Bilingual Analysis

Bilingual education has been historically surrounded by societal discourse in the US. According to Freeman (1998), sociopolitical factors such as changing immigration patterns not only lead to an increasing need for access to bilingual education, but present a tremendous cultural-linguistic diversity that challenges the traditional monolingual ideology. Nevertheless, mainstream US educational discourse has already normalized the use of Standard English and pushed minority students to follow the norms of white middle-class population. Correspondingly, teachers in the same context are assumed to regard such norms as criteria when developing curriculum content and interpreting student behavior, while neglecting minority students’ vernacular and

In other words, minority students are likely to struggle with learning in an ideologically hostile context, where minority languages are viewed as threats to national unity (Cahnmann, 2003). Furthermore, Lincoln (2003) states that continuously emphasizing the mainstream content exacerbates the isolation of minority students. Alternatively, including vernacular content and valuing simultaneous exposure to multiple varieties and cultures will stimulate their participation and achievement. Due to its contribution to educational equality, I agree with Freeman (1998) that multicultural curriculum draws students’ attention to diverse struggles and accomplishments of different peoples, and fosters students to recognize how they are related to people in the external society through language-mediated interactions. Thus, students are able to develop a fuller self-understanding, refuse to be negatively positioned by mainstream ideology, and reposition themselves differently (Freeman,