Social Justice And Language Minority Students In The United States

SOCIAL JUSTICE AND LANGUAGE MINORITY STUDENTS

Social Justice and Minority Language Students in the United States Ercilia Delancer University of North Florida

Abstract This paper purports to examine the attitudes and policies guiding the teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) to minority language students in the United States and the impact such policies have on the students’ self-esteem, school performance and graduation rates. It is my belief that minority language students are being cheated of the opportunity to receive an education equal to that of their peers once politicians, school administrators and uninformed teachers operate under the assumption that English can be mastered in a couple of years and that language minority students should stop communicating in their native language in favor of immersing themselves in English only to optimize their assimilation into the culture of the dominant political group. When students get the message that their culture and prior experiences are irrelevant and that the only culture they need to learn about is the Anglo-Saxon one, irreparable damage results due to the cognizant dissonance such message creates in the student’s psyche. .

Social Justice and Minority Language Students in the United States As a nation of immigrants, the United States has a long history of teaching immigrants and their children English as a Second (or additional) Language with a pattern of language acquisition that has varied little throughout the last couple of centuries: the first wave spoke little or no English, their children spoke English fluently and in most cases kept their mother tongue thus becoming bilingual, while their children spoke English only. Those parents in the first wave who wanted to insure that their children retain their mother tongue went to great lengths to educate their children through the paying of private classes taught at the local church, school or synagogue. These teachings consolidated the link to the motherland and, insured that the second generation could communicate with the first and provided the parents with a bridge to the new culture through their children’s ability to serve as informal translators and interpreters. Although it is estimated that there are around 3.5 to 3.7 million language minority students in public schools, the teaching of English as a Second Language has long been perceived by policymakers, administrators and even teachers not familiar with the ESOL program, as a temporary detour for minority language students who are expected to join the mainstream classes after a short interval there. The impetus for such perception lies in part on the effort carried out by such organization as English Only which posits that speaking any other language but English to transact business or teach classes should be outlawed in the United States. The proponents of this policy contend that earlier waves of immigrants were able to learn English easily and did not need to have translators or interpreters to carry out their civic obligations. Such assertion denies the fact that earlier immigrants owned and operate bilingual schools until distrust from surrounding communities forced them to close.

As a result of this misguided perception, the followers of English Only propose that students should be immersed in the English language from day one as the fastest route to achieving fluency in the target language. One factor in operation here is that the school continue to be perceived as the training grounds for the future workforce of the United States and as such need to respond to the needs of the marketplace. Based on this belief, schools should not concerned themselves with educating an individual so that he or she is capable of relating to the world around him or her, but just enough as to be able to operate a computer. Furthermore, the No Child Left Behind law requires that schools demonstrate progress in teaching English to language minority students regardless of their age of arrival at the school. We have already seen how progressive school districts in such states as California have reversed prior decisions to offer bilingual education to its language minority students when policy-makers responded to xenophobic rhetoric against all forms of diversity (O’Malley and Pierce, 1996). Citing research studies, statistics and data to support their fears and phobias, groups such as English First try to convince policy-makers that offering bilingual education to language minority students only perpetuate the problem of assimilating the newcomers into the society at large as soon as possible in order to make them productive members of society. Otherwise, they feel that the new immigrants: ...never become productive members of American society. They remain stuck in a linguistic and economic ghetto, many living off welfare and costing working Americans millions of tax dollar every year (English First a). Since the parents of the newly arrived minority language students might not have education themselves, might not speak the language or understand the school system, their children are assigned to whatever school program is provided with little or no explanation to the parents. This

arrangement follows the power structure currently in place where the group where the dominant group decides what is best for those that are powerless to protest, especially when such protestation could be labeled as unpatriotic and the immigrants be encouraged to return to their countries of origin if they don’t like it here. Once in the classroom, the minority language students encounter a hostile atmosphere as they are expected to perform just as the native speakers do without having the requisite background knowledge to do so. As a teacher who has provided ESOL instruction on a pull-out basis, on an inclusive basis (in conjunction with the regular teacher), or in a self-contained classroom, I can attest to the fact that minority language students are not uniform in their needs and thus do not benefit from a homogenous approach to their learning needs. Aggravating the situation is the fact that these influential groups demand and expect that the minority language students, even those who have just arrived speaking not a word of English, be enrolled in content subject classes while acquiring the English require to communicate. Such gargantuan task is assigned to each student regardless of his or her educational background thus ignoring that the ability of each student to acquire English fluently enough to understand and participate in content area classes is going to be determined by what level and quality of schooling they have brought with them from their native country (Freeman & Freeman 200) Despite the 1974 ruling in Lau Versus Nichols, a decision which required school districts to provide services to minority language students, government and school districts have sought to minimize the expenses such program entails by requiring that language minority students enrolled in ESOL, bilingual or sheltered classes make the transition into mainstream classes within three years of their enrollment (Chamness Miller & Endo 2004).

