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Juneteenth: Shackles by Any Name…

Juneteenth is a combination of “June” and “nineteenth” in honor of the date Union Army’s Major General Gordon Granger arrival in Galveston, Texas to announce the end of the Civil War & the official end of slavery through the ratification of the Emancipation Proclamation which occurred on Jan 1, 1863 (de Haan, 2020). This announcement on June 19, 1865 occurred 901 days or 2.5 years after the proclamation’s ratification. In other words, 3.5 million freed people were illegally enslaved for an additional 2.5 years.

Coincidentally, June is also Immigrant Heritage Month. It is a time for Americans who are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants to reflect on and celebrate their cultural heritages (White, 2020). It is imperative to understand that although Juneteenth is the celebration of the end of slavery for African Americans, one must understand that 23,893 or 4.2% of K-12 ELs (English Learners) identified as racially Black (Cooper, A., & Bryan, K., 2021). The number of Black immigrants is growing in the U.S. and they too face much of the same bias, racism, and prejudice as African Americans. Due to the unaddressed legacy of slavery in the U.S., Black migrants face challenges that non-Black immigrants do not (White, 2020).

Juneteenth is not only a celebration of freedom, but also a time to further the conversation of addressing the still lingering legacy of slavery in the U.S. But this freedom was not instant magic. When Texas fell and Granger dispatched his now famous General Order No. 3, which announced the end of slavery, it was not exactly “instant magic” for most of the Lone Star State’s 250,000 slaves. On plantations, slave owners had to decide when and how to announce the news or wait for a government agent to arrive to force them to free their slaves and some slave owners delayed the announcement until after the harvest. Even in Galveston City, the ex-Confederate mayor flouted the Army by forcing freed people back to work, as historian Elizabeth Hayes Turner details in her comprehensive essay, “Juneteenth: Emancipation and Memory,” in Lone Star Pasts: Memory and History in Texas (Conradt, 2018).

Freedom was not guaranteed

Many who acted on the news of freedom did so at their own peril because despite the announcement, Texas slave owners weren’t too eager to part with what they felt was their property. We should remember that slavery was not just the practice of making someone do something against their will, but it was a belief that Black people were someone’s property to do with as they please. The newly emancipated people who tried to escape were often murdered, beaten, or lynched (de Haan, 2020).


The unequal access to key information and resources, as epitomized by Juneteenth, continues the historic legacy of African Americans having unequal access to the same resources and information as white Americans have had. This “theme” of Black Americans having unequal access, being the last to know, the last to benefit, and the last to experience all the benefits of freedom and equality guaranteed to them through the 13th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act, to name just a couple of laws, is a continuous thread that can presently be seen throughout the American educational system. Black American students have on average unequal access to key information and resources offered by the American education system.

Education for African Americans after the end of slavery

The Reconstruction era: The Reconstruction era was the period after the American Civil War from 1865 to 1877. During this time, the U.S. dealt with reintegrating the states that seceded back into the union and determining the legal status of African Americans (African Americans and Education During Reconstruction: The Tolson’s Chapel Schools (U.S. National Park Service) 2021)

African Americans in the former slave-holding states immediately saw education as an important step towards achieving equality, independence, and prosperity. As such, they found ways to learn despite the many obstacles poverty and white Americans placed in their path. The African American community’s commitment to education had a lasting impact in the former slave-holding states. As voters and legislators in the 1800s, African Americans played crucial roles creating public schools for them and white Americans in the southern and border states (African Americans and Education During Reconstruction: The Tolson’s Chapel Schools U.S. National Park Service, 2021)

According to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, before the 1860s, and the freedom of African Americans, most of the South only had a rudimentary public school system. After the Civil War, southern states ultimately created an educational system based on race with “colored schools” and “white-only schools.” These separate schools were anything but equal. In some southern states, “white-only schools” received two to three times more money per student than “colored schools”. African American taxpayers in several states not only bore the entire cost of their own schools but helped support “white-only schools” as well (The Quest for Education – Separate Is Not Equal, ND).

