We Are One, We Are Many: Portraits of Australian Bilingual Schools by Donald F
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We Are One, We Are Many: Portraits of Australian Bilingual Schools By Donald F. Hones We are one, but we are many, education may not be widespread in Aus- background other than English. Italian, And from all the lands on Earth we come tralia, but in certain schools and commu- Greek, Cantonese and Mandarin are the — from Woodley & Newton, nities, it thrives. most common languages other than En- I am/We are Australian In the last months of 2003 I had the glish spoken in the home (Miller, 2003). In opportunity to visit, and learn from, the addition, it is estimated that 200-250 Lalor North Primary School lies bilingual education programs at several Aboriginal languages are still spoken in tucked away in a quiet suburb north of schools in the state of Victoria, Australia. Australia (Lo Bianco & Rhydwen, 2001). Melbourne, Australia. Cars jam the side In the study that follows I address the cul- In the 1970s, multiculturalism poli- streets as parents drop their children off tural, historical and political contexts of cies finally began to address the needs of at the start of the day. Across the street, immigrant bilingual education in Austra- linguistically diverse students in the beautiful roses grow in front of small, well- lia and particularly, Victoria. schools. English as a Second Language kept homes. A football oval—“Australian I collected data through participant (ESL) programs were offered to students, Rules” football in this part of the country, observation, audiotaped interviews, and and some schools began programs in bilin- mate—lies a short distance away, the grass library research to build ethnographic por- gual education. However, mirroring devel- gleaming in the mid-morning sun. traits of three schools containing four bi- opments in the USA, Australia began to To all appearances, this is a typical lingual programs, with target languages roll back support for bilingual education school in a typical neighborhood. But in- of Chinese, Greek, Macedonian and Indo- by the 1980s, and funding for ESL pro- side there are some surprises: Student lit- nesian. Through a process of interpretive grams was cut. A discourse of main- erary and art work adorns the wall, but interactionism (Denzin, 1994), I examine streaming began to guide federal policies the Cyrillic alphabet is used, and the lan- these portraits, and include comparisons (Miller, 2003). Though mainstreaming was guage is Greek. In a classroom in another and contrasts to bilingual education pro- championed as a way to limit the wing of the building, students congregate grams in my country, the United States. marginalization experienced by language around a computer, editing and producing Finally, implications for educators, learners, it also resulted in the loss of a newspaper, but the language is policymakers and others are suggested, needed language support (Ozolins, 1993). Macedonian. including ways that supporters of bilingual The birth of the Australian nation in Though separated by thousands of education in other nations can learn from 1901 was accompanied by two acts of Par- miles from the homelands of their parents these portraits of three school programs. liament, both of which seemed intended to and grandparents, students at this school ensure that Australia remained predomi- in Australia master language and aca- Australian Immigrant Languages nantly British. The Immigration Restric- demic content in the language of their eth- and Public Education tion Act 1901 was designed to preserve nic communities, and English. Bilingual racial purity by introducing a dictation test Australia in the Twenty-first Century in any European language. The Common- is a nation with immigrants from many wealth Naturalisation Act 1903 denied Donald F. Hones cultures. It is estimated that one in four Asians and other non-Europeans the right is an associate professor Australians is foreign born, and one in to apply for naturalization, receive pen- in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction twenty is from Asia. Linguistically, Aus- sions, or vote. Immigration to Australia at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, tralia is also diverse, with about 25% of swelled after World War II and in the af- Oshkosh, Wisconsin. the population coming from a language termath of Vietnam. By 1970s, the last MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION 14 vestiges of “White Australia” policies were bilingual programs for “community lan- lingual programs situated within four abandoned for an immigration policy of guages”—those spoken by large numbers schools in the state of Victoria, Australia. non-discrimination based on race, color or of immigrants in a community, as well as I integrate historical, sociological, psycho- nationality (Hage, 2002). for the study of languages of strong re- logical and cultural perspectives to find the According to the 2001 census, 16% of gional or economic interest. The support “circles of meaning” present in the lives of the Australian population