A New Role of Advocacy 
for Language Minority Students

Jill Kerper Mora, Ed.D.
San Diego State University

Keynote Address to the Arizona TESOL Conference
March 9, 2001
Yuma, Arizona 

Good Morning,

Thank you for the opportunity to be here with you today. I wish to thank the Planning Committee for this excellent AZ-TESOL conference, including Olivia Zepeda, Nancy Blitz, and Gretchen Gross, for this opportunity to talk with you about our new role as advocates for language minority students. I applaud you for taking the time to attend this conference to learn more about research, teaching methods, materials and programs and to grow as TESOL professionals. In these times of dramatic policy shifts and new legal mandates, we are keenly aware that we must do all that we can do to improve education for children and adults who are learning English. We have had new responsibilities and challenges thrust upon us through the ballot initiative process in California and Arizona. Proposition 227 and Proposition 203 have dramatically changed the nature of our work in classrooms and the political and policy context in which we design and implement programs for speakers of languages other than English. We as educators, and TESOL as an organization, have responded to the public’s demands for more accountability. We have adopted and are implemented higher academic standards for students and higher professional standards for educators. The unfortunate truth is, however, that accountability has turned out to be a one-way street. Education politics are geared toward reversing demographic changes rather than toward accommodating the linguistic and cultural diversity of our student population.

I am reminded of the story about the education reformer who holds a séance in order to call up the ghost of the great progressive educator John Dewey. Frustrated with the pace of reform, this person asks the great philosopher of progressive education how to bring about real change in American schools. When the ghost of Dewey appears, he asks,

"Do you want the realistic way, or the miraculous way?"

 "Well, the realistic way, of course," says the reformer.

Dewey answers: "A million angels would come down from heaven and visit every classroom in America, wave their hands, and education reform would immediately become established."

"Then what would be the miraculous way?" asks the puzzled reformer.

"Educators would do it themselves," explains Dewey.

 The story always gets a laugh, because no one knows better than we educators how fiendishly difficult it is to institute lasting school reform.

Let us begin to understand our role as advocates for language minority students with a definition. We second language teachers love the study of words and word origins. The word “advocate” comes from Latin. The prefix “ad” meaning “toward” or “in favor of” and “vocare” meaning “to speak” or “to voice.” In Spanish, for example, “abogado” means “lawyer,” a person who speaks for someone else on their behalf or in their defense. This little diversion into etymology and word derivations gives us a glimpse into our role on behalf of language minority students. But let’s not stop there with our word study lesson. I love our ability in English to take a single verb, like “to speak” and derive different meanings by adding and changing the accompanying preposition. These are called phrasal verbs. I challenge us to think of our roles as advocates as inclusive of all of these variations of the verb “to speak.” We must speak up, speak out, speak for, speak to, and speak with language minorities, policy makers, the public and our fellow professionals.  

 

Let us examine each of these components of our role as advocates for language minority students, their families and our communities because we are in fact one community whose futures and whose well-being are interconnected. First of all, we must speak up. To be an effective voice of reason in a sea of chaotic and often incoherent school reform policies, we must understand why these changes are taking place. The political and social phenomena we are witnessing are in fact, nothing new.  Theory and research in sociology and social psychology can help us explain the “backlash politics” of the anti-bilingual education movement as part of wider social and economic changes and our responses to those changes through the theories of intergroup conflict and social dominance.

Proposition 227 and Proposition 203 are intended to accomplish two related but separate goals: To set language policy and to establish education policy. First, we must recognize that there is no “official” language policy in the United States. Attempts at the federal level to legislate English as the official language have failed. The primary reason for this is that, at some level, politicians and policy makers recognize that it is impossible to enforce these laws in a society such as ours with its great cultural and linguistic diversity. We as TESOL educators know that you can’t force someone to learn a language. How easy our jobs would be, if we still had them, if this were the case!

