Language and Learning

Successful communication between people relies on comprehension of language. Whether spoken or signed, written or physical, human beings attempt to communicate with each other in ways that both parties can understand. When it comes to education, language plays a major role in student growth and achievement. As articulated in our three readings, there are a variety of ways that students can interact with language that will benefit them through their schooling years.

In her article “How Hawaiian Came Back from the Dead”, Alexandria Neason explores how Hawaiian language immersion schools allow students to “never feel bound to the language of their oppressors. Instead, they could stand tall, unapologetically Hawaiian”.  There are still 18 thousand Native Hawaiians who speak the language, which was banned in 1893 after the monarchy was overthrown. People are not willing to let go of this important part of their heritage. This sentiment echoes those of the other minority students that we have read about this semester. Given that these Hawaiian students are native to this land and not immigrants, they have more of an advantage than students in other areas. The sheer number of people with common ancestry allows for a population that makes immersion schools possible. In areas of the mainland United States, there may not be a majority of students who would benefit from or desire this immersion.

That’s not to say that there aren’t drawbacks to immersion schools. These limitations tend to stem from bureaucracy rather than the implicit nature of this type of school. For example, there is the issue that state testing, which is used as a means of evaluating schools, is primarily in English. Because of this, “In 2015, the middle school division of Nāwahī ranked 48^th of 49 middle schools across the state despite the fact that the school graduates 100 percent of its high school seniors and sends 80 percent of them to college.” This is a clear sign of the inadequacy of standardized testing as an assessment of a student’s full range of abilities. The experiential learning offered in immersion schools appears to prepare students for college just as well as, if not better than, a traditional English education. It also allows families to maintain their heritage language, be proud of their ancestry, and inspire future generations to do the same. 

On the mainland, Native American students face some of the same challenges  despite government efforts. In “When Tribal Sovereignty Challenges Democracy: American Indian Education and the Democratic Ideal”, K. Tsianina Lomawaima and Teresa L. McCarty discuss how “American Indian education teaches us that nurturing ‘places of difference’ within American society is a necessary component of a fully functional democracy” (280). They argue that history is a social construct as it is never politically neutral. For democracy to truly exist, we must have “more than a benignly neutral diversity that ‘celebrates’ cultural differences while muting the ideological forces that privilege certain differences and marginalize others. Rather, diversity embodies the heart and soul of promise, of opportunities of what might be, for a socially just and full democratic union,” (281). Given this definition, America as we know it certainly is not a democracy.

A large issue facing Native American communities is the struggle to maintain sovereignty while under federally imposed guidelines. This struggle found its way into schools as early 1898, when Estelle Reel, a white woman, became Superintendent of Indian Schools and took it upon herself to pick and choose which features of American Indian life were ‘safe’ enough to put in the curriculum. She also allowed Native American women to teach classes, until it was decided that student contact with these cultural differences could undermine “federally endorsed norms” (286). 

There has long been a balancing act for Native Americans between what is considered ‘safe ‘or ‘dangerous’ for white students to learn. The people making these distinctions are those who have little experience with the issues facing this community. Losing this heritage goes hand in hand with the loss of language.  Parents want their children to learn the language of their ancestors, and “language reclamation and maintenance are thus elemental to self-determination” (296). Of the 300 languages being spoken when colonists landed in American, 175 are still being spoken. This is a huge number in a country that identifies English as the single most important language. The authors ask: “given innate human abilities to master more than one language, must proficiency in the languages of wider communication come at the price of the mother tongue?” (296). While it is more difficult to learn a language without immersion, there does not seem to be a real reason why people should have to lose their heritage languages for the sake of English. Just as the Hawaiian immersion schools do, Native American controlled schools show that students who are bilingual make the greatest gains and often outperform their English-only peers. 

It seems that the pushback against the celebration of cultural differences in effort to maintain the white, English-speaking status quo has nothing to do with what is ‘better’ for anyone. As Lisa Delpit argues in “What Should Teachers Do? Ebonics and Culturally Responsive Instruction”, linguistic form is directly connected to family, community, and personal identity. When educators over-correct a student’s spoken dialect, they “typically produce silence” (32). The last thing we need in our schools is students who are too afraid to express themselves for fear of admonishment. Although it is important for students to speak Standard English in certain settings, Delpit argues that we should eliminate the implication that someone’s language is inadequate and reframe our teaching to show the different contexts of linguistic form. She discusses a variety of ways that we can allow students with differing dialects to play with language and practice Standard English without the pressure of being told that their linguistic habits are wrong. 

            What I have gathered from these articles is that language is a way for us to connect with our heritage and form a personal identity that is proud of our ancestry. There is truly no harm in helping students maintain their culture through language. In fact, the benefits are greater for those who are bilingual. It is a given that students living in the United States will become proficient in English because of the nature of society and our schools. So what are people afraid of? Why does society seem to think that diversity will lead to an elimination whiteness?  Why are white people so afraid of immigrant kids?