ABSTRACT
But although all schools have found it comfortable to at least pay lip-service to teaching for diversity, it is the category of language that has remained, as we will see, most problematic. There are four reasons, discussed below, for the resistance to the inclusion of languages other than English (LOTEs) and varieties of English with non-standard features in U.S. schools: • The teachers’ conceptualization of language as simply an instrument for
communication • The schools’ standard English identity • The teachers’ need for control of learning • The schools’ reluctance to reallocate resources. Teachers learn early that language is simply an instrument for communication that can be used to help students develop knowledge or to control the class. But besides a utilitarian function, language links us to our identity because it connects us to our mother or initial caregiver. And although one develops a different identity from one’s mother through schooling and socialization, the mother or caregiver’s identity, outwardly manifested in the child’s mother tongue or way of using language, remains a part of one’s life, giving sense to oneself. Teachers who do not affirm the students’ multiple language identities regardless of how well they speak, read, and/or write standard English, plunge them into self-oblivion and disconnect them from their relationship with parents, relatives, a community of speakers, and often a rich body of literature.
