ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a climate of school failure for language-minority children arises from two intellectual traditions, prescriptivism and 'semilingualism'. W. O'Neil and M. Honda have shown that the scientific study of language that used to teach children about principles of science and rational inquiry, and to develop curiosity. The greater insight into the nature of bilingualism may illuminate the concerns of special education teachers and school psychologists. T. Skutnabb-Kangas reviews the number of attempts to test Nils Erik Hansegard's definition empirically, for the first three criteria show that 'semilingualism' has not been found to hold for any population but that little work has been done regarding the last three of Hansegard's criteria. However, in proper historical context, William Labov's work on non-standard English might have been seen as equally technical, as it drew upon the recent developments in abstract phonology of the sort discussed at length in Chomsky and Halle.
