Week 14 Post: Language Policy

I really enjoyed McKay’s discussion on language planning and language policy.  Particularly, I found the part about bilingual education fascinating because I will soon be a bilingual educator.  I agree with what is said about how there should be more of a language policy at the federal level rather than teachers being informed at a local level.  Multilingualism should be encouraged at the federal level so that every student in the US has the same opportunity to learn different languages and so that students who speak another language can maintain that language while learning English.  I don’t know how long it will take for our country to get to that point or if it ever will but in my eyes, that would be ideal.  While we are lucky to have bilingual education at all, I am not in favor of some “sink or swim” models.  I am happy to see more dual-language models being implemented but I still wish that there were more.

I found it interesting how the article on bilingual parenting addressed how even though parents might encourage bilingualism on their children, the dominance and superior role of English in our society can play a part in how well that ends up happening.  Because national and local language policies fail to support languages other than English, there is a lack of high quality bilingual education.  Also, one must think about how difficult it might be for lower class families to get access to high quality bilingual education.  Higher class parents have the resources to provide their children with access to bilingual education as well as extra help outside of school.