The public schools are seen as the transmitters of American culture and traditions. Schools have played a role for many years in helping to assimilate each new wave of immigrants and teach them to function in an English speaking society. The official English laws have been largely symbolic statements about the value of learning English and the power of English as a unifying force in our nation. These laws are in a sense a “code of conduct” for immigrants, supposedly giving us the ability to distinguish “good immigrants” who want to become totally assimilated and abandon their native language and culture, from “bad immigrants” who wish to maintain their heritage language and traditions while living in the United States. This is why bilingual education has been seen as a threat, since the use of a language other than English in a public institution somehow gives status and acceptance to another language. If a language such as Spanish is officially allowed in the public schools, it confers a new and possibly competing status on a “foreign language.” This in turn is seen as a threat to the dominance and status of English.

The strategies used to impose and maintain dominance of one group over another are not new. Sociologists can easily identify them. The dominant group creates what are call “legitimizing myths” to justify the subordination of threatening minority groups. We have heard such myths frequently in this political climate. In order to distinguish the in-group from the out-group, the dominant forces will demonize the out-group, blame them for societal ills, cast them as scapegoats, portray them as selfish and self-serving and therefore, worthy of discriminatory and even oppressive treatment. Does any of this sound familiar? How many of you have heard some variation on these myths?

"Young children soak up a new language like a sponge. Therefore, they can learn English in one year in kindergarten, where all they do anyway is color, cut and paste. Then they can enter the mainstream without any difficulty."

Or how about this one? "My granddaughter went to Japan and studied Japanese the year after she graduated from college. In an immersion program she learned the language in one year. This is proof that immersion works. "

This one is the classic: "My ancestors from (name the country) immigrated to this country way back when… They didn’t want or need bilingual education or special English classes and they learned English just fine. Why do today’s immigrants expect special treatment?"

It is challenging to point out to someone whose mind is made up, the subtle differences between a fully literate and well-educated college graduate studying a foreign language during a year of immersing herself in the language and culture and a kindergarten child from a Spanish-speaking home in Yuma entering school for the first time. It is difficult to explain about how we are committed to closing the achievement gap between language minority students and their English-speaking peers over the long-term. But we must rise to the challenge. We must speak up and patiently explain that children need to learn much more than just how to speak English in our public schools.

We as educators are not used to becoming involved in power struggles. Most of us avoid the petty feuding and power plays that sometimes go on in our schools over whose ideology will prevail and who will get to make the important decisions about instructional methods and program implementation. We avoid name-calling and scapegoating because we know that we must work together to achieve a common goal. This is our role as professionals in keeping with our duties to the children and young adults we teach. It is also sound pedagogical practice. But we cannot just be satisfied when our own house is in order when our larger community and our society is polarized and divided.

The campaign to discredit bilingual education and bilingual educators has led to what our respected theorist and researcher Jim Cummins calls “coercive power relationships.”  It is very hard for me to believe that if I were a school administrator in Arizona under the provisions of Proposition 203, I could be putting myself at risk professionally and financially for promoting or defending dual language instruction for language minority students. Is this the democratic America that we grew up believing in when our freedom of speech is restricted when we advocate for sound policies and effective programs for our children?

We must speak up to refute the notion that English is threatened or that those parents and communities that choose to have their children learn in the language they bring from the home when they enter school are somehow un-American or refusing to assimilate. We must explain that the realities of today’s immigrants and immigrant communities are very different. Our immigrants in the Southwest are not like those who got off the boat at Ellis Island with all their earthly belongings in a suitcase. Many of today’s immigrant families are what we call “transnational.” They maintain close familial and economic ties with their countries of origin. For these people to become monolingual in English is simply impractical since their heritage language is a source of bonding as well as an economic asset as they travel and trade across borders.

As advocates for language minority students, we must also speak out. As John Dewey’s ghost points out to us, the voice of educators often goes unheard in policy decisions that dramatically impact our students. Policy makers and the public must understand the complexities and the challenges of teaching and learning in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms. We must educate the public sector, as well as school administrators, our colleagues, and parents about much more than just second language learning and how long it takes to learn academic English. We laugh to keep from crying when they tell us that young children can easily become proficient in one year, knowing how difficult it is to implement sound bilingual and second-language programs without being strapped with pseudo-theories, false pedagogical assumptions and misinterpreted and misrepresented assessment and evaluation data. We must get across the message that we are not just about teaching English, but that students need a solid base in language, literacy and content in order to succeed academically. Language minority children do not have to replace their native languages with English in order to achieve in school. On the contrary, we know that we must build on children’s funds of cultural and linguistic knowledge so that they can achieve to the best of their abilities.

