“Before, you spoke our language, my son.”
(Source: “That Was Before America’s Capitalist Society Betrayed Him — and Us…” from ¡No Pasarán!)

Joseph Nhan-O’Reilly notes in his blog post entitled “Bridging the Language Divide in Vietnam”, that the language of instruction for education heavily influences the success of a student. He claims that educating minority children in their native language during elementary school assists their overall educational development more than merely educating minority students in a foreign language to begin with (Nhan-O’Reilly, 2013)¹.

Nhan-O’Reilly’s case study is Vietnam, but I have seen the same setbacks he mentions facing students in my hometown of Redmond, Oregon.

Even in America, as pluralistic as it claims to be, English education is largely forced upon a number of minorities throughout the country, severely stinting their educational development. Speaking predominantly Spanish or an indigenous language at home, the overwhelming majority of students who were behind on their reading level in my community were either Hispanic or Native American. School taught them English, not their family. As a result, they were told to have, in Paulo Friere’s terms, “an absolute ignorance” (2005, p. 72), and as such they were deemed “problem children”, just like the Vietnamese students who would, “drop out of school altogether, while others fail their examinations and spend years repeating grades” (Nhan-O’Reilly, 2013).

In the United States and other countries with minority groups, we need more programs like the ones Nhan-O’Reilly mentions in Vietnam. As a new sector for teachers in education would open up, community members who would normally face trouble finding a job, such as poorly educated minorities, could acquire a quick teacher’s license and then help out the children from their communities (Nhan-O’Reilly, 2013). This would create both an economic incentive for increased attention paid to minority’s education, but it could also harken to the effects noted by Nhan-O’Reilly where students were, “[motivated] to read, including in Vietnamese” (2013). When the children learn first in their mother tongue, they are more successful in education and at learning other languages later on.

We know from the colonial history of numerous countries that education is both a means of inclusion and exclusion (Nhan-O’Reilly, 2013). We cannot afford to continue to exclude minorities in education within the United States. If the least successful students on paper got a chance at education on their own terms, then these students could possibly be the next Einstein as neoliberalism so resolutely wants them to be.

However, it is not as if the entire education system needs to be reorganized to benefit the few at the expense of the majority. I merely argue that at the rudimentary level of public education, students should be given an equal opportunity to succeed regardless of background and language. I acknowledge that satisfying the needs of all minority groups in every geographic region is nearly impossible in a practical sense, but our lack of ability to do everything to help minorities does not mean we should do nothing to help.

Language and education are essential for human development across the board. Otherwise we would merely be left with the Lonely Island’s knowledge of education: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M94ii6MVilw 

Nhan-O’Reilly’s piece can be found here:
http://www.educationforallblog.org/regions/east-asia-and-pacific/bridging-the-language-divide-in-vietnam

Paulo Friere’s book:
Paulo, F. (2005). The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. United States of America.

(Source: “Race starts early for ethnic minority students” from Earth Times)