ACADEMIC PROGRAMMING AND LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AT NORTHSIDE
Since opening in a mostly middle and upper middle-class suburb north of Toronto in 1970, Northside Secondary School had established a reputation of academic excellence. During the first year of the study, Judith Ngan, one of the research assistants on the project, brought me a copy of the real estate section from one of Toronto's Chinese newspapers. An advertisement for one of the houses located close to the school used the property's proximity to Northside as a selling point. The community is still mostly composed of middle and upper middle-class families; most Northside students were working toward college or university admission, and the school's 1995-1996 Quality Assurance School Review reported that students identified high academic standards as a major strength of the school (North York Board of Education, 1996). The School Review also reported that students at Northside at 16 years of age achieved at levels above the system average in mathematics testing, literacy testing, and accumulated credits. Students taking mathematics, sciences, and computer sciences at Northside had an impressive record of success in national and international contests and competitions. The school also offered a strong arts program. According to Northside's School Profile, a school board publication written to help parents understand what the school had to offer students, about half of the student population took part in the school's visual arts, drama, or music programs. There were also opportunities for students to develop skills outside the classroom by joining programs in peer tutoring, peer counseling, and cooperative education.
According to School Review, 86% of the students at Northside were immigrants to Canada and 60% reported that their primary language was a language other than English. The top five primary languages spoken by students were English (38%), Cantonese (35%); Mandarin (6%) and Farsi and Korean (4%). The large percentage of bilingual and multilingual speakers at the school meant that although English was the language of instruction, everyday talk in classrooms, hallways, and the cafeteria took place in English as well as other languages. This was an issue for many people at the school.
The review team, who had interviewed individual teachers, department teams, students, student groups, office staff, caretaking staff, and administrators for the 1995-1996 School Review, reported that "all parties inter viewed expressed concern about the amount of non-English spoken in both the hallways and classrooms of the school" (p. 3). The team also reported that the group of 10 parents they spoke to expressed "considerable concern about language and the strong feeling was that English should not only be the language of instruction, but also the only language spoken at school" (p. 7). Although the review team didn't explain the reasons behind this concern, one of the recommendations they made was that the school continue to work on the English literacy initiative it had already begun, but also include in this initiative a "major focus on oral [English] language development" (p. 10). I interpreted this recommendation as a direct response to the amount of "non-English" being spoken at school and the desire to make English the only language spoken. What the staff was being asked to do was this: Initiate a schoolwide, oral English development program in a multilingual school where students were already successfully using both English and languages other than English to conduct their academic and social lives.
After reading the School Review, the first question that was raised for me was why there was such concern that English be the only language spoken at the school when, overall, Northside students were achieving above the system average and successfully working toward admission to col leges and universities. I initially thought the answer to this question may lie in the linguistic make-up of the school and parent groups the review team spoke to when conducting the school review. Although the majority of students at Northside had a primary language other than English, most of the teachers and staff we spoke to were monolingual or primary speakers of English. And while the review team reported that the group of par ents they met with were representative of the school community, it did not state whether the opinions of speakers of languages other than English were represented in the School Review. Yet, looking for answers in the linguistic make-up of the interviewees could not fully answer the question of why people were concerned about multilingual practices at Northside. 1 knew I could not assume that all English speakers believed that English was the only language that should be spoken at the school, and neither did many of my English-speaking colleagues who were public high-school teachers. Nor could I assume that all speakers of languages other than English believed that the use of languages other than English in the class room was helpful to students studying in their second and third languages. In fact, findings from a 1995 survey study undertaken in Hong Kong, where many students at Northside had begun their secondary school education, revealed the opposite.1 When asked about their beliefs about the use of English and Chinese as languages of instruction, parents said that English instruction brought about a better standard of English than did a combination of English and Chinese instruction.2 They also said they favored English instruction over Chinese instruction because of the socio-economic importance of English in Hong Kong.
Importantly, the survey was undertaken before the implementation of the linguistic streaming policy adopted in Hong Kong in September, 1998. After September, 1998, only 114 secondary schools (around 30% of all secondary schools) were allowed to use English as the medium of instruction for their newly admitted (form 1 or grade 7) students. The rest of all publicly funded or subsidized secondary schools (around 70% of all secondary schools) were expected to use Chinese (that is, spoken Cantonese and written Standard Chinese) as the medium of instruction for all new form 1 students.
