Humanizing Dual Language Immersion Education

In every corner of the world, children are learning languages at home that differ from the dominant language used in their broader social world. These children arrive at school with a precious resource: their mother tongue. In the face of this resource and the possibility for biliteracy, majority language educational programs do nothing to support primary language competence. To counter monolingual education, there are significant albeit few initiatives around the world that provide formal support for children to continue to develop competence in their mother tongue, while also learning an additional language or languages. One such initiative is dual language immersion education (DLI).

Interestingly, most (if not all) research on DLI programs focus on the effectiveness of bilingual education vis-à-vis academic access and achievement. The ideologies embedded in the research and guidelines for DLI education, albeit necessary and critical during the early days of DLI schooling, are disconnected from the present realities, epistemologies, and humanness of our bilingual youth.

A Humanizing Dual Language Immersion Education envisions a framework informed by bilingual teachers and students who support biliteracy as a human right. Positioning bilingual education under a human rights framework addresses the basic right of our bi/multilingual youth to human dignity. Respect for the languages of persons belonging to different linguistic communities is essential for a just and democratic society. Given the centrality of language to our sense of who we are and where we fit in the broader world, a connection between linguistic human rights and bilingual education is essential.

Yvette V. Lapayese, Ph.D. (2003), University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), is Professor of Education at Loyola Marymount University. She has published several articles, book chapters and books, including Mother Scholar: (Re)Imagining K-12 Education (Sense, 2012).