PhD thesis for a detailed examination of China’s English fever since 2001).

Hu and Alsagoff (2010) explore how China’s compulsory English language learning stands up as a public policy. They identify four key considerations in evaluating language policy: moral justice, practical feasibility, allocative efficiency and distributive justice.

From an idealistic position of moral justice universal English language teaching is a good idea as access to English can be considered a form of instrumental language right: surely, everyone has a right to learn the global power code. However, in the same way that students have a right to learn the global power code, they also have an expressive language right to the full development of their mother tongue and they also have the right to acquire other kinds of useful knowledge. The moral justice argument for English is thus limited to that degree that learning English does not interfere with learning the mother tongue or other subject knowledge.

From a moral justice perspective, the case for English is thus so-so. So, what about practical feasibility? Universal English teaching in China, as elsewhere, is subject to some intractable and incapacitating constraints, which include a severe shortage of qualified teachers, lack of appropriate instructional materials and the non-existence of a sociolinguistic environment in which English is meaningful.

It could be argued that a language policy should not be criticised for implementation problems because these might straighten themselves out over time. On the other hand, they might not; and if policy makers have failed to come up with an implementation plan together with the policy, there is no reason to believe in magical transformation in the future.

The verdict on universal English teaching becomes even more negative when it comes to allocative effectiveness. The costs of teacher training, of hiring expatriate teachers, of developing suitable materials and of creating the necessary infrastructure to teach English are high. At the same time, the available evidence suggests that English language teaching in China, as elsewhere, has, to date not been particularly effective.

Furthermore, addressing the problem of costly and ineffective English language instruction may have made other subjects more costly and less effective, raising the question of distributive justice. Hu and Alsagoff (2010) cite evidence that the promotion of English has benefited only a relatively small number of students in well-resourced urban schools at the expense of the majority of students. Universal English thus benefits an elite group while disadvantaging everyone else:

Because of their privileged position, they [=Chinese elites] are also consuming resources that might otherwise have been allocated to policy options that could benefit the majority, who are not compensated for the losses they suffer as a result of the diversion of these resources. As a consequence, the English medium instruction initiative has not only perpetuated the unequal distribution of power and access but is also creating new forms of inequality. (Hu and Alsagoff 2010, p. 375)

If moral justice, practical feasibility, allocative efficiency and distributive justice are taken into account, the verdict on the universal English learning initiative in China is thus unambiguously negative. Hu and Alsagoff (2010) go on to also assess the English instruction policy not only for the Han majority but also for ethnic minority students and in that context their verdict is even more dire, “an outlandish extravagance” (p. 377).

If universal English instruction is indeed a wrong-headed policy for China’s majority and minorities alike, as the authors conclude, what policy alternatives are there? The authors suggest the provision of English as an enrichment subject rather than as a compulsory subject and the removal of English from high-stakes assessment.

Hu, G., & Alsagoff, L. (2010). A public policy perspective on English medium instruction in China Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 31 (4), 365-382 DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2010.489950

The completed calendar, rolled up and secured with a rubber band

When my son was six years old, he came home from his Japanese Montessori pre-school one day saying that his teacher had given him a homework assignment. The task involved cutting up a wall-calendar into fifty-two weeks and joining them together end-to-end in a long strip. The strip was to be rolled up, secured with a rubber band and taken to school the following day. In keeping with the Montessori philosophy, the task had to be completed without adult help.

He explained all this in fluent Japanese. I insisted that he must have misunderstood. He was adamant that he had not. I insisted some more. What parent would agree to cutting up their calendar? What family would have a spare calendar lying around the house? Were we expected to go out and buy a calendar for the purpose? And even if a calendar were available, the assignment would surely be incredibly time-consuming, hardly something he could fit in between dinner, bath and bed ready to hand in the next day. It just didn’t sound like a reasonable request for his teacher to have made. In fact, it sounded quite bizarre. He had clearly misunderstood.

