From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals
What may explain seeming under-achievement by language minority children when and where this occurs? When first, second or third generation immigrant children appear to fail in the classroom, where is blame popularly placed? When guest works' children, indigenous minorities and distinct ethnic groups are shown to leave school earlier, achieve less in examinations or receive lower grades, what is the cause?
The blame may be attributed to the child's bilingualism, often popularly seen as causing cognitive confusion. The bilingual brain is depicted as two engines working at half throttle, while the monolingual's single, well-tuned engine runs at full throttle. Such an explanation is usually incorrect. Where two languages are well developed, then bilingualism is more likely to bring advantages than disadvantages. Only when a child's two languages are both underdeveloped can 'blame' be attributed to bilingualism. Even then, the blame should be on the societal circumstances that occasionally create underdeveloped languages.
Where under-achievement exists, the reason assigned may be underexposure to the majority language. Failure or below average performance, in the United States and the United Kingdom, is typically attributed to insufficiently developed English language skills for the curriculum. Those who use a minority language at home are sometimes perceived to struggle at school, due to a lack of competence in the dominant tongue. Thus submersion and transitional forms of bilingual education attempt to ensure a fast conversion to the majority language.
However, such a speedy conversion may do more harm than good; it denies the child's home language skills, even denies the child's identity and self-respect. Instead of using existing skills, the 'sink or swim' approach attempts to replace them. The level of English in the curriculum may be too advanced; consequently, the child under-achieves. Further English lessons become the remedy, but not the best solution.
Providing instruction through the medium of the minority language, in two-way, developmental maintenance or heritage language programs may combat under-achievement. When children are allowed to operate in the heritage language in the curriculum, evidence indicates successful results, including fluency in the majority language (Baker, 1996; Cummins, 2000). Thus underexposure to the majority language, though popular, is an incorrect explanation of under-achievement. It fails to note the advantages of instruction in the minority language. It inappropriately seeks an answer in increased majority language instruction, rather than increased minority language education.
Moreover, when bilingual children under-achieve, there may be a mismatch between home and school, based not only on language differences but also dissimilarities in culture, values and beliefs (Delgado-Gaitan & Trueba, 1991). As an extreme, this reflects an assimilationist, imperialist and oppressive majority viewpoint. The child and family are expected to adjust to the school system, rather than expecting a pluralist system to incorporate variety. From such an assimilationist viewpoint, the solution lies in the home adjusting to mainstream language and culture to prepare the child for school. In the past, some educational psychologists and speech therapists advised language minority parents to raise their children in the majority, school language.
Alternatively, where practicable, the school system should be flexible enough to incorporate the home language and culture. A home-school mismatch can be positive addressed by 'strong forms' of bilingual education for minorities. By two-way, developmental maintenance and heritage language programs, by a multicultural classroom approach with respect for the child's value systems, culture and religious beliefs, the inclusion of parents in running the school and in partnership in their child's education, the mismatch can become a merger.
(pp. 120,121)
Section on socioeconomic factors omitted due to my current focus on international school environments.
This raises another issue. Under-achievement is not simply related to one or several causes. The equation of under-achievement is complex, involving a number of factors, which interact in complicated ways. Umbrella labels, such as 'socioeconomic status' must be broken down into more definable predictors of under-achievement, such as the parents' attitude about education. Home factors interact with school factors and provide an enormous number of different routes to varying degrees of school success. The recipes of success and failure are many, with varies, interacting ingredients. However, socioeconomic and sociocultural features are important in most equations of under-achievement.
Part of the equation is the type of school the child atttends. This topic has highlighted the different outcomes in 'strong' forms of bilingual education, compared with 'weak'. The same child will learn more in programs using the heritage language for instruction than in programs which replace the home language as soon as possible. Therefore, under-achievement in a language minority child or group calls for scrutiny of the whole school. A system that suppresses the home language is likely to explain part of individual and ethnic group under-achievement. It tends to deny the language and cognitive achievements of children, their identity and self-esteem.
'Type of school' is a broad heading, under which a range of quality can exist, from poor to superior. Where under-achievement occurs, it is too simple to blame the type of school, rather than digging deeper and locating more specific causes. Baker (1996), Cummins (2000) and Hornberger (1991) have listed attributes that must be examined in assessing the quality of any educational system serving language minority children. Such factors include the supply, ethnic origins and bilingualism of teachers, classroom balance of minority and majority students, use and sequencing of languages across the curriculum over different grades, and reward systems for enriching the minority language and culture.
Under-achievement may be due to real learning difficulties. It is important to make a distinction. Too often, bilingual children are labeled with learning difficulties, while the causes of problems may be less in the child and more in the school or educational system. A subtractive, assimilative system typically creates negative attitudes and low motivation. In the 'sink or swim' approach, 'sinking' reflects an unsympathetic system and insensitive teaching, rather than individual learning problems. Apart from system and school generated problems, there will be children who are bilingual and have genuine learning difficulties (Cummins, 1984). Distinguishing between the real and the apparent, the system-generated and the remediable problems of the individual highlights alternatives. When under-achievement exists, do we blame the victim, blame the teacher and the school, or blame the system? When assessment tests and examinations show relatively low performance of language minority individuals and groups, will prejudices be confirmed or can we use such assessment to reveal deficiencies in the architecture of the school system and curriculum design? Under-achievement tends to be blamed on the child and the language minority group, while the explanation often lies in factors outside the individual.
A particular case of under-achievement is when students drop-out of schools. Stephen Krashen (1999) provides evidence to show that bilingual education is not the cause of dropping-out in United States schools, but it may be the cure. Latino students do have higher dropout rates (e.g. 30% of Latino students are classified as drop-outs compared to 8.6% of non-Latino whites and 12.1% of non-Latino blacks). Krashen's (1999) review of evidence suggest that those who had experienced bilingual education were significantly less likely to drop-out.
There are factors (other than bilingual education) related to dropping-out such as socio-economic class, recency of immigration, family environment, and the presence of print at home. It is estimated that 40% of Latino children are more likely to have parents who did not complete High School. When these factors are controlled statistically, the drop-out rate among Latinos is the same (or virtually the same) as for other groups. Since 'strong' forms of bilingual schooling tend to produce higher standards of academic English and performance across the curriculum, then such schools become part of the cure for dropping-out.
(pp.122,123)
SOURCE:
Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
REFS:
Baca, L.M. and Cervantes, H.T. (1998) The Bilingual Special Education Interface (3rd edn). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Cummins, J. (1984) Bilingualism and Special Education: Issues in Assessment and Pedagogy. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Harry, B. (1992) Cultural Diversity, Families and the Special Education System: Communication and Empowerment. New York: Teachers College Press.
Krashen, S.D. (1999) Condemned Without a Trial: Bogus Arguments Against Bilingual Education. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
