Potovsky's video: "No child left monolingual"

Hi bookworms! 

Today I am going to talk about some bilingual programs that are applied in some countries such as United Stated. The objetive is comparing such ones with those Spanish educational programs targeted to immigrant children. 

Here you are the video on which I based my arguments: 

Potovsky begins her discourse through an outstanding statement: “65% people over the world are bilingual or multilingual”. Contradictorily to such statement, little countries or education programs promote bilingualism or multilingualism. United States is a clear example of transitional programs for immigrant children whose goals are mastering the official language: English.  

As a consequence, there is language shift in immigrant families, which it is what we know as linguistic assimilation. Grandsons arrive to not communicate to their grandparents because of their heritance language loss. Immigrant children have to adjust their lives to speaking English, so this is a social issue to success in United States and other countries. Actually, some schools ask parents to not speak their L1 at home, since it is not beneficious for students learning. Really?

In Spain, something similar happens in our education. “Aules d’acollida” are a type of transitional programs for immigrant children. The difference with some United States programs is that such “aules d’acollida” don’t allow students to use their L1, so they are totally introduced into a Catalan or Spanish learning environment. Another difference is the fact these immigrant pupils are separated from the rest of classmates until they master Catalan or Spanish language. Therefore, all their social backgrounds and cultures are not integrated in class.

Why do Spanish “aules d’acollida” separate immigrant children from other classmates? I consider that the best way to learn a new language or to integrate a new culture is socialising within their context. What’s more, as I mentioned before, these pupils are not allowed to use their L1 in class, neither with their own classmates; they are expected to speak Catalan or Spanish. In such case, we can compare to some United States schools that ask parents not to speak their L1 at home, so these students are like in a cage; they cannot express their feelings nor their ideas even using Catalan mixed with their L1. 

In both cases, Spain and United States educational programs are targeted to be “monoglossic/bilingual pedagogies that treat each of the child’s languages as separate and whole, and view the two languages as bounded autonomous systems” (García, 2009). There is an educational program in U.S.A. that differs from others: two-way immersion program.

As we may know, in United States we have English-only educational programs; bilingual education programs (25% Spanish and 75% English are taught); and two-way immersion programs. This last one starts teaching by using children’s L1 and introduce English or Spanish progressively. In fact, this educational program compensates languages differences, since pupils learn better English language and their backgrounds and cultures are respected. Why cannot Spanish “aules d’acollida” apply such approach? I consider that it is the better to integrate our immigrants in class. However, we need people who know children’s L1.

Why can’t school hire foreign people that know Spanish/Catalan and other languages at the same time such as Moroccan or Chinese? “There is the native teacher and need to exclude mother tongue from foreign language class” (Noguerol, 2008). If we want integrated children, we may integrate foreign teachers, too.

Potovsky promotes linguistic appreciation, so heritance language maintenance. Specifically, she talks about looking for resources to practice such minority languages, so that parents don’t allow their children lose heritance language. Personally, I would go beyond this: why cannot we introduce minority languages at schools? I mean we can promote activities that integrate immigrant pupils or just let them participate in class. We must avoid the “static conception of language that contrasts with a plural and diverse reality of their social usages” (Noguerol, 2008).

In short, as Potovsky says bilingualism has a lot of cognitive benefits regarding setting links between languages; solving problems and, of course, advantages for our neurological health. Switch from one language to another is how really our brains work, even mixing 2 languages in a sentence. So, is it worth avoiding to use just one language in class? Is it worth putting our immigrant classmates apart, in other classes?