ABSTRACT
In an ironic twist of fate, I feel obliged in this introduction to acknowledge two former educators whose pedagogy of exclusion nearly made me join the ranks of those who, by virtue of their race, ethnicity, culture, and language are greeted in school with an unwelcome-carpet treatment that steers them away from the classroom and toward the exit door. I vividly remember when, seeking help with my college application, I approached my guidance counselor at Boston English High School. He somberly looked me in the eye and said: “I honestly think that the best thing for you to do is to apply to Franklin Institute and become a TV repairman. You have been in this country only two years and you will never develop the necessary vocabulary to compete with the American-born who have been speaking English all their lives.” What my guidance counselor failed to recognize is that I was already fluent in three languages and that I had scored over 600 in both my Spanish and my French Achievement Tests. What my guidance counselor did was equate my English-language development with my intellectual capacity. If the same diagnostic standards were to be applied to equate my American peers’ foreign-language ability (including some of the foreign-language teachers themselves) with their intellectual capacity, they would all be referred to special education classes. Perhaps my guidance counselor was not really operating from a deficit-orientation model but was, instead, responding to a need for bilingual TV repairmen.