Eventually, I managed to persuade my son that he must be mistaken and sent him off to school the next day empty-handed, asking him to find out what he was expected to do. When I picked him up later that day he looked crestfallen. He had been the only one who had not done as he was asked. Everyone had taken their rolled-up calendar strips to school that day and had fun rolling them out side by side in the main hall. He told the teacher that he had not been able to do it because his mum had not believed him. The teacher, well aware of my proficiency in Japanese, assumed that he simply had not conveyed the instructions properly and told him to be sure to complete the assignment and bring it in the following day.

I tried to picture the spectacle of thirty-nine ‘years’ being unfurled along the floor, imagining my son’s dismay and feeling his sense of bewilderment when his candid excuse was dismissed out of hand as a failure to make himself understood. Linguistically speaking, I had comprehended perfectly the information he had communicated. However, my cultural mindset was such that the concept described simply could not register. So far removed from my lived experience was the thing he was being asked to do that he may as well have been speaking an entirely unfamiliar tongue.

On the way home that afternoon we went and bought a calendar and cancelled all other plans for the rest of the day. As requested, my son insisted on doing the task himself, refusing my occasional attempts to speed up the proceedings. Cutting precisely along the lines that separated each week of the twelve months and meticulously pasting them back together in the new format demanded extraordinary patience and perseverance. The painstaking process took him close to three hours, breaking only once for a drink of grape juice and a biscuit. When it was finished, the ‘year’ stretched almost the entire length of our apartment.

Finally, I understood. My son’s words now had real meaning. He had suffered the indignity of being doubted by his teacher and would have to present his ‘year’ strip one day later than the rest of the class. But he had succeeded in shifting his mother’s culturally bound perceptions and narrowing the gap between language and lived experience. It was not the first time, nor would it be the last.

The high price of multilingualism

When society doesn’t value something you, as an individual, do, you, the individual, end up paying for society’s lack of valuation.

That’s the case with our personal home language situation and the frustrating lack of valuation of meaningful multilingualism in the United States.

Not a single public school in the state of Colorado, where we live, offers German language immersion, although, eight public schools, most of them in the Denver/Boulder area, offer other language immersion options – Spanish, Chinese, French, and, in one case, Russian.

Language immersion schools .004% of American schools
Nationally, according to the Center for Applied Linguistics Directory of Foreign Language Immersion Programs in U.S. Schools, 448 schools – this includes private schools – offer some form of language immersion education. That’s just .004% of the approximately 99,000 public schools the National Center for Education Statistics says are in the U.S.

For the past two years, we’ve enrolled our two daughters,  now 7 and 5, in the Colorado International School (COIS), a private language immersion school in Denver — and the only school in the state of Colorado that offers German language immersion. We’re going to enroll them for a third year in 2012-13.

By the end of 2013, we will have spent nearly $60,000 in tuition. If we continue to enroll the children at COIS through eighth grade, we will have spent more than $200,000.

That’s a lot of money – and this total doesn’t even include the tens of thousands of dollars we’ve spent on German-speaking au pairs and German-speaking nannies.

High financial duress
I am definitely feeling the financial duress of swimming against the assimilating American English monolingual stream. Despite this very real stress — during the past seven years we’ve spent up to a third of our total income on German for the kids, a total my wife rightly finds rather high — I am extremely reluctant to pull our children from COIS and place them into the American public education system.

Why?

So far, we’ve beaten the odds and our daughters’ dominant language, the one they speak to each other nearly 100 percent of the time, German, is a minority/immigrant language, not the locally, nationally, and globally dominant language of English.

Now, this might not seem like such a big deal. After all, there are plenty of other families around the world whose children speak a non-dominant, non-local language to each other.

Unusual circumstances
However, I doubt many have achieved what we have under the personal and social circumstances we have. Let me explain:

• I am not a native speaker of German – my German father who emigrated to the U.S. in the 1960s, did not pass German on to his children; I learned German primarily in college;
• My wife does not speak German;
• We live in the United States, where, despite the fact that German heritage continues to be the leading historical heritage, the German language has comparatively little presence;

I am 100 percent certain if we placed our daughters in a monolingual English public school – thus saving ourselves $20,000 per year — within no more than six months our daughters would no longer be speaking German to each other. It’s also questionable how much German they would be speaking with me at that point.