More and more longitudinal research, especially in the area of literacy education, is confirming what we already know: Effective programs for increasing academic achievement come out of collaborative efforts over a long period of time that are based on sound research-based theory and a deep understanding of the learning needs and styles of the particular students we teach. 30 years of research have confirmed that effective programs for language minority students share certain characteristics. I have listed first the school environment factors that must be in place to promote high levels of achievement for our linguistically diverse students. Second, we can confirm the instructional features of our programs that support our bilingual learners’ attainment of high academic standards and the fulfillment of their human potential. 

We must speak out and demand the human and economic resources to give these children a solid foundation and enriched experiences with reading and writing and engaging academic content. These include appropriate and relevant professional development and instructional materials. Just in the last few weeks, the Arizona Senate has debated funding for English language learner programs. A way to start to speak out is to write your legislators and the chair of the education committee, Senator Kenneth Bennett, and to telling them just how much more can be accomplished in properly organized and well-funded programs than in programs for language minority students. Is $150 above the base line of funding for students enough to provide a high quality and effective program for your second-language learners? Is $250 enough? The leaders of the “English for the Children” campaign think so. Do you agree? Speak out for social justice and equal opportunities to learn for these children.

Our role as advocates for language minority students requires us to do much more than to go into our classrooms and shut the door, as a defense against the changes swirling around us. We must have the courage to speak to people who are well-meaning but ill informed about how bilingual learners learn and about the value of their bilingualism as they willingly and eagerly acquire their second language. We must speak for the less powerful among us, including our Native American communities, whose rights to maintain their heritage languages is threatened through the fears and prejudices of those who do not appreciate the intimate link between language and culture. We must speak with parents and community leaders about the hopes and dreams they have for their children and how we can help to achieve those dreams together. We must engage in conversation and dialogue with our colleagues in our university and school communities about the best way to design and implement effective programs that are coherent and well integrated. We must not allow power struggles and ideological battles to destroy collaboration and impede shared decision-making. Advocacy requires courage and a clear vision of the alternatives that will lead to the true and lasting benefits of speaking two languages and living in a multicultural society.

Is this a new role for the organization and membership of TESOL? No, not really. We have come a long way in education reform, with California’s Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development teaching credential, the CLAD, for example. TESOL leaders were active in establishing the CLAD content and methods courses as the core of teacher preparation. The CLAD credential is a companion and complement to the BCLAD or bilingual credential. The two credentials are based on the same theoretical underpinnings of second-language acquisition and cognitive development, with a focus on the three tiers of instruction: language, literacy and content. TESOL has soundly rejected the notion that BCLAD and CLAD educators are in competition with one another.

TESOL has also been a leader in the approval and implementation of California’s English language standards. The ELD standards define “pathways” for English language learners to gain full access to reading and language arts and to the content areas through a developmentally appropriate instructional focus for students with different levels of English proficiency. The ELD standards are a giant step toward a more coherent and well-articulated curriculum for language minority students.

In many ways, there is no turning back now. We as Teachers of Speakers of Other Languages have been thrust into the position of explaining complex social and cultural changes to a society that does not seem to want to listen. But we are language teachers, and language is our strongest weapon against ignorance and prejudice. We must challenge ourselves, each other, and our society to live up to the noble principles on which our country was founded. We must respect the rights to self-determination and equal educational opportunity for our language minority students. Speak up, speak out, speak for, speak to and speak with all of those who can somehow make a difference. This is our role as advocates for language minority students and for a brighter future and better world for all of us. 

Additional Resources  

Click here for a Road Map to the Bilingual Education Controversy

Social Dominance Theory & Language Minority Education
References

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For additional resources and to navigate Dr. Mora's CLAD Website:

This page was last updated on 07/26/02