English-Only laws in AZ

[Susan Penfield]

Matthew,
Thank you for your thoughts and insights...I'm in total agreement on all but one point. There are many people still telling me that 'more than one language is confusing for children' and often these are the tribal elders I work with. I am pretty sure these are attitudes forged from boarding school experiences but they continue to be reinforced through local language policy. Therefore, some of the people who are really in key positions to help with revitalization efforts are unsure and occasionally reluctant to get involved.( Certainly, this is not true of everyone and I'm not claiming to know all the dynamics at work here.) We (meaning the community members I work with who are most involved in language revitalization) are continually in a position of having to educate those in the local schools, in the migrant community and in the tribal community about the clear benefits of bi-or multi-lingualism. I think that most local folks, tribal members and others, argue for the value of language preservation from the position of wanting to document and, perhaps put to limited use, a cultural artifact. Very,very few ever argue that it will benefit the children's cognitive growth tremendously (as the research clearly shows). Changing attitudes is slow work but without it, native languages will continue to be viewed as 'artifacts'.

After working for over thirty years in a rural Arizona community, I can reflect on the fact that we were able to make more headway for Native languages in the public schools then than we can now with Prop 203 in place. Today, there is a growing willingness to include 'culture' into the cirriculum, but to clearly exclude language. (This is true for both the migrant and tribal populations). In 1973, I directed a federally-funded program designed to teach native languages and cultures in the public schools --in any venue approved by the tribes. I can't imagine that kind of blanket acceptance in Arizona today. (Of course, public schools may not be the best place for native language instruction, but that is another discussion altogether).

 BTW, Mia's ideas about putting a more public face through the media about the cognitive benefits of bilingualism I fully support.
Susan 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Matthew Ward 
  To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU 
  Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 3:35 PM
  Subject: Re: English-Only laws in AZ


  Thanks for your thoughts, Don.  

  On one issue that we are discussing--the idea that bilingualism or multilingulaism is good for an individual, I do think that serious progress has been in terms of public attitudes.  It's very rare anymore for people to argue that it somehow confuses children or such.  Even in the tiny rural corner of Washington State where I'm originally from, I've heard parents bragging about their (native English speaking) children's ability to speak Spanish, and they seem to recognize that earlier is better.  As a person who speaks a few languages, I personally get ridiculous amounts of praise for doing something that comes naturally for many people in parts of the world like South Asia or Africa.  It seems that, in concept, American society values being able to speak more than one language.  I do hope that more and more of this research showing bi and multilinguals having cognitive benefits is publicized, but I think that a surprising number of  people already understand this instinctively. 

  Even the English-Only movement does not generally argue against bilingualism, it just insists that English is so important to immigrant children that they should be in an all-English environment as soon as possible--assuming, of course, that being in an all-English environment is the best way for them to learn.  I won't even get into that particular debate right now.  My concern is their obviously implied definition of English as the only American language, and then their writing laws that are so badly written and overreaching that they end up applying to indigenous languages, although the laws are claimed to be directed at immigrant children and languages.  I could, perhaps, give them the benefit of the doubt when they say that they support efforts of Native Americans to preserve their own languages, but if their laws are in fact working against that end, then all the good intentions in the world mean nothing.  

  What really offends me is the combination of the continual equation of English with American nationhood, as if no other language could possibility considered "American" (here, I'm using "American" in the sense of "United States," obviously) with laws that in fact harm non-English American languages.  It's like a kinder, friendlier cultural genocide:  you can re-write history so that English is our only legitimate language, and at the same time, you can help wipe out indigenous languages so that, in the end, you can say "Well, we don't HAVE any indigenous languages."  Seems like the two goals work together very nicely, whether they are intended to or not.  The end result seems to be wiping cultures and their languages (which, of course, contain much of any culture's content, in terms of songs, stories, proverbs, histories, poems, etc.) off the face of the earth and then rewriting history so that we don't even remember that those cultures existed--cultural genocide, done in a less violent, more "civilized" way.  "English for the Children," doesn't that sound nice?  I remember getting in a debate about this on the Internet a few years back, and one person's comment was "I never met an Indian who couldn't speak English."  Well, obviously that person hadn't spent much time in the Southwest, but what really struck me was how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy his attitude amounted to:  if all Native Americans can speak English (in itself, a positive enough goal) then there is no need to preserve their languages.  One goal justifies the next goal.  

  One thing you do hear from the English-Only people is things like "We're not against them teaching their own languages."  Well, of course you're not.  You can have a class teaching Hopi, just like you can have a class teaching German or Japanese.  In recent history, people generally haven't argued with the idea of having a few hours a week to teach a "foreign" language.  Acting like you're being tolerant for allowing people to do that is totally disingenous.  It's a totally false argument.  Sure, you allow them a few hours a week to teach their own languages.  But, is that really going to preserve languages in the long term?  Would Hawaiian even exist today if not for the language nests?  It may well be that these people actually know very well what they are doing--they know that pretending to give people something by "allowing" them to have classes teaching Navajo (rather than classes that are conducted in the MEDIUM of Navajo) actually furthers their goals in the long run.  Sure, having a class is far better than not teaching it at all, but if that's all you're allowed to do in public schools, then you are effectively dooming languages.  

  On a hopeful note, I think that English-Only can be discredited and defeated, and that, next time Unz and his bullies try to pass a law, there should be ads on TV letting people know, in language that everyone can easily understand, what has happened in Arizona.  "We aren't against preserving Indian languages."  "Well, actually, you've already passed a law that, in the name of helping immigrant kids learn English, is actually working against an indigenous American language that helped win WWII.  You are demoting American languages to the status of foreign languages like French, and how can we trust your next law to not do the same?"  That's a crude, nationalistic way of putting it, but it's also based on fact.  The English-Only people will use far cruder nationalism and back it up with baldfaced lies.  I've tried these arguments out on a wide variety of individuals in my daily life, and when you put it in those terms, people look at the whole issue in a very different way "Oh no, those laws shouldn't apply to Indian languages!"  It simply never occurs to most people that those laws might end up applying to indigenous languages that pre-date English.  

  As for "English Fever," it is indeed very real, but it mostly affects people in countries where English is an official second language--that's why it affect some urban Africans.  Of course, it affects people where English is a foreign language, but it mostly involves things like having their kids start learning English in elementary school instead of high-schools, and few would argue with the wisdom of that.  For linguistic minorities in countries where English is the dominant native language, it's more of a question of survival rather than dealing with internationalism; obviously, if it's a country speaking another dominant national language, then the choice they are facing involves the indigenous languages vs. the dominant national language, rather than vs. English.  For the English-only people, the argument usually focuses on the status of English as the de-facto national language of the US.  I have sometimes heard them use the "English is an international language argument," but I think that they are aware that this argument is a double-edged sword:  you could very well argue "Spanish is an international language, so we should encourage our Spanish-speaking immigrants to keep their language while learning English."  

  On a side note, several years ago, "English Fever" reached a point in S. Korea where a few wingnuts actually proposed making it an "official second language," something which, understandably, made a lot of Koreans very upset (very proud people who know what it's like to have a language imposed on them--given another 50 years of Japanese occupation, and Korean could well have been endangered!).  The whole idea, of course, was science-fiction from any realistic language-planning perspective.  The ironic thing is that now, only a half-decade later, China has replaced the US as S. Korea's biggest trading partner, and there is a growing trend of people choosing Chinese over English for foreign-language studies.  The same thing happened in Japan a few years back, with some polls even suggesting more interest in studying Chinese than English.  I do not believe that Chinese is under any position to replace English in any time for the foreseeable future, but I do think that English will find itself increasinly challenged by global multilingualism--in a shinking, multilingual world, it simply makes good business sense for countries to have their citizens able to speak a variety of foreign languages, rather than just having everybody learn the same language.  Send two identical corporations to do business in Brazil, one with Portuguese-speaking employees, and the other with English-speaking employees, and see which one does better business.  That's one reason why I think that English-Only avoids talking too much about English being an international language:  doing so not only contradicts their ridiculous "English is endangered" arguments, it also would seemingly support certain kinds of bilingual education that support immigrant kids keeping their native languages--why spend a lot of effort trying to get English-speaking people to learn foreign languages and simultanously support policies that encourage immigrants speaking the same languages to forget those languages?  It's just an enormous and silly waste of resources.  