At the time the 1995 survey was taken, secondary school entrants in Hong Kong took tests that measured their Chinese and English language skills. Students were then classified into three groups according to their test scores in both languages. Students who were placed in group 1 were those whose test scores indicated that they were able to learn effectively in either English or Chinese. Students in group 2 were those whose test scores indicated that they would learn more effectively in Chinese. Students in group 3 were those whose test scores indicated that they would probably learn more effectively in Chinese, but were capable of learning in English. Interactionist sociolinguist Angel Lin, who conducted ethnographic research in Hong Kong secondary classrooms in the mid-1990s, tells us that the majority of secondary schools that had been advised to switch to Chinese as the language of instruction (on the basis of the language test scores of their incoming students) still continued to call themselves "English medium schools." They conducted classes in a Cantonese-English oral mode and English written mode. Lin saw this pedagogical practice as a local coping response in schools where students with limited access to English resources were struggling to acquire an English medium education.3
Returning to the findings of the Hong Kong survey, most of the children agreed with their parents' views on English medium instruction; however, they also supported a gradual transition from Chinese to English medium education, and were in favor of teachers using both English and Chinese in the same lesson. In contrast, both parents and teachers tended to believe that teachers should not teach the same lesson in both English and Chinese (even
though many teachers were teaching bilingually in their own classrooms). In commenting about this contradiction, Lin suggested that the surveyed teachers experienced some conflict between what they believed was (officially) correct practice and what they found necessary to do in their own classrooms. She also suggested that the unfavorable attitude toward bilingual classroom practices expressed by parents and teachers in the survey might have been a result of the official, academic, and media discourses, which claimed that bilingual classroom practices have negative educational effects.4
Returning to the question of why there was such concern that English be the only language spoken at Northside, the answer seemed to lie in understanding the importance, value, and privileges English held for parents, teachers, and students. It also lay in understanding the kinds of difficulties, tensions, and dilemmas that students and teachers associated with the use of languages other than English at the school.
In discussions of the desire for English monolingualism, I have found that it is helpful to distinguish between the desire for a monolingual English classroom and the desire for a monolingual English school. Although the School Review reported that there was a strong feeling at Northside that English should not only be the language of instruction, but also the only language spoken at school, not one of the 10 teachers we interviewed had any objections to the use of Cantonese spoken for social interaction outside the classroom. Those who believed that their students' best interests were served by English monolingualism in the classroom did not call for English monolingualism in the hallways or cafeteria.
In August, 1995, very shortly after the School Review was submitted to the principal of the school, the school board to which Northside belonged adopted a new language policy. Entitled the Language for Learning Policy, the policy consisted of 10 "core assumptions" that administrators and teachers were to adopt as a basis for their planning around language initiatives. Four of the 10 assumptions are particularly relevant for the discussions I pursue. They are the assumptions that:
1. Language, culture, and identity are closely linked. A program that recognizes, respects, and values students' racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, as well as the varieties of language, helps them to develop a positive sense of self and motivates them to learn. All students need opportunities to think critically about the social values and status assigned to different languages by various groups in our society and to explore issues of bias and stereotyping related to language and culture.
2. First-language literacy is important for second-language learning. It helps students to grasp key concepts more easily and influences general academic achievement.
3. All languages and varieties of languages are equally valid forms of thought and communication. Canadian Standard English is the language of instruction in The Board's Schools and all children in The Board's District need to develop proficiency in this language.
4. Students' first languages play an important role in the classroom, in the school program as a whole, and in communication with the home. (Language For Learning Policy, pp. 7-8)
While the Language for Learning Policy explicitly named and legitimized English as the language of instruction in its schools, it also legitimized student use of languages other than English at school in several ways. First, it asserted that effective, "motivating," school programming was programming that recognized, respected, and valued students' linguistic back-grounds. Secondly, it asserted that first-language literacy was important for second-language learning. Third, it asserted that students' first languages had an important role to play in the classroom and the school program as a whole. The introduction of a language policy that legitimized student multilingualism at the same time the School Review acknowledged a local desire for English monolingualism and recommended a schoolwide oral English development initiative produced an extremely interesting moment in Northside's history. Teachers and administrators were being asked to respond to two contradictory desires: the desire for institutional English monolingualism and the desire for student multilingualism. They were also being asked to implement a schoolwide oral English development initiative while recognizing that students' primary languages played an important role in attaining academic success. This moment resulted in teachers experimenting with a variety of pedagogical practices in their classrooms that are at the center of the discussions that follow.
When several different school boards in the metropolitan Toronto area merged to form the new Toronto District School Board in January, 1998, the policies implemented in each school board were replaced with new policies. A new language policy for the new Toronto District School Board was adopted on May 27, 1998, after our classroom observation work had been completed. A discussion of the similarities and differences between the Language for Learning Policy (North York Board of Education, 1995) and the new Literacy Foundation Policy (Toronto District School Board, 1998) is taken up in the Conclusion. The impact and implications that the implementation of both language policies have for critical educational practice is also taken up in the Conclusion.
1 See Tung, Tsang, and Lam (1997) for a full description of this survey research.
2 As explained by Lin (2001), Chinese in the Hong Kong context is often taken to mean Cantonese in its spoken form and Modern Standard Chinese in its written form.
3 See Lin (1997b). As already mentioned, Lin's research was undertaken before the implementation of the 1998 linguistic streaming policy. The language situation in secondary school classrooms since the implementation of the 1998 policy has not been studied.
4 See Lin (1997a) for a critical analysis of these official, academic, and media discourses.
الاكثر قراءة في Teaching Strategies
اخر الاخبار
اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة
