I wonder if this would be true for Native languages

[Evan Gardner]

Could this work for Native Languages?

I am betting my life on it!
On Mar 25, 2012 5:36 AM, "Dr. MJ Hardman" <hardman at ufl.edu> wrote:

> I remember way back when, after we from UF had helped install a genuinely
> bi-lingual program in Miami schools, it was destroyed by exactly the same
> logic.  In that program English-speaking students went to Spanish class
> while Spanish-speaking students went to English class.  The children loved
> it; they learned about language itself (very helpful for English-speaking
> students who spoke a discriminated variety of their own language), and they
> ended up bilingual in a city where it is necessary to be bilingual to get a
> job.  It's gone.  MJ
>
> On 3/25/12 1:42 AM, "Rudy Troike" <rtroike at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU> wrote:
>
> > Re Andrew's question:
> >
> >    Yes, dual language instruction would surely work, IF Native-language
> > curricula were developed paralleling usual content in regular
> English-only
> > classes. The situation vis-a-vis Spanish/English is that a weird backlash
> > against 'bilingual education' developed, with opponents convincing the
> > public that it was monolingual instruction in Spanish, dooming students
> > to isolation from access to English (even a Yale professor of literature
> > denounced bilingual education on these grounds, ignoring the obvious
> > meaning of 'bi-', which was distorted to be interpreted as 'mono-').
> > Ronald Reagan campaigned against bilingual education on these grounds,
> > and part of the legacy of the Reagan Revolution was to pervert support
> > for bilingual education into support for English as a Second Language
> > (ESL) support. In California, even native Spanish-speaking voters were
> > intimidated into supporting a referendum funded by a zealous businessman
> > named Unz, who later brought the same initiative to Arizona, to outlaw
> > bilingual instruction. The label 'dual language' was developed as a
> > workaround to avoid the taint of the perversion of 'bi-' to mean 'mono-'.
> > Also, critically, it more actively sought to recruit native English-
> > speaking children into classes, and was often installed in magnet
> schools,
> > where dual language instruction was made attractive, rather than treated
> > as a ghettoizing program designed as remedial instruction for immigrants.
> > (The educationally preposterous nature of the Arizona law is that if a
> > child enters school unable to comprehend English adequately, he/she is
> > denied placement in a program utilizing the child's native language, and
> > is can only be admitted into bi-/dual language instruction once his/her
> > competence in English is deemed adequate.) I think the same irrational
> > and discriminatory provision applies in California, so except in schools
> > on a reservation, this absurdity would have to be factored -- Native
> > language could NOT be used until a child had demonstrated an adequate
> > level of proficiency in English, by which time it might be too late to
> > take maximum advantage of children's natural language learning ability.
> >
> >    Rudy
> >
>
> Dr. MJ Hardman
> Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology
> Department of Linguistics
> University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
> Doctora Honoris Causa UNMSM, Lima, Perú
> website:  http://grove.ufl.edu/~hardman/
>
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