  I'd like to see the English-only movement discredited across the board, but obviously, the most crucial thing for now is to keep them from affecting efforts to preserve indigenous languages in any way.   

  PS:  Don, do feel free to re-post any of my posts anywhere you want.  

  Donald Z. Osborn wrote:

This is a very interesting thread with some very important strands, if you will,
that it would help to sort out. Or at least I'm needing to do that and hope it
will be useful for me to share it.

1. Bilingualism is good for you. I'd tend to agree with what Mia said on this,
without denying Susan's reference to failed efforts to focus on such a message.
It seems to be a much surer long-term foundation (or part of it) for arguing
for bilingual education than otherwise clever arguments such as what Matthew
suggested (e.g., that English-only laws make Navajo a foreign language). Such
reasoning risks dividing support for indigenous languages in education from
support for immigrant languages (an unintended message). The basic cause of
bilingual education probably needs to be broader to succeed.

2. First-language education is a matter of quality education as well as a matter
of human (linguistic) rights. This would be the other part of the foundation
for the case for bilingual education.

3. What is really being argued against can therefore be recast as "monolingual
non-first-language education," which in the US puts children of non-English
speaking households at a disadvantage (per #2) and removes a potential
advantage (per #1). This not an arguement against English, of course, but
English-only.

4. Monolongual paradigm. One of the challenges of pursuing this line of
reasoning (nos. 1-3) is that it runs up against what I think of as a paradigm
that considers more than one language to be a disadvantage to individuals and
societies, and that having more than one language means learning one or
both/all less well. This is not just a US phenomenon, but held in some other
countries, even multilingual ones (the notion of a single language for
nation-building came from Europe, for instance).

5. "English fever." Another seemingly distant but very real consideration is
that there seems to be an organic need in today's globalizing human society for
an international lingua franca. English for better or worse (let's not get into
that discussion now) is for the moment at least, spreading to fill that role.
It's easy for people looking at that to think that the best thing in the world
for their kids and the other kids in their society is to learn English really
well. This thought manifests itself in different forms as it passes through
geographic and political prisms (to stretch a metaphor), from "English only" in
some dominantly English first-language contries (notably the US), to parents in
countries where English is a language trying to speak English only and not
their first languages to their children in the hopes that that will benefit
them later on in life (some examples in urban Africa), to the increased
importance of teaching English to non-English speakers (examples worldwide,
including China, where there are a lot of English learning schools, programs,
etc.).

6. Matthew's example of someone saying "We're not against preservation of Native
languages, but they have to be practical. They couldn't use them if they go to
Germany," is an example of nos. 4&5 above, and also probably an unstated
hierarchy of languages. The speaker would probably not say something similar to
Germans. this kind of thinking, which if you look at it is fundamentally a
monolingual paradigm.

7. Language rights and bilingual education are international issues too, like
English fever. IOW, I'd agree with what Susan wrote about endangered languages
but take it a step further. It may be that proponents of indigenous and
endangered languages are more conscious of the international dimensions than
others focusing on bilingual education in particular countries. In any event,
more could be done.

8. There is another hidden strand here and that is the less extreme position of
English-only (and similar propositions) that reduces first language (L1)
education to a stepping stone to fluency in a second/additional language (L2).
This of course is opposed to "additive bilingual" approaches that recognize the
intrinsic importance of L1.

Don Osborn

  
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