Bilingual Children’s Mother Tongue - La Lavagne Plurilengâl · PDF filepromote children’s abilities and talents. ... only learning this language in a nar- ... BILINGUAL CHILDREN‘S

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  • 15JIM CUMMINS: BILINGUAL CHILDRENS MOTHER TONGUE

    The term globalization is never far fromthe front pages of newspapers thesedays. It evokes strong positive or nega-tive feelings depending upon whetherit is being praised by the business com-munity for opening up world marketsto more extensive trade or condemnedby those who associate the term withthe dramatically widening gap betweenrich and poor nations and people.

    One aspect of globalization that hasimportant implications for educators isthe increasing movement of peoplefrom one country to another. Populationmobility is caused by many factors: de-sire for better economic conditions, theneed for labour in many countries thatare experiencing low birthrates, a con-stant flow of refugees resulting fromconflicts between groups, oppressionof one group by another, or ecological

    disasters. Economic integration withinthe EU also encourages the free move-ment of workers and their familiesamong EU member countries. The factthat travel between countries is nowfast and efficient (most of the time) ob-viously facilitates population mobility.

    A consequence of population mobilityis linguistic, cultural, racial, and reli-gious diversity within schools. To illu-strate, in the city of Toronto in Canada,58% of kindergarten students comefrom homes where standard English isnot the usual language of communica-tion. Schools in Europe and NorthAmerica have experienced this diver-sity for many years but it remains con-troversial, and educational policies andpractices vary widely between coun-tries and even within countries. Neo-fascist groups in a number of countries

    Bilingual Childrens Mother Tongue:Why is it important for education?

    Jim Cummins

    Professor, Ph.D. University of Toronto.

  • 16 SPROGFORUM NR. 19, 2001

    promote overtly racist policies in rela-tion to immigrant and culturally di-verse communities. Other political par-ties and groups adopt a somewhatmore enlightened orientation andsearch for ways to solve the problemof diverse communities and their inte-gration in schools and society. How-ever, they still define the presence ofdiverse communities as a problemand see few positive consequences forthe host society. They worry that lin-guistic, cultural, racial and religiousdiversity threaten the identity of thehost society. Consequently, they pro-mote educational policies that willmake the problem disappear.

    Whereas neo-fascist groups advocateexpulsion of immigrants or at least ex-clusion from the mainstream of society(e.g. in largely segregated schools andhousing areas), more liberal groups ad-vocate assimilation into the mainstreamof society. However, assimilation issimilar in many ways to exclusion in-sofar as both orientations are designedto make the problem disappear. Un-der both policies, culturally diversegroups will no longer be visible or au-dible. Assimilationist policies in educa-tion discourage students from main-taining their mother tongues. If stu-dents retain their culture and language,then they are viewed as less capable ofidentifying with the mainstream cul-ture and learning the mainstream lan-guage of the society.

    While students may not be physicallypunished for speaking their mothertongue in the school (as they previouslywere in many countries), a strong mes-

    sage is communicated to them that ifthey want to be accepted by the teacherand the society, they have to renounceany allegiance to their home languageand culture.

    This solve the problem orientation todiversity in education is still dominantin most European and North Americancountries. Unfortunately, it can havedisastrous consequences for childrenand their families. It violates childrensright to an appropriate education andundermines communication betweenchildren and their parents. Any cred-ible educator will agree that schoolsshould build on the experience andknowledge that children bring to theclassroom, and instruction should alsopromote childrens abilities and talents.Whether we do it intentionally or inad-vertently, when we destroy childrenslanguage and rupture their relationshipwith parents and grandparents, we arecontradicting the very essence of edu-cation.

    The destruction of language and cul-ture in schools is also highly counter-productive for the host society itself. Inan era of globalization, a society thathas access to multilingual and multi-cultural resources is advantaged in itsability to play an important social andeconomic role on the world stage. At atime when cross-cultural contact is atan all time high in human history, theidentities of all societies are evolving.The identities of societies and ethnicgroups have never been static and it isa naive illusion to believe that they canbecome static - fixed as monochromeand monocultural museum exhibits for

  • 17JIM CUMMINS: BILINGUAL CHILDRENS MOTHER TONGUE

    posterity - when the pace of globalchange is as rapid as it is today.