American public education = language killer
To me, that feels a lot like language death, with the American public education system the clear language killer. In fact, a part of me will die inside when my daughters give up speaking German to me and to each other, as I have become very emotionally attached to the tiny, German speaking world we’ve created.

Yes, we could maintain our daughters’ German language learning via other means – for instance, via the Internet (which we already do), me speaking only German to them, and via after-school programs.

But it’s clear to me that when our daughters stop using German regularly in their everyday life, as would inevitably occur if they were placed in an English monolingual public school, they will slide backward.  At that point, our struggle to raise meaningful German-English bilinguals will become much more difficult, though we will save a lot of money.

Of course, to me, deep, lifelong multilingual ability — my long-term goal is for our daughters to be able to pass the so-called Grosses Deutsches Sprachdiplom —  is incredibly valuable. Sadly, it’s not viewed that way by most Americans, which is why we’re having to pay so much to ensure that our children are multilingual.

Yesterday, on an elementary school yard, that changed.
My daughters, 7 and 5 years old, were rushing around the playground speaking, and yelling, German to one another — as they do pretty much 100 percent of the time — and I was shouting something to them in German as well when a young boy, about eight years old, on a swing nearby said:
“What did you say?! Why are you speaking Spanish to your kids!?”

Confusing Spanish with German
This isn’t the first time that a child had asked me why I, or my daughters, are speaking Spanish, when, of course, we’re speaking German, though, amazingly, I’ve never had an adult ask me this.

I politely explained we were speaking German, not Spanish.

Pretty soon, the little boy and my two girls were playing with each other. The three of them were, of course, speaking English to one another, as my daughters are bilingual in English and German. And they were definitely having fun together. However, each time my daughters shouted something to me in German and I shouted back to them in German – on a playground you often have to shout just to be heard   – the little boy asked, “What did you say?” I, or one of my daughters, translated for him every time he asked, and he responded each time with an, “Oh, okay.”

‘No one can understand you’
After about 20 minutes of the three of them playing together, the boy, who’d returned to the swing where we first encountered him, asked me, “Why are you speaking German to your kids when no one can understand it?” I admit that I could feel my blood pressure rise just a bit. This question was a bit confrontational, though I understood that an eight-year-old wouldn’t have intended it this way.

I took a deep breath, and said: “Because we’re raising our daughters to be bilingual. I believe it’s better to be able to speak two languages than just one. I think it’s always better to be able to do more things than fewer things.”

The boy didn’t respond, just kept swinging on his swing.

English only in our house
About a minute passed. Then, the young boy, who was Caucasian and who was now sitting motionless on his swing, said, “My mom told me if I learn Spanish or German at school I’m not going to live with her anymore. She said, ‘We speak English in our house!’ ”

In fact, the boy’s mother wasn’t there – he was being watched by some after-school teachers. And, given what the boy had just told me, I was glad his mother wasn’t there.

A lot of thoughts were coursing through my head at this point. I thought about Bourdieu’s notion of distinction and the ways in which it captures some, though not all, of the social interplay that was going on here – I’ll admit to working hard to separate myself and my daughters from monolingual Americans and monolingual ideology.

I also thought about how all of us, even self-identified anti-elitists who would accuse me of thinking I’m better than others because I’m multilingual are inevitably caught up in a hierarchical notion of ‘better’. After all, the self-identified anti-elitists themselves believe it’s better to be part of the (monolingual) mainstream.

German only, 100 percent of time
I thought, too, about the social questions and tensions raised by me speaking German only to my daughters 100 percent of the time – I really do speak only German to them all of the time, no matter what the situation, though I, and they, will often translate for friends, family, or, in this case, even strangers.

