Answering the Multilingual Question
Education
As I started into this study I was motivated by a major disagreement with Rodriguez’s position of assimilation. As indicated above, I found Rodriguez elitist and arrogant. It seemed to me that he had chosen to sacrifice his native linguistic, then cultural, heritage, not so much out of a need to get along, to survive, but out of ambition to fit in and to take on the common language and culture in order to place himself equal to or above others around him.
It is only as I have dug deeper into his distinction between public and private language that I have begun to shift my position on bilingual education. I find Rodriguez’s argument in favor of a public language (in this case, Standard American English) for public education extremely convincing. I still have felt, as mentioned above, that he fails to address the fact that native-English-speaking students could carry their private language into the marketplace. But when I had the opportunity to ask him about this (1995b) he responded that, while the public/private dichotomy is more easily understood by those whose first language is not the public English, even most native-English-speakers use a different vernacular and tone among intimates than is common in the public arena. Thus, everyone faces the assimilation question of to some degree adopting the public language of the schools. This fact is reflected in Celia’s story and in Leonore’s German experience.
But I have not come to the point of agreeing with Rodriguez that the nuns, his teachers, were justified in expecting him to relinquish his home language completely or that this is a necessary part of his or anybody else’s public assimilation. Rodriguez is still somewhat of a hard-liner, but, as I have noted, he has softened his rhetoric as he states, “I don't know that I’m in favor of assimilation, any more than I’m in favor of the sunset, or any more than I’m in favor of breathing. Assimilation happens – to coin a phrase” (Postrel & Gilesspie, 1994, 1995a, 1995b). He is correct in this statement. But he also continues to contradict himself. While stating that public language is a fact of life and that assimilation is natural, he glosses over the fact that private, intimate language is also a fact of life and that one’s home identity is at least as, if not more, natural and important. He reflects this duplicit thinking not in his assertion that a common language of education is necessary or that students of all backgrounds should be expected to learn the common language – even as Leonore was expected to learn German – but in the fact that he then refers (1995b) to the public language violating his private world and implies that this is acceptable when the reverse is not.
And Anzaldúa, Celia, and Leonore, all three, demonstrate that it is possible to maintain one’s private and public identities – and, thus, languages – simultaneously. One’s private language – be it Spanish, Chinese, Jive, hill vernacular, or ghetto English – can continue to exist, even as one is learning and using the public language (in this case Standard American English) in school. And as long as one’s private language, one’s first language is kept intact, even as one is learning and using the public language in school, then the possibility remains that one will be able to use that first language in social and business forums as appropriate, while still having access to the public identity and freedom of the common language, which Rodriguez finds so vital.
Anzaldúa and Celia show that this may likely involve struggle, even as Rodriguez has emphasized, but they also demonstrate that such struggle can be directed into personal growth and self-discovery, and I have noted that Rodriguez’s struggle was not ended by his assimilation; it only took a different face.
Rodriguez (1982, 1993, 1995b) has gone on to relearn Spanish and use it professionally, but Anzaldúa and Celia prove that such relearning is not necessary. Though both were required to learn and use the common English in school (Anzaldúa by force, Celia by circumstance), both have maintained their first language and gone on to use it professionally (Anzaldúa as a writer, Celia as a Spanish teacher and English Second Language teacher with Hispanic students).
Leonore, meanwhile, confirms that such conflict of identity is not inherent. Even Anzaldúa’s experience shows that the conflict is not inherent, since her experience is simply that of one clearly tenacious and sometimes rebellious individual.
What this says to us as educators is that we need to seriously reconsider the idea of bilingual education, even transitional bilingual education, or at least how we go about it. It may be that we indeed do need to educate via a lingua franca, in this case Standard American English.
But here we are talking about the public language. Let us not forget Rodriguez’s lesson to us of the difference between public and private language. Let us not forget the violation of his world when the private language was ripped from his personal life by a myopic educational system. And let us not forget the lessons of Anzaldúa, Celia, and Leonore, which clearly show that private language, be it Spanish, Chicano Spanish, Chinese, Black English Vernacular, or Street Jive, can co-exist with the common tongue.
