The sociopolitics of heritage language education more

E E rivera-02 4/12/2010 13:18 Page 309 E E In: Susana V. Rivera-Mills/Daniel J. Villa (eds.) Spanish of the US Southwest: A Language in Transition. (2010) INTRODUCTION T H E S O C I O P O L I T I C S O F H E R I TAG E L A N G U AG E EDUCATION JENNIFER LEEMAN George Mason University Introduction Although there is debate over exactly how to define ‘heritage language’ (HL) and ‘heritage language speakers’, these terms are generally used within discussions of language education to refer to students who have grown up speaking, or hearing, a language other than English. HL speakers of Spanish constitute a diverse group which includes immigrants from the Caribbean, Central and South America, Mexico, and Spain, as well as their children and grandchildren, in addition to the descendents of earlier generations of immigrants and of the Spanish-speaking people living in territories that were annexed to the United States during westward expansion and conquest. Given the diversity of their life and language experiences, HL speakers of Spanish display a broad range of linguistic abilities; those who were born in the U.S. or immigrated at a young age tend to be English-dominant with widely varying degrees of Spanish knowledge, whereas more recent immigrants or young children with limited school experience may be dominant in Spanish (see Section II of the present volume). Some HL speakers never fully acquired Spanish, while others have lost some of the linguistic ability they once had. Despite the wide range of linguistic abilities exhibited by HL speakers of Spanish, researchers and educators agree that HL speakers’ abilities and language educational needs differ from those of second language (L2) learners of Spanish, for whom traditional language classes were designed. In particular, HL students are often already conversant in the heritage language, although they may have stronger receptive than productive abilities. In many cases they have native or near-native pronunciation, in contrast with L2 students who sometimes struggle to understand basic conversation and to produce Spanish sounds. If the majority of their schooling has been in English, HL speakers may not have had the opportunity to become literate in Spanish. E E E E E E rivera-02 4/12/2010 13:18 Page 310 E E 310   Thus, unlike L2 students who often acquire writing skills simultaneously with, or prior to, learning to speak, HL students may not be familiar with Spanish orthography or other writing conventions. Whereas L2 students generally learn some grammar terminology and explicit rules even in the courses described as ‘communicative’, HL students may have little metalinguistic knowledge. In contrast with advanced L2 Spanish students who often learn academic registers of Spanish but who may be less adept at negotiating various social situations in Spanish, HL speakers who are comfortable conversing with friends and family may not be familiar with the linguistic conventions of public or formal settings. For these reasons, placement of HL speakers in courses designed for L2 learners is often problematic; HL students may be bored by basic conversation activities in lower level courses but overly challenged by grammar exercises or writing activities in higher level courses for which they may have little preparation. The last few decades have been a period of exponential growth of the proportion of Latinos in the general U.S. population, many of whom have grown up speaking at least some Spanish. The percentage of Latino students in primary, secondary, and postsecondary educational institutions has risen even more quickly, and Latino students now constitute a majority in numerous school districts in the Southwest and elsewhere. With the increase in Latino students in the classroom has come a growing recognition of the limitations of the traditional L2 Spanish curriculum for meeting HL students’ needs. As a result, more and more schools and universities are offering Spanish courses of GG specifically designed to meet the needs for HL speakers as an alternative to L2 Spanish courses. Students clearly benefit from courses that reflect their particular strengths and needs, and the best HL classes build on what students already know by helping them to develop literacy in Spanish and to broaden their linguistic repertoires to include the language associated with a wide range of formal as well as informal situations. In school systems with larger HL student populations, several different classes may be offered, allowing the curriculum to respond more specifically to various segments of the HL speaker population. In addition to promoting Spanish language maintenance and development, the official recognition and valuing of students’ linguistic abilities and experiences within the curriculum can foster an inclusive educational environment in which all students have greater opportunity for academic success. Ana Sanchez-Muñoz (this section) reports on an empirical study of one aspect of HL speakers’ linguistic repertoires: lexical variation according to social setting. Whereas some researchers have posited that the lack of a public role for Spanish leads to a reduced number of styles and registers being E E E E E E rivera-02 4/12/2010 13:18 Page 311 E E       311 employed by HL speakers, Sanchez-Muñoz’s analysis of