Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Revised version of a plenary paper presented on 30 March 2008 at the American Association of Applied Linguistics Conference, Washington, DC.
1.
Introduction
In his review of bilingual education in the Western ancient world up to the Renaissance, Welsh scholar Glyn Lewis writes:
Polyglottism is a very early characteristic of human societies, and monolingualism a cultural limitation. It is doubtful whether any community or any language has existed in isolation from other communities or languages . . . If there is one thing we learn from a historical study of languages in contact it is that the languages which appear to contribute most and survive longest . . . are usually supported and reinforced by powerful institutions, of which the schools . . . are among the most influential. (Lewis 1976: 150, 199)
Although multilingualism and multilingual education have existed for centuries, our 21st century entrance into the new millennium has brought renewed interest and contestation around this educational alternative. Ethnolinguistic diversity and inequality, intercultural communication and contact, and global political and economic interdependence are more than ever acknowledged realities of today's world, and all of them put pressures on our educational systems. Now, as throughout history, multilingual education offers the best possibilities for preparing coming generations to participate in constructing more just and democratic societies in our globalized and intercultural world; however, it is not unproblematically achieved.
Multilingual education is, at its best, (1) multilingual in that it uses and values more than one language in teaching and learning, (2) intercultural in that it recognizes and values understanding and dialogue across different lived experiences and cultural worldviews, and (3) education that draws out, taking as its starting point the knowledge students bring to the classroom and moving toward their participation as full and indispensable actors in society - locally, nationally, and globally.
Beyond these fundamental characteristics, there are many unanswered questions and doubts surrounding multilingual education as to policy and implementation, program and curricular design, classroom instruction practices, pedagogy, and teacher professional development, but there is also much that we understand and know very well, based on empirical research in many corners of the world. Multilingual education is in its essence an instance of biliteracy 'in which communication...