But Celia’s case needs closer examination here, because her experience gives us the most extensive guidelines for the possible reformation of multilingual education.
Celia has struggled with the identity issues of walking in multiple worlds, multiple languages, multiple cultures. She knows the Standard American English, the white middle-class American experience, and she can relate it to her students, native-English-speaker and native-Spanish-speaker alike. She also knows the soft, low, intimate sounds of Spanish, and the uniquely Hispanic culture that we see variously mirrored in both Rodriguez’s and Anzaldúa’s stories.
Thus, when a primarily Spanish-speaking student sits down in one of her English classes, she can speak to that student in Spanish, but she does not have to. In fact, it is preferable that she does not. What makes far greater sense is for her to draw upon her own knowledge of Spanish culture and language and compare that to the Anglo experience and language, in Standard American English, whenever she needs to break through any difficulty the Spanish-speaking student might have in learning either Standard American English or the social values on which it is based.
This approach accomplishes two objectives. First, it gives the student a reference point based in familiar circumstances and comparisons, from which to transfer understanding into the new culture and language. Secondly, it simultaneously teaches the student the common language, by direct experience and struggle, the same way that Leonore had to learn German, the same way that Rodriguez had to learn English, and the same way that Rodriguez later had to learn Spanish, which he had not used after the age of seven.
This approach is not a transitional bilingual education approach. It is very much a full immersion approach, such as I have found most helpful in refreshing my own German-language skills and in initially learning Tibetan. But it carries a difference founded in rhetoric. Rather than expecting the non-native-speaker of the language being learned, the target language, to be automatically able to transfer between two structurally different languages, it gives rhetorical references from both cultures, from which the student can make such transfers. This is significant since rhetoric – the language use of a culture and the semantic functioning of that language – is far more closely related to the thinking of that culture than are the specific words. (Grammar falls somewhere in the middle and is a topic within itself.)
And I have seen this approach used highly effectively in classes I have attended. I have watched the instructor, familiar with Japanese and French, use examples of Japanese and French rhetoric and cultural thinking, not only to make the English easier for the international students to comprehend, but also as informative comparisons for native-English-speaking students who would be going on to teach international students, or already were. The same instructor has also occasionally referenced specific words in the non-English languages, but such occasions have been rare and seemed to import far less lasting effects on the students than did the rhetorical and cultural comparisons.
Such an approach means, of course, that we need immediately to start training our future teachers – particularly our future English Second Language teachers – in the art of intercultural and comparative rhetoric. This may mean that the cultural element of teacher training needs to be broadened to include a wider world view, or it may mean that world history needs to become an integral part of our English-teacher-training programs. But this is a small price to pay for being able to bridge the gaps, as I wrote of in the beginning of this essay, in an increasingly international society.
It also means that we need to put a far greater emphasis on foreign language learning among our would-be teachers. An understanding of a foreign language, as our international students’ understanding of English, requires an understanding of the culture from which that language derives, and such understanding is exactly what our teachers need to teach their international students. Combined with the cultural, historical element mentioned above, this makes a strong training package for future teachers.
Society and Government
But while we are stressing comparative rhetoric and monolingual, common-language instruction in the classroom, we need to remember that we do not live in a monolingual society and are increasingly unlikely to. International business demands an awareness of other languages (an additional reason for foreign-language requirements). And not everyone who comes to this country will be a child in the public school systems or a university student. Some will be simply coming here as adults seeking the nebulous American dream of which we as a nation are so proud and which, Rodriguez (1993, 1995b) points out, we promote so heavily to the rest of the world. Some, too, are already in this country without knowing much if any English. This continuing influx of non-English-speaking citizens we have openly invited must be accommodated, as Anzaldúa indicates.
We still need to allow for interpreters in society. We still need to allow for translators. We still need to provide multilingual election ballots, legal forms, and courtroom situations. If we do not, then we risk rapidly returning to the very discrimination that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against in decisions such as those cited above.