participants’ use of several lexical features revealed variation depending on whether they were in academic or informal settings. This finding suggests that the HL speakers in this study had some awareness of register, and it reminds us that the systematicity of language varieties is not limited to the monolingual ‘standard’. Because all participants had had some prior Spanish-language education, it is impossible to determine whether their ability to shift registers was acquired outside of class or as a result of that class, but either way, her findings represent a cause for optimism. Language ideologies and Spanish language education There is still a need for more research on the cognitive aspects of HL learning and teaching, such as comparisons among HL development, first language (L1) and L2 development, and explorations of the mental processes involved in the expansion of HL speakers’ linguistic repertoires to include additional registers and language varieties. However, researchers and educators increasingly emphasize that the cognitive processes involved in language learning and use are intricately intertwined with social, ideological, and political processes and forces. As a result, recent years have seen greater attention being paid by educators to sociolinguistic issues such as the connection of language and identity, the relative status of different language varieties and practices, and the multi-faceted relationship among language ideologies, language policy, and language use. This is part and parcel of a larger trend in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences that emphasizes the importance of ideologies and context in shaping behavior, as well as a growing recognition of the centrality of language in social and political life. Language politics and ideologies have also come to the fore in discussions of HL education as a result of the flourishing of critical approaches to pedagogical practice and research. Critical educators seek to elucidate the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which school systems and universities privilege particular groups of people and particular ways of seeing the world. Perhaps the most obvious link between education and the favoring of groups with greater socioeconomic status is related to ways in which educational resources are distributed within a society. School is a key site for the acquisition of social and cultural capital, closely linked to the access of economic capital and power; providing disadvantaged groups fewer opportunities for quality schooling buttresses existing inequalities. E E E E E E rivera-02 4/12/2010 13:18 Page 312 E E 312   In addition, educational institutions are imbued with the power to define knowledge, to determine what is ‘correct’ and ‘true’, and to delineate what is worth knowing. By privileging certain kinds of knowledge, or certain value systems, educational practices relegate other kinds of knowledges and other beliefs to a subordinate position. This subordination is not always explicit, and often works through a system of erasure, in which only the dominant views and practices are presented, with no acknowledgement of alternatives. Thus, schools play an important role in naturalizing particular knowledges, practices and values, and socializing learners into dominant ideologies. For students whose life experiences are not reflected in the preferred models presented in schools, education can contribute to marginalization and disempowerment. Spanish language teaching in the United States, like other types of education, can be examined in light of the dominant ideologies and social hierarchies that influence and are influenced by it. In the United States, the teaching of both modern and classical languages to speakers of English has historically been oriented towards the study of literature and the reading of the ‘great books’, with language study seen less as the acquisition of a practical skill than as a badge of a liberal arts education. The teaching of Spanish has been consistent with this trend, at least until quite recently. Further, even when the motivation for the study of Spanish has been framed in terms of the proximity of Latin America to the United States, course content has foregrounded literature from Spain and portrayed varieties of Spanish spoken in Spain as the ‘best’ or the ‘most authentic’, paralleling U.S. racial ideologies which considered European and European-descendent cultures and peoples to be superior to the those of Africa, Asia and the Americas (Leeman 20067). Whereas the L2 Spanish curriculum gave Latin American cultural production and language short shrift through most of the 20th century, U.S. Latinos were largely ignored, reflecting a broader tendency to portray the U.S. as a monolingual English-speaking nation and to erase the linguistic diversity that has existed throughout the nation’s history. By ignoring or denigrating the varieties of Spanish spoken in the U.S., as well as the language practices typical of bilingual speakers and contact situations, mainstream approaches to L2 Spanish teaching have been complicit in the portrayal of the language of HL speakers, their families, and their communities as less ‘authentic’ and less valuable (Valdés 1989, García 1993, Villa 2002, Leeman 2005, Train 2007). Moreover, in ‘communicative’ or ‘proficiency-oriented’ approaches to