ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with education in multiple languages, a pressing issue in many communities around the world. In Chapter 7 we saw that the choice of which language(s) to use in school settings can be complex, so it’s not surprising that the practice of bilingual or multilingual education is well accepted in some contexts and controversial in others. Although instruction in two or more languages is increasingly common, the term ‘bilingual education’ is often poorly understood, as the following quotation from a primary school teacher from Tucson, Arizona, illustrates:
‘Bilingual ed’ is a term that has such a negative connotation, which is partly the reason we’ve decided to call our model ‘dual language’. It’s helped a lot. When people think of bilingual education, the general opinion is, ‘Oh, you’re teaching Spanish to the Spanish kids, English to the English kids.’ It’s almost the opposite with dual language. These kids are receiving not just one education, they’re receiving two. And if you explain this to parents, it’s like, ‘Wow! That’s really great!’ Whereas before if you had said it’s bilingual ed, people didn’t want to hear about it.
