IT ALL STARTS WITH EDUCATION…
We believe that in order to properly nurture people’s understanding of language and culture we must start in primary education. People’s attitudes and beliefs are engrained in them as children and therefore we must start to teach them the values of language and culture as soon as possible. What follows are three steps we believe can push us towards our goal. While these steps are not the full solution, they would be a huge step in the right direction.
Step 1 – New class structures (Two-way immersion)
Studies have shown that when students recieve more instruction in their heritage langauge they perform better not only in English but in all other subjects as well. By teaching students in their heritage language they are able to stay connected to their culture as well as learn in a much more appealing way. Classes need to begin promoting linguistic variation and culture in all their students.
Step 2 – More training for teachers
Many teachers are inexperienced and truthfully uneducated on how to promote language and culture in the classroom. By providing more training for our teachers they can learn how to correctly promote culture in the classroom as well as learn many of the false ideologies that run through a school and how to combat them.
Step 3 – A push away from the idea of a “native language”
Forever people have been priding themselves on the purity of their native language. However language is not various sets of words and rules, it is a constantly changing, ebbing and flowing, medium of communication. Through the words we choose we express our identities and who we are. Every language stems from a mixture of cultures and just as none of our languages are truly pure, they all are.