Spanish language study, teaching materials and practices typically portray the ‘ideal’ student as a middle class monolingual English-speaker who will use E E E E E E rivera-02 4/12/2010 13:18 Page 313 E E       313 Spanish when traveling abroad as a tourist, and they tend to ignore and marginalize the identities and learning goals of other kinds of students, including HL speakers of Spanish (Herman 2007). In the final chapter of this section, Robert Train illustrates the interrelationship of education and power by tracing the history of Spanish in Sonoma County, California from its establishment in 1823 as the northernmost Spanish-speaking settlement in North America until the present day. Stressing the importance of language in defining and asserting imperial and national identities, Train documents the imposition of Spanish in colonial and Mexican California, and the erasure of Spanish in contemporary Sonoma. His study serves as a reminder that the status of a given language is not related to the particular linguistic qualities of that language but instead emerges from the ideological and sociopolitical context. Linguistic hierarchies and Spanish for HL speakers Beginning with the Chicano and Puerto Rican rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and intensifying in subsequent decades with the growth of the U.S. Latino population as well as greater public recognition of cultural diversity, L2 Spanish curricula have included explicit references to U.S. Latinos. In addition, more and more schools and universities have added courses designed specifically for HL students. Nonetheless, HL courses have been fraught with   , an interrelated set of beliefs including: the idea that it is possible to eliminate variation within languages, the conviction that certain ways of speaking are ‘correct’ while others are ‘wrong’, the acceptance of linguistic authority regarding correctness, and the conviction that the prestige of particular language forms or practices is related to their inherent worth, rather than society’s attitudes towards the people who use them (Milroy 2007). One way that standard language ideologies may be manifested in HL instruction is in attempts to rid students of ‘non-standard’ or ‘incorrect’ language, such as linguistic forms associated with rural varieties or lower socioeconomic status, words or structures that show signs of English influence, and code-switching. Telling students that the language of their families and communities is ‘wrong’ or ‘deficient’ can have negative psychological and emotional consequences for HL speakers, some of whom are also denigrated for speaking limited or ‘non-standard’ English. In addition, HL programs that insist on the superiority of ‘standard’ language forms may hinder Spanish language maintenance and use among HL speakers by contributing to lin- E E E E E E rivera-02 4/12/2010 13:18 Page 314 E E 314   guistic insecurity, and they contribute to the subordination and disenfranchisement of speakers of ‘non-standard’ varieties. Fortunately, there has been a move away from eradication-oriented approaches to HL education, and a greater emphasis placed on expanding students’ repertoires (Valdés 1981). Nonetheless, HL programs that teach students that all language varieties and practices are legitimate, but that certain varieties are inappropriate for public and professional use, or unsuitable for academic discussions, may unintentionally buttress language hierarchies that position the learners’ language at the bottom (Leeman 2005). Similarly, HL educational practices that fail to acknowledge and value the language varieties spoken by U.S. Latinos —such as the HL textbooks examined by Ducar (2009), which privileged Peninsular Spanish over North, Central, and South American varieties— are complicit in the silencing of their voices and the ongoing erasure of their experiences. Monolingual ideologies and HL education In addition to examining the language ideologies that are reflected in and reinforced by HL programs and teaching materials, it is also important to consider the broader sociopolitical context in which the framework of HL education has developed. As is frequently noted, the U.S. has a long history of elementary and secondary education in several non-English languages, including French, German, and Spanish, with the Spanish-language schools of the Southwest particularly well known. Like societal multilingualism, the use of minority languages in education was seen as acceptable until the escalation of anti-immigrant, anti-Latino, and anti-German sentiment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Such isolationist prejudices led to non-English languages increasingly being seen as un-American (Pavlenko 2002, Schmid 2001, Wiley 2000). Consequently, education in other languages (including the teaching of L2s) was vastly reduced across the country, and was even outlawed in several states. Although at first glance it might appear that contemporary HL programs are a continuation or return to early programs, or evidence of a new educational commitment to linguistic diversity, a closer look reveals important differences. Whereas the Spanish-language schools common in the Southwestern territories annexed from Mexico provided education completely in Spanish (Schmid 2001), the majority of today’s Spanish courses for HL speakers are offered as