[lg policy] bibitem: True American: Language, Identity, and the Education of Immigrant Children

[Harold Schiffman]

True American: Language, Identity, and the Education of Immigrant Children

Rosemary Salomone

Harvard University Press

How can schools meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population
of newcomers? Do bilingual programs help children transition into
American life, or do they keep them in a linguistic ghetto? Are
immigrants who maintain their native language uninterested in being
American, or are they committed to changing what it means to be
American?

In this ambitious book, Rosemary Salomone uses the heated debate over
how best to educate immigrant children as a way to explore what
national identity means in an age of globalization, transnationalism,
and dual citizenship. She demolishes popular myths—that bilingualism
impedes academic success, that English is under threat in contemporary
America, that immigrants are reluctant to learn English, or that the
ancestors of today’s assimilated Americans had all to gain and nothing
to lose in abandoning their family language.

She lucidly reveals the little-known legislative history of bilingual
education, its dizzying range of meanings in different schools,
districts, and states, and the difficulty in proving or disproving
whether it works—or defining it as a legal right.

In eye-opening comparisons, Salomone suggests that the simultaneous
spread of English and the push toward multilingualism in western
Europe offer economic and political advantages from which the U.S.
could learn. She argues eloquently that multilingualism can and should
be part of a meaningful education and responsible national citizenship
in a globalized world.

Table of contents: Preface
The Symbolic and the Salient
Americanization Past
The New Immigrants
Language, Identity, and Belonging
Rights, Ambivalence, and Ambiguities
Backlash
More Wrongs than Rights
Setting the Record Straight
Looking Both Ways
A Meaningful Education
Notes
Index

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674046528

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Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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