Research Studies on Educating for Diversity and Social Justice by Esmail Ashraf;Pitre Abul;Lund Darren E.;Baptiste H. Prentice;Duhon-Owens Gwendolyn;

Author:Esmail, Ashraf;Pitre, Abul;Lund, Darren E.;Baptiste, H. Prentice;Duhon-Owens, Gwendolyn;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Unpacking the Principal’s Stand

Observing from the audience, the author was once more surprised. As a long-time participant of the dual language community, she had experienced multiple incidents that reflected conflicts among parents, teachers, students, and administrators. The principal’s call for an open discussion of these tensions was the first and only one that the author experienced in her eight years as a parent in Escamilla Elementary. Even more surprising was the principal’s courageous stand to air the parents’ complaints against the program and the newly arrived Spanish speakers, and her confronting response in which she contested the deficit-thinking type of narratives that challenged the value of dual language programs.

On another note, while the principal’s clarification about dual language being a bilingual program might seem a subtle detail, it took a brave stand to reappropriate the word bilingual, which has slowly been purposefully deleted from legislation and academic literature (García, 2009). The current US federal education law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), deleted the previous law’s mention of bilingual education and labeled the education of linguistically diverse students as “English Language Acquisition [or] Language Enhancement” (NCLB Act of 2001, 2002, Sec. 3101).

The author now realizes that her assumption was that the administration of a successful dual language program would shy away from affirming any pride in bilingual education and the education of the linguistically diverse student as a priority. Furthermore, as Crawford (2000) explains, bilingual education had been left to be defended exclusively by scholars, researchers, informed bilingual administrators, and teachers. It was a surprise for the author to see an administrator democratizing historical and conceptual knowledge about the foundations of bilingual education.

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