an alternative to L2 language classes for students who receive most of their education in English, although sometimes they are E E E E E E rivera-02 4/12/2010 13:18 Page 315 E E       315 provided in optional after-school programs or private ‘Saturday schools’. As such, they are mostly available in junior or senior high schools, and meet for only a few hours a week. In HL instruction, the Spanish language (and sometimes, the cultures of Spanish-speaking people) is the primary focus and goal of instruction, whereas in Spanish-medium schools the development of language arts and literacy was incorporated into a broader curriculum. Suspicion of speakers of languages other than English has continued through the 20th century and into the 21st , and the rising tendency to view non-English languages in general, and Spanish in particular, as threatening to U.S. national identity has also contributed to the demise of bilingual education. Although bilingual and minority language schools had existed earlier, in the 1960s and 1970s, civil rights movements challenging educational segregation and inequality as well as other kinds of discrimination brought bilingual education to the fore. As a result of activists’ work, awareness of the inadequacy of English-only schools for minority language children increased among the public and government officials alike. In 1974 the Supreme Court ruled that providing English-medium instruction to all children without special accommodation for children with limited English proficiency amounted to discrimination. Many school districts implemented bilingual education programs in order to comply with federal law. However, although parents and community activists advocated for educational programs promoting Spanish development and maintenance while also providing English language and literacy training, and there is a broad consensus among researchers that such programs are the most beneficial, the vast majority of bilingual programs are instead designed to gradually move students to English-only classrooms. The predominance of these ‘transitional bilingual’ programs —where the focus is on the acquisition or development of English language skills and the use of the L1 is gradually phased out— reflects the larger societal ideologies that devalue non-English languages and see them as impediments to academic and professional success. In recent decades, public discourse portraying Spanish as dangerous, unAmerican, and illegal has become commonplace. Anxiety and hostility regarding non-English languages have crystallized in numerous movements to declare English the official language, and in federal and state educational legislation reducing or eliminating bilingual education and the use of nonEnglish languages in schools, such as No Child Left Behind and the antibilingual education referendums in Arizona and California. The failure to value students’ home languages or to provide literacy and language arts education in those languages reinforces negative attitudes and contributes to incomplete acquisition and attrition. E E E E E E rivera-02 4/12/2010 13:18 Page 316 E E 316   The same time period has seen a renewed interest in the study of nonEnglish languages by L1 English-speakers, which some observers have taken as a positive sign regarding public attitudes towards multilingualism. However, with the exception of a very small number of innovative dual-immersion schools (cf. Freeman 1998), bilingualism acquired by English-speaking elites is seen positively whereas the bilingualism of Spanish-speakers who learn English is viewed as problematic (Pomerantz 2002). Knowledge of multiple languages is increasingly portrayed as an asset but educational policy encourages L1 English-speakers to learn additional languages while L1 Spanish-speakers are encouraged to replace their Spanish with English. Although it is possible to see the current trend towards offering Spanish HL courses as a sign of greater attention to the language education needs of students who have grown up in Spanish-speaking homes, it must be noted that this trend leaves the dominant English-only educational framework largely unchallenged. The lack of educational opportunities for Spanish maintenance and literacy, together with the subordination of Spanish, is a key factor shaping the linguistic and life experiences of many HL speakers. Thus, while Spanish programs designed specifically for HL speakers certainly represent a vast improvement over a one-size-fits-all curriculum implicitly designed for monolingual English-speaking L2 learners, they should not be seen as the ideal educational option. Instead, it is important that educators, researchers and activists take a broader view of the educational system in their work to promote language development, academic success, and social justice for all. In the following chapter, Holly Cashman examines the ideological construction of non-English languages in Arizona, where a referendum in 2000 brought an end to bilingual education and another in 2006 made English the official language of the state. Cashman’s exploration of anti-Spanish sentiment and her discussion of the role of the state in either supporting or stifling minority languages provide insights on the ways in which language subordination is enacted through educational policy. 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