Yet, the commitment of African American teachers and parents to education never faltered. The lyrics by African Americans established a tradition of educational self-help. They were among the first southerners to campaign for universal public education. They welcomed the support of the Freedmen’s Bureau, white charities, and missionary societies. Additionally, Black communities, despite being desperately poor, dug deep into their own resources to build, uphold, and maintain schools that met their needs and reflected their values. Even with that, the threat of attacks from white Americans was still present (Smithsonian National Museum of American History, ND).

We went every day about nine o’clock, with our books wrapped in paper to prevent the police or white persons from seeing them…After school we left the same way we entered, one by one, when we would go to the square about a block from school and wait for each other.”
—Susie King (1848-1912) attended a secret school in Savannah, Georgia.

The Jim Crow South
The term Jim Crow traces back to a derogatory minstrel routine from the 1830s. The term “Jim Crow” typically refers to repressive laws and customs once used to restrict African Americans’ rights, but the origin of the name itself actually dates back to before the Civil War (Andrews, 2014).

Education is the key to economic success, but for African Americans and Black immigrants obtaining an education was and still can be an arduous and often dangerous task where not everyone is successful, but it is not impossible as can be heard in the lyrics by Truthcity in the song Persistence, “I know success ain’t common, I know the hood economics / I know some won’t make it out, tear when I think about it / But I know God and logic / Grind and let the spirits guide us / Passion, will and thirst for knowledge got me through the pain and trauma.”

Southern education was not very good even for white children. But education for African Americans in the South in the early 1900s was worse (Adedapo & Kaplan, 2020). Americans have long believed that a healthy democracy depends in part on free public education. The nation’s founders stressed that an educated citizenry would better understand their rights and help build a
prosperous nation. Beginning in the early 1800s, the federal government and the states encouraged a largely locally controlled public school system. The American public-school movement opened new opportunities for millions of children, but millions of racial and ethnic minorities were excluded from an equally well-resourced public education. These groups were relegated to a segregated education system designed to confine these children to a subservient role in society and second-class citizenship (The Educated Citizen – Separate Is Not Equal, ND).

Bias in Education:
Americans often forget that as late as the 1960s most African American, Latino, and Native American students were educated in wholly segregated schools funded at rates many times lower than those serving white Americans and were excluded entirely from many higher education institutions (Darling-Hammond, 2016).

In the current American education system, the historical thread of African Americans having unequal access to key information and resources continues and the COVID-19 pandemic further brought this to the forefront. School lockdowns have helped reveal the many layers of inequities in education that have long existed yet have been hidden in plain sight or simply ignored. For many this has brought to light the painful reality that there is truly no equity in education for African Americans and Black immigrants, especially those that live in low-income urban communities.

Research shows that implicit racial bias leads teachers to set lower expectations for all Black students, African Americans and Black immigrants. The same is true for bias against students who are not native English speakers. Black immigrant students who don’t speak English well face a double bind of lowered expectations (White, 2020). This inequity in the American education system is also seen in majority racial and ethnic minority communities. As co-author, Dr. de Haan stated in her December 19, 2020 article for NJ Spotlight, “NJ schools need a plan to rescue students from COVID-19 chasm.” A “covid slide” is occurring, and children who live in poverty, mainly African American and other other racial and ethnic minorities, will be much more adversely affected and the learning losses will be greatest at the elementary school level, particularly in reading and math, with kindergartners experiencing the most harm. There is extensive literature that indicates students from historically oppressed groups will experience much greater learning loss and higher dropout rates (de Haan, 2020). According to the 2017-2018 results from the National Center for Educational Statistics, the national adjusted cohort graduation rate (ACGR) for public high school shows that African American and Latino American students, regardless of race, had graduation rates of only 79% and 81% respectively, as compared to 89% for white students and 92% for Asian/Pacific Islander American students. But is the “learning loss” really just due to the pandemic? From the history of education of African Americans in the U.S., as outlined in this article, the answer emphatically points to NO.
The learning loss has been a systemic process that still relegates African American students to the back of the bus. Only now the bus has become education. Let us take a closer look at two layers of inequity that COVID-19 revealed, ‘The Swallowing of a Generation’, and ‘The Digital Divide’.