This policy runs counter to the view of experts in the field of second language acquisition who assert that the average student needs five to seven years of exposure to the second language to acquire the fluency needed to carry out the complex language and mathematical functions necessary to achieve high school graduation grades at the same level as the native speakers counterparts (Cummins,). Students placed in this sink or swim position end up frustrated and many drop out of school entirely as the student come to realize that teachers around them seem to ignore their struggle not only to understand the language being spoken around them, but the societal norms that apply to this new place, norms that can be diametrically opposed to their own (Lehman, 2004). According to Olsen and Jaramillo (1999), ESOL students can be classified according to the length of stay in the United States and the level of schooling achieved in their native country. Based on this classification, students should be assigned to classes that would accommodate their learning needs and would provide an environment where they will be able to acquire the English needed to subsequently fully participate in the content classes needed to graduate from high school. Such accommodation would require massive funding for schools with large minority language students. Despite the rhetoric indicating the public’s willingness to educate every child in the United States, the reality is quite different for while we welcome the chance to exploit the labor of their parents, we are reluctant to spend the large sums of money required to bridge the gap between recently arrived minority language students and their native English speakers counterparts. Based on the theory of social justice that stipulates that every child is entitled to an education equal to that of any of their peers, this paper endeavor to show that the basic human rights of minority language students are being violated when they are mainstreamed into classes for which

they lack sufficient knowledge of English to insure comprehension, retention of material and full participation in class activities. It will also argue that the only way to promote learning and insure that these students will be able to read, write, compute and think critically is by providing an education in their native language until they have achieved such fluency in English as that of their peers. Let us take a look at some of the language minority students I have encountered during my nine years teaching English for Speaker of Other Languages (ESOL) and how their educational needs are not being met: Santiago is a ten-year-old boy, with obvious indigenous looks, who has just arrived from Mexico a week ago. This is his first day at the nearby elementary school and he has spent four hours in his classroom silently staring at his desk while his classmates go about performing their tasks in their content area classes. By the time he arrives at his ESOL class, he has been buffeted by the numerous instructions in English offered by his teachers and embarrassed at his clumsy attempts to follow them, not to mention the fact that school routines here are completely different to ones he remembers observing in Mexico. When I greet him in Spanish, his eyes light up and a stream of speech is released, the anxiety leaves his face as he eases into a chair, relieved to finally be in a place where something is familiar. Maritza is twelve years old, also from Mexico, but light-skinned and well-dressed. She sits at her desk as I come in for the inclusion portion of my teaching and does not look up when I call on her to follow me to the end of the classroom for one-on-one tutoring. Although Maritza has been at school for about six months, she refuses to communicate in English, does not participate in any task assigned to her, and spends most of her time arranging and re-arranging the content of her desk while playing dumb when called upon to answer a question. Maritza is resentful at

being single out for ESOL instruction and lets me know that by only grudgingly answering my questions and then only by providing monosyllabic responses. Edgar is sixteen-years old and has come from the Philippines recently. A short, stocky boy looking much younger than his age, he wants to blend into the wall and sits at the farther edge of the classroom. I ask Roberto, another student from the Philippines, to help Edgar with his introduction to the class only to find out that Edgar speaks one of many dialects and Roberto speaks only Tagalog. Since I have received no personal information on Edgar, I have nothing to fall upon and fumble a few phrases of welcome, unsure he is getting any of it. Cristina is a blond, blue eye beauty from Costa Rica entering the ninth grade of the local high school. Bright, extrovert and well-read, Cristina is eager to participate in class discussions, write in her journal and offer her views on life in the United States. Unfortunately, all of her contributions take place in Spanish and require that another student translates it word for word. Jean is a fourteen year old from Haiti who reluctantly sits at the front of the row, but avoids eye contact with me and never answers any of my questions. He does not take notes, even when instructed to so, and only leans over his closed backpack staring at the floor as our activities move from lecture to hands-on tasks. When I ask him if he understand what is to do next, he shakes his head and returns his gaze to the floor. Not having another French/Creole student in the classroom, I am stumped as how to reach this student. If the school districts were doing a proper job of interviewing the student, with the help of a interpreter if need be, and the parents to find out exactly what the educational background of the student was and had then proceeded to test the student in their native language to determine what their strengths and weaknesses were, the teacher could then place the student according to the following table, thus assuring that the student would receive the kind of instruction needed for

his or her specific case instead of lumping the student as just another student in need of ESOL instruction.

