Contested Policy: The Rise and Fall of Federal Bilingual Education in the United States, 1960-2001

San Miguel Jr., Guadalupe

ISBN 10: 1574411713 / ISBN 13: 9781574411713

Published by University of North Texas Press, Denton, TX, 2004

About this Item

168 pp. Tightly bound. NOTE: Lower corners are bumped. Text is free of markings. No ownership markings. Very good dust jacket. First Edition / First Printing. 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1. This copy is smyth sewn. Smyth sewing is a method of bookbinding where groups of folded pages (referred to as signatures) are stitched together using binder thread. Each folded signature is sewn together individually with multiple stitches and then joined with other signatures to create the complete book block. This is the traditional and best method of bookbinding.

Seller Inventory # 031188

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Contested Policy: The Rise and Fall of Federal Bilingual Education in the United States, 1960-2001
• Publisher: University of North Texas Press, Denton, TX
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1574411713
• ISBN 13: 9781574411713
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Good to Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good Dust Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

Bilingual education is one of the most contentious and misunderstood educational programs in the country. It raises significant questions about this country’s national identity, the nature of federalism, power, ethnicity, and pedagogy. In Contested Policy, Guadalupe San Miguel Jr. studies the origins, evolution, and consequences of federal bilingual education policy from 1960 to 2001, with particular attention to the activist years after 1978, when bilingual policy was heatedly contested.

Traditionally, those in favor of bilingual education are language specialists, Mexican American activists, newly enfranchised civil rights advocates, language minorities, intellectuals, teachers, and students. They are ideologically opposed to the assimilationist philosophy in the schools, to the structural exclusion and institutional discrimination of minority groups, and to limited school reform.

On the other hand, the opponents of bilingual education, comprised at different points in time of conservative journalists, politicians, federal bureaucrats, Anglo parent groups, school officials, administrators, and special-interest groups (such as U.S. English), favor assimilationism, the structural exclusion and discrimination of ethnic minorities, and limited school reform.

In the 1990s a resurgence of opposition to bilingual education succeeded in repealing bilingual legislation with an English-only piece of legislation. San Miguel deftly provides a history of these clashing groups and how they impacted bilingual educational policy over the years. Rounding out this history is an extensive, annotated bibliography on federal bilingual policy that can be used to enhance further study.

About the Author

Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., is professor of history at the University of Houston. He is the author of “Let All of Them Take Heed”: Mexican-Americans and the Campaign for Educational Equality in Texas, 1910–1981; Brown, Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston; and Tejano Proud: Tex-Mex Music in the Twentieth Century.