Layer 1: The Swallowing of a Generation:

  • One result of the COVID-19 pandemic is widespread concern that the achievement gap has grown into a coronavirus chasm that threatens to “swallow” an entire generation of African American, and many other children, regardless of race or ethnicity, from low-income families as well as English-language learners and special-education students. These children have been left to teach themselves unsupervised on Zoom in kitchens, bedrooms and on sofas. Many schools serving low-income students have lowered learning expectations for remote instruction because families may not have reliable technology to stream video (de Haan, 2020). The May 7, 2021 Language Magazine article entitled, Summer Learning to Help Students Most Impacted by the Pandemic, states that the Department of Education has launched a Summer Learning & Enrichment Collaborative to help states use federal funding to support students most affected by the COVID-19 lockdowns in order to address the potential learning loss due to the pandemic.

    The technological divide, or digital divide, has created another point of unequal access to key information and resources adversely affecting equity in the American education system.
    

Layer 2: The Digital Divide:The digital divide refers to the growing gap between the under resourced members of society, especially the low-income and rural portion of the population who do not have access to computers and/or the internet, and the wealthy and the middle-class members of society living in urban and suburban areas who have access (Dotterer et al., 2016).

  • The pandemic did not create the digital divide, it exposed the digital divide. There has always existed a well-known achievement gap between the socioeconomic classes in education, and technology should be a means of closing that gap. Unfortunately, rural and low-income urban schools also face a digital divide, which magnifies the achievement gap. In poorer areas and more rural areas, the internet is not as reliable or as easily available for students. According to a 2013 Pew Research study, only 54% of middle and high school teachers surveyed thought their students have sufficient access to digital tools at school, and 84% said that digital technologies are leading to greater disparities between affluent and disadvantaged schools and school districts (Purcell et al., 2020).

For Americans of all backgrounds, Black immigrants included, the unequal allocation of opportunity in a society that is becoming ever more dependent on knowledge and education is a source of great anxiety and concern. Educational outcomes for African American and other racial and ethnic minority children are much more a function of their unequal access to key educational resources, including skilled teachers and quality curriculum, than they are a function of race or ethnicity.

In fact, the U.S. educational system is one of the most unequal in the industrialized world, and students routinely receive dramatically different learning opportunities based on their social status. In contrast to European and Asian nations that fund schools centrally and equally, the wealthiest 10% of U.S. school districts spend nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10%, and spending ratios of 3 to 1 are common within states. Despite stark differences in funding, resources, teacher quality, school curriculum, and class sizes, the prevailing view in the U.S. is that if students do not achieve, it is their own fault. If the U.S. is ever to move beyond the vast racial and ethnic inequalities, we as concerned citizens, must confront and address these inequalities in the American education system (Darling-Hammond, 2016).

The African American community throughout history, from slavery to present day, has been subjected to atrocities on all levels solely based on skin color. We need to honor Juneteenth as a time to further the conversation addressing the societal legacy of slavery in the U.S. and, as this article outlines, the educational inequalities brought about by this legacy. COVID-19 did not bring about the deficiencies in educational resources for African American or other racial or ethnic minority students, it was always present. But what it did was expose those layers of inequities, and the educational system’s biases, whether blind or implicit. How do we now break this continuous thread or “theme” of African American students having a lack of information, being the last to know, the last to benefit, and the last to experience all the benefits of freedom, equality and equity guaranteed to them through the 13th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act, and Brown vs. Board of Education?

The aim of this article is to be a humble contribution to the conversation and the history of educational inequality in the U.S. and to hopefully aid in conversations about achieving a desperately needed equitable educational system.