Type of Learner

Characteristics

Newly Arrived with Adequate Schooling

Recent arrival (less than five years in the U.S.) Adequate schooling in native country Soon catches up academically May still score low on standardized tests given in English

Newly Arrived with Limited Formal

Recent arrival (less than five years in the U.S.)

Schooling

Interrupted or limited schooling in native country Limited native language literacy Below grade level in math Poor academic achievement

Long term English Learner

Seven or more years in the U.S. Below grade level in reading and writing False perception of academic achievement Adequate grades, but low test scores ESL or bilingual instruction, but no consistent

program Adapted from Olsen and Jaramillo, 1999. As can be seen in the above referenced chart, minority language students who come from a middle class background and who have attended school on a regular basis, face less challenge in transferring the knowledge they have acquired in their native language into English while those that have had little schooling or had their education interrupted by wars, frequent moving or family demands face an uphill battle. These students are not equipped to be placed in an immersion class with ESOL classes as an additional support since they have not acquired the necessary skills to transfer into the new language. It is here where a bilingual or sheltered content approach must be employed to help these students bridge the differences between their culture and the new one. According to Gollnick and Chinn, when a minority language student’s language development is interrupted or replaced because of instruction of a second language in school prior to the development of his her first language proficiency skills, the following may result: (1) loss of first language (Lambert and Freed, 1982); (2) a mixing or combining of first and second language, resulting in the child’s own, unique communication system (Ortiz and Maldonado Colon, 1986); (3) limited proficiency in both and second languages (Skutnabb-Kangas and Toukomaa, 1976); and (4) an inability to develop English language proficiency in their school years (Cummins, 1984). Compounding the problems encountered by the pressure from both parents and teachers for the student to quickly acquire English is the perceived facility with which most minority language students can start communicating with their peers. What is lost to the naked eye is the fact that the language employed by native speakers is embedded in specific social situations for

which plenty of markers (gestures, body language, realia) are available for the language minority student to elucidate meaning and they take place in a face-to-face context. Cummins (1979) formalized a distinction between the language used between peers and the one used in decontextualized academic settings as BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills) and CALP (Cognitive/Academic Language Proficiency) and warned teachers not to be fooled by banter engaged in by language minority students in hallways and cafeterias as it did not indicate students possessed the ability to manipulate language in decontextualized academic situations (Richard-Amato, 1996). According to Harkku (), many in the general public in the United States hold a folk belief that in order for a newly arrived minority language student to learn English, all he needs to do is be surrounded by native speakers. Researcher who have put that theory to the test have found that newcomers interact very little with native speakers and when they do, their conversations revolve around school topics and tend to be very short in length thus preventing the minority language student from engaging in a negotiation of meaning that can lead to true understanding. A similar belief has led many a school district to dictate that all teachers who have even a single minority language student in his or her class must take minimum of 15 college credits on ESOL methodology convinced that the knowledge accumulated during attendance at these classes will instantaneously result in the teacher implementing especial strategies for the ESOL student. In reality, the beleaguered teacher surrounded by over thirty students in a crowded classroom is more often than not likely to ignore or miss the ESOL especially if he or she tends to be quiet and respectful, as the majority of them are. During my many instances of participating in inclusion sessions, I had never observed any of the teachers implement such strategies to reach ESOL students as exaggerated gesturing, pictures, realia, songs or pantomime, or even the

classic one, slowing down their speech pattern. In fact, many teachers expressed ire at having students who spoke not a word of English placed in their classes. As expressed in her article: “When a student cannot respond to the word “hello”, there is no ESOL strategy that is going to help him.” In order to address the many disadvantages that minority language students face when they enter public schools in the United States might require a more equitable balance of power between the school administrators and teachers and the parents and their children whereby the student is treated as an individual who brings something to the negotiating table instead of someone who needs to erase his or her native language, traditions and past experience to become a true “American’(Temple & Peyton 1999). In addition, adequate resources need to be allocated so that bilingual and sheltered instruction approaches can be established in those school districts where the ESOL population speaks a specific language and can be grouped successfully for that kind of instruction. These strategies are the only ones that have proven successful in stemming the dropout rate of ESOL students and insuring their graduation so they can become productive and well adjusted members of our society

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