spoke a lan- for bilingual programs was strongest in participants at these schools (Rabinow guage other than English in the home. Over areas where multilingualism flourished, and Sullivan, 1987). two hundred languages were listed for Aus- especially in Victoria and New South A narrative approach to will be used tralia. Numerically, the top 10 community Wales. In promoting bilingual approaches, to reconstruct stories of the classroom and languages in Australia are (with number policymakers and educators in Australia people’s lives. Narrative research is cho- of speakers): drew on evidence of academic success for sen as a method in that it focuses on hu- students educated over several years and man agency, and the ability of individuals through all major academic areas in two to creatively construct their lives within Table One: languages (Genesee, 1987; Lindholm & social and historical contexts (Casey, 1995). Top 10 Languages Other Than English Aclan, 1991). Conle (2000) suggests the value of narra- Spoken in Australia, 1996 and 2001 In 1997 the government of Victoria tive inquiry not only for research, but for began the Bilingual Schools Project, with professional teacher development. Language 1996 2001 % change the goal of supporting content-based lan- The interpretative style for these eth- Italian 375,834 353,606 -5.9 guage instruction for schools in community nographic portraits draws on a combina- Greek 269,831 263,718 -2.3 languages (such as Chinese, Greek, and tion of grounded theory (Glaser and Cantonese 202,194 225,307 +11.4 Arabic 177,641 209,371 +17.9 Arabic) as well as important regional lan- Strauss, 1967) and interpretive interac- Vietnamese 146,192 174,236 +19.2 guages (such as Indonesian and Japanese). tionism (Denzin, 1994). Interpretive Mandarin 92,065 139,288 +51.3 Schools in the project were required to pro- interactionism “begins and ends with the Spanish 91,270 93,595 +2.5 vide at least two Key Learning Areas (in- biography and the self of the researcher,” Tagalog 70,343 78,879 +12.1 cluding science, mathematics, studies of and encourages personal stories that are German 99,050 76,444 -22.8 society and the environment, etc.) in the thickly contextualized, and “connected to Macedonian 71,414 71,994 +0.8 target language across several grades, and larger institutional, group and cultural con- From Monash University Language and Society Centre (2003). teaching in the target language at a mini- texts” (Denzin, 1994:510-511). This study Multilingualism in Australia. at http://www.arts.monash. mum 7.5 hours per week (Bilingual Schools reflects an outsider perspective, that of a edu.au/language_and_society/past_projects/multilingual.html Project, 2003). Twelve primary schools and visiting American. My interpretation of 3 secondary colleges were originally cho- these programs is colored by comparisons The five years between 1996 and 2001 sen for support under the bilingual project. made, consciously and unconsciously, to saw a tremendous growth in numbers of Theresa, a bilingual teacher at contexts of bilingual education in the speakers of Asian and Middle Eastern lan- Kinsella Primary School, recalls the high United States. guages, while the languages of earlier Eu- level of support that accompanied this ini- At the outset of the study I decided to ropean immigrant groups showed a de- tiative: focus on primary schools, as these would offer the most variety of languages taught. cline. Chinese, including Mandarin and The government set out to retrain an Cantonese, is now the most widely spoken enormous number of teachers, and was They would also help me draw compari- language next to English (Australian cen- extremely generous. They paid for the sons and contrasts to bilingual schools in sus, 2001). Language use patterns vary training of the teachers, they paid for in- the United States, which are largely a across states and regions, and from city to country experiences, they were very sup- phenomenon at the elementary school level. city (Monash University, 2003). Cities with portive. Next, I decided to contact several of the twelve schools which had received support the highest percentage of speakers of lan- This state support for bilingual teachers from the Victorian government. I chose to guages other than English are Sydney and and schools has helped existing bilingual contact schools which taught languages Melbourne, at 26.4% and 25.4% respec- programs to continue and expand, and spoken widely in the community, as well tively (Clyne, 2003). many newer programs to get off to a good as those which taught languages impor- start. The decrease in funding in the last tant for Australia’s region of the world— Victorian Government Support few years, however, has forced schools with Asia and the Pacific. bilingual programs to rely more and more for Bilingual Education For this reason I chose not to visit some on themselves, and the quality of their pro- schools whose bilingual programs are highly Michael Clyne, whose work over many grams may have been compromised as a regarded, such as Camberwell’s French pro- years has shaped the field of bilingual edu- result.