Re-conceptualizing Bilingual Education

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Re-conceptualizing Bilingual Education by Cecilia Palacio-Ribón

Abstract

            Bilingual education has been put on the spot of the controversy not only as an important concern of education system, but also as an issue that impacts directly into the sociocultural structure, and involving political and economic aspects as well. Thus, bilingual education programs are an important topic to analyze and to undertake by educators, administrators, communities, and government as the whole responsible group for creation of citizens well prepared to face globalization. There are some examples of mutual collaboration between stakeholders; this paper is intended to expose some of them to explore their experiences to propose that those efforts should be imitated and improved. Hence, bilingual education ought to be transformed if we want our children to be multilingual and multicultural. We have to re-conceptualize bilingual education and then our children will become global citizens.

Keywords: bilingual education, community bilingual education, re-conceptualization, cultural identity, translanguaging, multilingualism, multicultural, global citizens.

 

Conclusion

     Therefore, a re-conceptualization of bilingual education should be an effort to combine the benefits of bilingual programs in public education with the valuable knowledge from community bilingual alternatives. As suggested by Garcia, a collaborative work is essential to improve bilingualism going beyond language heritage and a domestic second language learning program. It is crucial a change of mind and rethink about bilingual education as a gap into acculturation process. Our global society is demanding a multilinguistic and multicultural preparation; communities ought to take what is taught in public schools and vice versa. As long as this partnership is taken seriously, administrators and policy makers will have the evidence of the success that children can achieve if they are linguistically well-prepared, then they will support more bilingual education.

     If public schools and community education work separate, children are just bilingual rather than biliterate and bicultural. Moreover, if they combine efforts and allow cultural and linguistic diversity, they will prepare multilingual and multicultural future citizens. All cultures are valuable and deserve to be respected, and this is possible if educators engage a multicultural environment encouraging translanguage, culturally diverse communities’ involvement, and enacting a sincere curriculum with no taboos, paradigms, institutionalized rules, stereotypes or discrimination. It is fundamental a cultural appreciation so everyone will feel accepted, valuable, and able to share while teaching and learning. It is not Americanization, it is not to learn a second language, and it is not a religious commandment. Moreover, it is a humanistic perspective about prepare children to become global citizens transforming our world in a better world where children can speak the same language not as a linguistic code, but as a multicultural understanding to speak social justice around the world while being competitive and successful regardless cultural background.

 

Human beings are diverse and equals. We all deserve to be loved and to learn to love others. Small changes make big differences.

-Cecilia Palacio-Ribón