Bilingual/Multilingual Education

This paper examines the relationship between educational reform, national educational goals, and the goals and aspirations of linguistic minorities as exemplified in three models of bilingual/multilingual education: two favor language maintenance—a trilingual model in Belgium, an immersion model in Wales; one does not—a linguistic diversity model in England. The premises underlying these models are not mutually exclusive, nor do they represent consensus in the societies where they are located. Immersion models are found in Belgium and transitional models, a fourth type and most prevalent in the United States, also exists in England and in parts of Belgium alongside the other models. In Belgium, too, an uneasy compromise is emerging between experimental programs and legal restrictions on language use. In Wales, a less intensive "bilingual model" coexists with Welsh medium schools. In England, linguistic communities press for language instruction in regular schools despite the withdrawal of Home Office funding. In each of these settings, tension exists between individual and communal goals, between national goals and the aspirations of minorities, between centripetal and centrifugal outcomes

Bilingual education · Compromise · Language planning · Linguistic diversity · Linguistics · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Pedagogy · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Welsh · French Language Learning Methods · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy · Public Administration · Second Language Learning and Teaching

• The ‘Mother‐Tongue’ Issue in Britain

  Margaret R M Brook•British Journal of Sociology of…•1980

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