    The challenge for educators and policy-makers is to shape the evolution of na-tional identity in such a way that therights of all citizens (including schoolchildren) are respected, and the cultural,linguistic, and economic resources ofthe nation are maximized. To squanderthe linguistic resources of the nation bydiscouraging children from developingtheir mother tongues is quite simplyunintelligent from the point of view ofnational self-interest and also representsa violation of the rights of the child (seeSkutnabb-Kangas, 2000, for a compre-hensive review of international policiesand practices relating to linguistic hu-man rights).

    How can schools provide an appropri-ate education for culturally andlinguistically diverse children? A firststep is to learn what the research saysabout the role of language, and specifi-cally childrens mother tongues, intheir educational development.

    What We Know About Mother TongueDevelopment

    The research is very clear about the im-portance of bilingual childrens mothertongue for their overall personal andeducational development. More detailon the research findings summarizedbelow can be found in Baker (2000),Cummins (2000), and Skutnabb-Kangas (2000).

    Bilingualism has positive effects on chil-drens linguistic and educational devel-opment.

    When children continue to developtheir abilities in two or more languagesthroughout their primary school years,they gain a deeper understanding oflanguage and how to use it effectively.They have more practice in processinglanguage, especially when they de-velop literacy in both, and they are ableto compare and contrast the ways inwhich their two languages organize re-ality. More than 150 research studiesconducted during the past 35 yearsstrongly support what Goethe oncesaid: The person who knows only onelanguage does not truly know that lan-guage. The research suggests that bi-lingual children may also developmore flexibility in their thinking as aresult of processing informationthrough two different languages.

    The level of development of childrensmother tongue is a strong predictor oftheir second language development.

    Children who come to school with asolid foundation in their mothertongue develop stronger literacy abili-ties in the school language. When par-ents and other caregivers (e.g. grand-parents) are able to spend time withtheir children and tell stories or discussissues with them in a way that devel-ops their mother tongue vocabularyand concepts, children come to schoolwell-prepared to learn the school lan-guage and succeed educationally. Chil-drens knowledge and skills transferacross languages from the mothertongue they have learned in the hometo the school language. From the point

  • 18 SPROGFORUM NR. 19, 2001

    of view of childrens development ofconcepts and thinking skills, the twolanguages are interdependent. Transferacross languages can be two-way:when the mother tongue is promotedin school (e.g. in a bilingual educationprogram), the concepts, language, andliteracy skills that children are learningin the majority language can transfer tothe home language. In short, both lan-guages nurture each other when theeducational environment permits chil-dren access to both languages.

    Mother tongue promotion in the schoolhelps develop not only the mothertongue but also childrens abilities inthe majority school language.

    This finding is not surprising in viewof the previous findings that (a) bilin-gualism confers linguistic advantageson children and (b) abilities in the twolanguages are significantly related orinterdependent. Bilingual children per-form better in school when the schooleffectively teaches the mother tongueand, where appropriate, develops lit-eracy in that language. By contrast,when childrens mother tongue is en-couraged to atrophy and its develop-ment stagnates, childrens personaland conceptual foundation for learningis undermined.

    Spending instructional time through aminority language in the school doesnot hurt childrens academic develop-ment in the majority school language.

    Some educators and parents are suspi-cious of bilingual education or mothertongue teaching programs becausethey worry that these programs taketime away from the majority school

    language. For example, in a bilingualprogram where 50% of the time isspent teaching through childrenshome language and 50% through themajority school language, surely chil-drens learning of the majority schoollanguage must suffer? One of the moststrongly established findings of educa-tional research, conducted in manycountries around the world, is thatwell-implemented bilingual programscan promote literacy and subject mat-ter knowledge in a minority languagewithout any negative effects on chil-drens development in the majoritylanguage. Within Europe, the Foyerprogram in Belgium which developschildrens speaking and literacy abili-ties in three languages (their mothertongue, Dutch