References
Adedapo , A., & Kaplan, F. (2020, August 21). The Education of Black Children in the Jim Crow South. America’s Black Holocaust Museum. https://www.abhmuseum.org/education-for-blacks-in-the-jim-crow-south/.
Andrews, E. (2014, January 29). Was Jim Crow a Real Person? History.com. https://www.history.com/news/was-jim-crow-a-real-person.
Cooper, A., & Bryan, K. (2021, May 13). Awareness to Advocacy: Black ESL Students in the United States. Presented at Kennesaw State University 19th Annual ESOL Conference, Kennesaw, GA.
de Haan, B. R. (2020, June). Juneteenth 19 June aka Emancipation Day. Racial Justice Series. Presented at DASACC for Cultural Awareness, Warren County, NJ de Haan, D. (2020, December 31). Op-Ed: NJ schools need a plan to rescue students from COVID-19 chasm. NJSpotlight News. NJSpotlight . https://www.njspotlight.com/2020/12/covid-19-chasm-unlearning-learning-loss-historically-oppressed-students/.
Dotterer, G., Hedges, A., & Parker, H. (2016, January 14). The Digital Divide in the Age of the Connected Classroom How Technology Helps Bridge the Achievement Gap. Net-ref.com. https://www.net-ref.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Bridging-the-Digital-Divide-NetRef-White-Paper-FINAL.pdf.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2016, July 28). Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/.
Purcell, K., Buchanan, J., & Friedrich, L. (2020, May 30). How Teachers Are Using Technology at Home and in Their Classrooms. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2013/02/28/how-teachers-are-using-technology-at-home-and-in-their-classrooms/.
The Smithsonian Natural Museum History of American History. (n.d.). The Quest for Education – Separate Is Not Equal. https://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/2-battleground/quest-for-education-1.html.
The Smithsonian National Museum of American History. (n.d.). The Educated Citizen – Separate Is Not Equal. https://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/2-battleground/educated-citizen.html.
U.S. Department of the Interior. (2021, May 5). African Americans and Education During Reconstruction: The Tolson’s Chapel Schools (U.S. National Park Service). National Parks Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/african-americans-and-education-during-reconstruction-the-tolson-s-chapel-schools.htm#:~:text=African%20Americans%20had%20other%20reasons,for%20participating%20in%20civic%20life.
White, S. (2020, November 2). What Does it Mean to Be a Black Immigrant in the United States? > The Immigrant Learning Center. The Immigrant Learning Center. https://www.ilctr.org/what-does-it-mean-to-be-black-immigrant-united-states/.

Notes
1 The Freedmen’s Bureau was established in 1865 to aid formerly enslaved African Americans. Its limited resources never met the tremendous demand for education from African Americans across the South.
2 Papiamentu, also spelled Papiamento, creole language based on Portuguese but heavily influenced by Spanish. In the early 21st century, it was spoken by about 250,000 people, primarily on the Caribbean islands of Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire. It is an official language of Curaçao and Aruba.

Bremen de Haan, M.A, MBA is a former International Rotary Academic Peace Fellow and a returned Peace Corps Panama Volunteer with an extensive background in social sector program development, implementation, and consulting. Mr. de Haan earned his MBA from The Rotterdam School of Business: Erasmus University, holds a M.A. in Peace and Conflict Resolution and International Diplomacy from the University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Australia and a B.A. in International Economics and Development from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mr. de Haan is fluent in English, Spanish, Dutch, Papiamentu2 and Level 1 Mandarin Chinese.

Darlyne de Haan, Ed.D is an educator, educational consultant, a former forensic scientist and chemist with more than 20 years of experience in STEM, and a Blogger for TESOL International. Dr. de Haan is a recipient and participant of the coveted Fulbright Administrator Program for Fulbright Leaders for Global Schools, a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Dr. de Haan is a strong advocate for changing the face of STEM to reflect the population. Dr. de Haan is fluent in English and proficient in Spanish and Papiamentu.

Words Matter – The Case for Shifting to “Emergent Bilingual”

Throughout IDRA’s almost five decades, we have paid close attention to how we speak about people in terms of race or ethnicity, gender, etc. Words matter.

Almost 5 million students in U.S. public schools are learning English as a second language. That’s over 10% of the student population. The number almost doubled over the last 15 years. IDRA recently took another look at the terminology used to identify these students and the implications of using certain labels.

Most state policies refer to students with a first language other than English as English learners or English language learners, while 10, including Texas, use some form of limited English proficient students (LEP).* The Texas Education Agency also uses English learners in documents. At first glance, these labels may seem neutral and plainly descriptive; however a closer inspection reveals that these terms are deficit-based, that is, they define students by the knowledge they lack, rather than the strengths and abilities they already bring into the classroom.