Finally, I thought about how grateful I was that my daughters are enrolled in a language immersion school where they don’t have to face the anti-multilingual criticism this boy, clearly influenced by his parents, and other kids would surely be directing at them every single day.

In fact, I’m 100 percent sure my daughters would not be speaking German to each other still if they were enrolled in a traditional, public monolingual English school, which I view as the most crucial social entity in the annihilation of lived, everyday multilingualism of the sort that we’ve managed to practice for the past seven years.

But the role of monolingual public education in the elimination of linguistic diversity in the United States is grist for a future blog entry

Japanese lessons learnt from Velcro tape

“Velcro on one pocket coming away at the edge. Please repair and bring back tomorrow for checking.” This was the note I had dreaded from my son’s teacher. The Velcro was one of two strips attached to the insides of each side pocket of his shorts. One pocket had to contain a pack of tissues, the other a “handkerchief”. The tissues were for runny noses, the handkerchief for drying hands. Velcro on the pockets stopped these items falling out during exercise and posing an unhelpful distraction to the child. The fastening was easily manipulated by the child, allowing him to access and replace the contents of his pocket independently and without fuss. Spare changes of clothes had to be ready equipped with a pack of tissues and a handkerchief, doing away with the need for the child to transfer them from one set of clothing to another. The Velcro had to be sewn on, not ironed. Having been at this Japanese Montessori pre-school for a year already, I was familiar with this requirement and, not owning a sewing machine, had become a seasoned hand-sewer-of-Velcro-on-pockets. So what was the problem?

Well, this particular pair of shorts was one of eight pairs of shorts from eight changes of clothes required for a three day, two night summer camp. The calculations appear not to add up, until you consider that the children were expected to change their clothing whenever it got dirty, sweaty, or wet from the rain. Since summer camp took place towards the end of the official rainy season of high heat and humidity when the ground underfoot was likely to be muddy … well, you get the picture. Each item of clothing had to be named (no iron-on labels permitted!). And each garment had to be rolled up in a prescribed fashion and secured with a rubber band. Eight pairs of shorts, eight T-shirts, eight vests, eight pairs of underpants, eight pairs of socks. Plus eight disposable plastic carrier bags for each set of soiled clothes, each bag bearing the child’s name, and each folded, rolled up and secured with a rubber band. The children, some as young as four years old, had to place the tissues and handkerchiefs in the pockets of the shorts; check that they knew where their name was on each garment; roll up the clothing and secure each piece with a rubber band; then pack these things into their bag, along with sandals, towels of specific sizes for specific functions, toiletries and other requisite items, all contained in bags of prescribed dimensions and materials, and all labeled with the child’s name. Only the rubber bands were able to remain anonymous!

The children then had to carry the bag by themselves to school for checking by the teacher two days before the day of departure. Parents seen carrying their child’s bag were reprimanded on the spot. Checking involved the child taking all the items out of the bag, removing the rubber band and unrolling each item of clothing, showing the teacher their name on each garment and other items, then rolling the clothes back up, securing them with the rubber bands, and re-packing all the items in the bag. My only slip-up was failing to repair one piece of Velcro on one pocket of one pair of well-worn shorts.

A little confession here: I knew that the Velcro had started to come away. But frankly, I found the meticulous preparations exhausting. So I decided to risk leaving it as it was. Another confession: Part of me wanted to see whether the teacher would notice the loosening stitches on the Velcro; whether she really believed that this could impact on my child’s ability to function independently at camp; whether she would dareto take me to task on it.

I had been made to jump through hoops to follow the requirements that I know were intended to support the independence of the child, the crucial tenet of the Montessori philosophy. Now, for the sake of a few more minutes of my time, I was digging my feet in. When I saw the note I could not control my sense of outrage. I told myself that it was not worth it. I would rather my son did not attend the camp than give in to such a ridiculous request. It was just not worth it. “No, it’s not worth it,” countered another voice inside my head. It’s really not worth it.

