One consequence of population mobility is an increasing diversity
within schools. To illustrate, in the city of Toronto in Canada, 58% of
kindergarten pupils come from homes where English is not the usual language
of communication. Schools in Europe and North America have experienced this
diversity for years, and educational policies and practices vary widely
between countries and even within countries. Some political parties and
groups search for ways to solve the problem of diverse communities and
their integration in schools and society. However, they see few positive
consequences for the host society and worry that this diversity threatens
the identity of the host society. Consequently, they promote unfortunate
educational policies that will make the “problem” disappear. If students
retain their culture and language, they are viewed as less capable of
identifying with the mainstream culture and learning the mainstream
language of the society.
The challenge for educator and policy-makers is to shape the
evolution of national identity in such a way that rights of all citizens
(including school children) are respected, and the cultural linguistic, and
economic resources of the nation are maximised. To waste the resources of
the nation by discouraging children from developing their mother tongues is
quite simply unintelligent from the point of view of national
self-interest. A first step in providing an appropriate education for
culturally and linguistically diverse children is to examine what the
existing research says about the role of children’s mother tongues in their
educational development.
In fact, the research is very clear. When children continue to
develop their abilities in two or more languages throughout their primary
school, they gain a deeper understanding of language and how to use it
effectively. They have more practice in processing language, especially
when they develop literacy in both. More than 150 research studies
conducted during the past 25 years strongly support what Goethe, the famous
eighteenth-century German philosopher, once said: the person who knows only
one language dose not truly know that language. Research suggests that
bilingual children may also develop more flexibility in their thinking as a
result of processing information through two different languages.
The level of development of children;s mother tongue is a strong
predictor of their second language development. Children who come to school
with a solid foundation in their mother tongue develop stronger literacy
abilities in the school language. When parents and other caregivers (e.g.
grandparents) are able to spend time with their children and tell stories
or discuss issues with them in a way that develops their mother tongue,
children come to school well-prepared to learn the school language and
succed educationally. Children’s knowledge and skills transfer across
languages from the mother tongue to the school language. Transfer across
languages can be two-way: both languages nurture each other when the
educational environment permits children access to both languages.
Some educators and parents are suspicious of mother tongue-based
teaching programs because they worry that they take time away from the
majority language. For exampie, in a bilingual program when 50% of the time
is spent teaching through children’s home language and 50% through the
majority language, surely children won’t progress as far in the latter? One
of the most strongly established findings of educational research, however,
is that well-implemented bilingual programs can promote literracy and
subject-matter knowledge in a minority language without any negative
effects on children’s development in the majority language. Within Europe,
the Foyer program in Belgium, which develops children’s speaking and
literacy abilities in three languages (their mother tongue, Dutch and
French), most clearly illustrates the benefits of bilingual and trilingual
education (see Cummins, 2000).
It is easy to understand how this happens. When children are learning
through a minority language, they are learning concepts and intellectual
skills too. Pupils who know how to tell the time in their mother tongue
understand the concept of telling time. In order to tell time in the
majority language, they do not need to re-learn the concept. Similarly, at
more advanced stages, there, is transfer across languages in other skills
such as knowing how to distinguish the main idea from the supporting
details of a written passage or story, and distinguishing fact from
opinion. Studies of secondary school pupils are providing interesting
findings in this area, and it would be worth extending this research.
Many people marvel at how quickfy bilingual children seem to “pick
up” conversational skills in the majority language at school (although it
takes much longer for them to catch up with native speakers in academic
language skills). However, educators are often much less aware of how
quickly children can lose their ability to use their mother tongue, even in
the home context. The extent and rapidity of language loss will vary
according to the concentration of families from a particular linguistic
group in the neighborhood. Where the mother tongue is used extensively in
the community, then language loss among young children will be less.
However, where language communities are not concentrated in particular
neighborhoods, children can lose their ability to communicate in their
mother tongue within 2-3 years of starting school. They may retain
receptive skills in the language but they will use the majority language,
in speaking with their peers and siblings and in responding to their
parents. By the time children become adolescents, the linguistic division
between parents and children has become an emotional chasm. Pupils
frequently become alienated from the cultures of both home and school with
predictable results.
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