Such terms can affect how we understand students and their potential. They can cause us to give English more legitimacy and power than a student’s first language. Additionally, because of the language used to define students, many may see them as a needy, expensive to educate, monolithic group, rather than a diverse group of students who represent a necessary resource and asset.

Timeline with terms used in federal policy for English learners

In Texas, for example, almost one in five students are designated English learners. Labeling almost 20% of Texas students as limited English proficient students or English learners can negatively affect how policymakers and educators measure those students’ potential. It starts with a deficit understanding of their abilities, labels them in terms of a cost that schools struggle to afford, funnels them into particular pathways according to perceptions, and often limits their access to critical learning opportunities, such as college-level coursework (Martinez, 2018). Because emergent bilingual students are seldom viewed as college material, only one in 10 are deemed college ready at graduation (TEA, 2018).

IDRA believes in the value of bilingualism and biculturalism. Schools must protect the civil rights of all students by preserving and celebrating the cultures and experiences tied to the diverse languages students bring into the classroom. For these reasons, IDRA prefers using the term emergent bilingual students.

Coined and popularized by Dr. Ofelia García in 2008, emergent bilingual focuses on the unique potential for bilingualism possessed by students who are learning English in school. This terminology demands that we take an asset-based view of the capabilities of emergent bilingual students, who are simultaneously acquiring a new set of linguistic capabilities in school and building on the valuable knowledge of their first language.

By adopting the emergent bilingual distinction, we hope that education stakeholders at all levels begin to imagine classrooms where linguistic diversity is praised rather than shunned, and where students are intentionally invited to leverage their full linguistic and social repertoire in all learning environments (Ascenzi-Moreno, 2017). To propel this change, IDRA also is working with state lawmakers and education agencies, school districts and community members to encourage the use of the term emergent bilingual in state law, administrative codes and at the school level.

* In some regions of the country, the term “dual language” learner is used, which can be confused with the instructional program that is also called “dual language.”

Resources

Ascenzi-Moreno, L. (Fall 2017). From Deficit to Diversity: How Teachers of Recently Arrived Emergent Bilinguals Negotiate Ideological and Pedagogical Change.Schools: Studies in Education, Vol. 14, No. 2.

City University of New York. (2019). Vision statement – Emergent Bilinguals: Emergence, Dynamic Bilingualism, and Dynamic Development. CUNY-New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals.

Education Commission of the States. (2020). 50-State Comparison: English Learner Policies – How is “English learner” defined in state policy? webpage.

García, O., Kleifgen, J.A., & Falchi, L. (2008). From English Language Learners to Emergent Bilinguals. Equity Matters: Research Review, No. 1.

Martínez, R.A. (2018). Beyond the “English Learner” Label: Recognizing the Richness of Bi/Multilingual Students’ Linguistic Repertoires. The Reading Teacher.

Rosetta Stone. (2020). Emergent Bilinguals Are the Future. Rosetta Stone.

Texas Education Agency. (2020). 2020 Comprehensive Biennial Report on Texas Public Schools. Austin, Texas: TEA.

Araceli García is an IDRA Education Policy Fellow. Comments and questions may be directed to her via email at [email protected].

[©2021, IDRA. This article originally appeared in the February 2021 IDRA Newsletter by the Intercultural Development Research Association. Permission to reproduce this article is granted provided the article is reprinted in its entirety and proper credit is given to IDRA and the author.]

Linguistic Diversity Declines in Papua New Guinea

Traditional dancing at the Mask Festival, Kokopo, East New Britain, Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea—frequently heralded as the most linguistically diverse place in the entire world—is in the middle of a language crisis. According to a new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, the youngest generations in the nation are using Indigenous languages far less than ever before, instead opting for English and Tok Pisin, an English-based creole language. The country, located in northern Oceania, is home to nearly 1,000 different languages, many of which are not well documented and spoken by relatively small populations.

“Globalization puts small languages at a disadvantage, but our understanding of the drivers and rate of language loss remains incomplete,” the paper reads. “Papua New Guinea is home to more than 10% of the world’s languages and rich and varied biocultural knowledge, but the future of this diversity remains unclear.”