Pigheadedness. Pride. Indignation. Were these the lessons I wanted to teach my son? What about flexibility? Humility? Respect for the person whom I trusted to keep my child safe on his first camping adventure, the person who had patiently sat with each of the fifteen children as they unpacked and repacked their bags? The children who had done as they were asked without complaint? Solidarity with the other mothers, some with siblings at the school whose workload had been double that of my own? And the reasons for eschewing international Montessori schools for a Japanese Montessori environment in the first place?

This was not the first time during the past year that I had been forced – always with an initial degree of resistance and sometimes painfully – to adjust my thinking concerning the practice of the Montessori philosophy, to expand my view of the limits of a child’s capabilities, to challenge my culturally-blinkered perceptions.

Japan was not a new culture – I had spent a number of years there before becoming a mother and was fluent and literate in the language – but the insights gained through the application of the Montessori philosophy within the cultural context of Japan went beyond anything I could ever have conceived of. That evening, as I stitched the loose edge of the stiff Velcro, listening to the chatter of my son in his growing excitement at the prospect of the trip, it seemed to yield a little more easily than usual to the pressure of the needle.

Angela also reflects about international parenting in this episode of Japanese-on-the-Move.

Wolpertinger

I’m not a big fan of what I call “breathless academic postmodernism,” or what I view as the often naïve valorization of, among other things, hybridization, creolization, liminality, polysemy, multiplicity, plurality, discontinuities, third spaces – the list goes on.

I’m not against hybridization, polysemy, etc. To be so would be ridiculous. It’s clear hybridity, polysemy, etc. exist – though I will always insist such terms, dare I say it,  be thoroughly “situated” against larger societal power relations, which frequently they are not.

Politically, I am very sympathetic to many of the goals of the breathless postmodernists, in particular, the deconstruction of social inequalities and the reconstitution of the social world into a more egalitarian “third space” where difference doesn’t necessarily spell hierarchy.

Difference without hierarchy?
To be truthful, I’m not so sure, when it comes to human beings, there is such a thing as difference without hierarchy, though I’d certainly like to believe there might be. Of course, wishful thinking doesn’t change the world. Indeed, I believe it can be profoundly counter-productive with respect to precisely many of the very same aims activist postmodernists seek to promote.

Let me give you an example – the one that inspired me to write this entry: Some of the claims/goals put forward by Samina Hadi-Tabassum in her book Language, Space and Power: A Critical Look at Bilingual Education. I’m re-reading parts of Tabassum’s book along with students in a graduate course I’m teaching at the University of Denver, “Language, Power & Globalization.” Hers is part of a set of readings I assign focused on language immersion programs in the United States.

I’m a big fan of language immersion as an approach to teaching multiple languages and, in particular, of two-way language immersion. Two-way immersion brings students from minority language communities together with students from majority language groups and, ideally, ensures deep, multi-contextual multilingualism for all of them.

Spanish-English dual immersion
Hadi-Tabassum — who conducts a “critical ethnography” of an English-Spanish dual language immersion school in the U.S. —  clearly supports the ideal of multilingualism. But she has a problem with traditional two-way immersion programs: They create and enforce an artificial binary between languages such as Spanish and English. She pushes for recognition of the fluid, hybrid, plural, liminal – pick your postmodernist term of choice here – nature of the relationship between languages.

She’s right.

Trouble is, she doesn’t sufficiently situate her call to celebrate fluidity, hybridity, liminality, and resistance among students against “artificial” boundaries between Spanish and English etc. vis-à-vis the larger social forces in play beyond school boundaries.

I agree with Hadi-Tabassum’s call for greater reflexivity on the part of school administrators and educators. I agree as well that creating a liminal “third space” where students and others might talk about some of the issues that swirl around the artificial boundaries created between English and Spanish in dual immersion programs as well as where they might actively “play” with the languages would be fruitful.

Taking the liminal too far?
However, given the reality of the imposition of “artificial” boundaries among languages in power domains in the U.S. where English monolingualism rules, and given a near total lack of a societal code-switching multilingualism among the dominant fundamental language identity in the U.S. – the (monolingual) English speaker – I believe we do two-way immersion students a profound disservice if the “liminality” advocated by Hadi-Tabussum gets taken too far, for instance, to the point where the minority language, Spanish, comes to be largely subsumed by the dominant language, English. In the U.S., the more English that finds its way into the (two-way) language immersion classroom the more the social hegemony of English as a whole gets reinforced.

Yes, there is irony in the fact that language immersion programs, including the German immersion program in which my two daughters, 7, and 5, are enrolled, seek to combat the structured, rigid English monolingualism that prevails outside their walls with rigid German, Spanish, Mandarin, etc. monolingualism within those walls.

However, without what one of my graduate students calls “counter-monolingual-immersion” the chances that children – especially those who come from households in which English is the only language used — will acquire deep, meaningful and lasting multilingualism are low.

In short, in the current U.S. social environment, playing up the endless “play” of languages and insisting hybridization and free-form multilingual code switching is the way to go in terms of language immersion programs will accomplish little other than to further strengthen the hierarchical, exclusive, “artificial” English monolingual society many postmodernists, Hadi-Tabassum among them, seek to dismantle.

Commemorative stamp, German Federal Post, 1989: 300 years French School Berlin

I’ve been teaching about bilingualism for more than a decade and when I speak about bilingual education and dual-immersion programs I draw on examples from Canada and the USA. These are the examples that fill the literature and the textbooks. I’d bet that a survey of university classes dealing with bilingual education would find that English-French dual-immersion programs in Canada and English-Spanish dual-immersion programs in the USA emerge as the paradigmatic cases of bilingual education that we present to our students.

An article in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism reminds us how myopic this view is:

A PhD literature review in the field of two-way immersion (TWI) education revealed that German TWI programs are hardly ever mentioned in English-language publications. (Meier, 2010, p. 419)

As the author goes on to show this is not because such programs are rare but because even scholars in the field of bilingualism are a bit blinder on the non-English eye. I have to admit that I myself had never before even heard of the Französisches Gymnasium/Collège Français, which has been providing bilingual education in French and German in Berlin since 1689. That’s right, for over 320 years! Originally founded to serve Berlin’s Huguenot refugee population, the school has, with a short break in the final year of World War II, been operating uninterruptedly ever since.

When I wrote about the English translation of a speech by German Chancellor Merkel last week, I had occasion to reflect on the control the English-language hegemony exerts over our ways of seeing in journalism. It’s a bit harder to face the fact that the same kind of hegemony operates even in a scholarly field explicitly dedicated to bi- and multilingualism.

Meier’s article shows that the Französisches Gymnasium/Collège Français is just one of many dual-immersion programs in Germany in a wide range of languages. That we know so little about those programs is not only a result of English-language hegemony but also of the ideologies of those groups in German society who control the information that gets seen and read internationally. The dominant groups in German society share a monolingual mindset and homogeneous views of the nation which help to obscure the fact that, for instance, in 2007 24% of all children born in Germany had at least one non-German parent (official statistics quoted by Meier, 2010, p. 427) and that at least some of these will head for one of the country’s many bilingual education programs.

Yoshio Sugimoto (2010, p. 14f.) explains the process beautifully with reference to international views of Japan:

Numerically small but ideologically dominant, core subcultural groups are the most noticeable to foreigners and are capable of presenting themselves to the outside world as representatives of Japanese culture.

Such a core subcultural group in Germany consists of ethnic Germans who cling to the myth of a homogeneous and monolingual nation. As Meier shows with reference to bilingual education, the reality is much more complex and diverse. It is fascinating, too! However, the inconvenient truth is that as bilingualism scholars we are actually colluding with the ideologically dominant if we fail to put diversity at the heart of our work – and that should routinely include reading the non-English-language literature, too!

Meier, G. (2010). Two-way immersion education in Germany: bridging the linguistic gap International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13 (4), 419-437 DOI: 10.1080/13670050903418793
Sugimoto, Yoshio (2010). An Introduction to Japanese Society Cambridge: Cambridge University Press