Not only is Papua New Guinea home to around 850 Indigenous languages, but those languages also descend from a diverse group of 33 different language families. The country officially recognizes four languages—English, Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu and Papua New Guinea Sign Language. Tok Pisin serves as the lingua franca of the country, while students are typically instructed in English. Because of the predominance of the two languages, the researchers note that about a third of the Indigenous languages spoken in Papua New Guinea are endangered.

According to the researchers, their study is one of the first national linguistic surveys conducted that analyzes the status of the smaller Indigenous languages spoken in the country. Secondary school students were surveyed for the study, to assess how frequently members of younger generations use their heritage languages and how well they know them (if at all).

The researchers collected data from a little over 6,000 students across the country, covering speakers of 392 languages. Once each participant completed a survey, the researchers then devised a model to predict future trends for each language based on their historical status among older generations and their usage among younger residents. 58% of the students sampled spoke an Indigenous language fluently, compared to 91% of their parents’ generation; the researchers then developed the model, which predicted that only 26% of the next generation will speak these languages fluently, indicating a significant decline in these languages’ use that would likely lead to the loss of significant cultural information.

“The traditional multilingualism in Indigenous languages in the present oldest generation has given way to bilingualism with the English-based creole Tok Pisin in an intermediate generation and monolingualism in Tok Pisin, with perhaps English from schooling, in a third generation.”

Andrew Warner

French to Lead During France’s EU Presidency

The French language is poised to become the main language of the European Union’s (EU’s) meetings, notes, and debates during France’s presidency of the bloc from January 2022 to June 2022. France is planning to host major EU meetings in French, a move that breaks with the long-held tradition of hosting such meetings in English. This will be the first time the nation has held the presidency since 2008, long before Brexit.

“Even if we admit that English is a working language and it is commonly practiced, the basis to express oneself in French remains fully in place in the EU institutions,” an unnamed senior French diplomat told POLITICO. “We must enrich it, and make it live again so that the French language truly regains ground, and above that, the taste and pride of multilingualism.”

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has made improvement of the French language’s international status a priority of his throughout his tenure. The language was once considered the lingua franca of the EU, especially in the institution’s early years. The language already has a relatively important role compared to many of the other official languages of the EU, as it is one of three working languages of the European Commission, alongside German and English.

In an article published in Le Figaro, France’s EU affairs minister Clement Beaune and secretary of state Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne said the use of French in Brussels “had diminished to the benefit of English, and more often to Globish – that ersatz of the English language, which narrows the scope of one’s thoughts, and restricts one’s ability to express him or herself”.

They added that the presidency created “an opportunity to hold high this vital fight for multilingualism.”

However, POLITICO reports that some international diplomats are skeptical of the move, viewing it more as a desperate grasp for relevance and a nostalgic attempt to return to the days of old, when French was at the forefront of the international stage.

Andrew Warner

Michigan Moves on Preschool for All

Detroit’s diverse population would benefit from the plan

As President Biden’s American Families Plan meets opposition in Congress, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer is moving forward with a $400 million dollar plan to expand the state’s Great Start Readiness Program so that it can provide free preschool to 22,000 more children.

Whitmer wants to spend $255 million of federal funding and $150 million of state funds over three years to expand state-funded preschool making it available to the remaining third of eligible 4-year-olds. While an estimated 65,400 children in Michigan are eligible for Great Start Readiness, which is offered to households with income at or below 250% of the poverty line, only about 43,000 children are enrolled in the program or Head Start services now. About 20% of Michigan’s preschoolers are classified as English learners.

“We have a unique opportunity right now to make the type of investments in early education and preschool that will pay massive dividends by improving health, educational, and social outcomes for our children decades down the line,” Whitmer said. “Parents across our state are aware of the importance of early education and now we have to seize this chance to eliminate waitlists for eligible children.”

Whitmer’s plan includes an additional $50 million to fund $15,000 grants for providers to open an estimated 1,500 more preschool classrooms, and spending an additional $10 million on scholarships for educators, school transport, and expanding outreach.

“There is no better investment than our children,” Michigan Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich told ABC News. “As a former teacher, I’ve seen firsthand the long-term benefits of a quality preschool education, and that’s why I am so glad that Governor Whitmer is making the Great Start Readiness Program available to more of Michigan’s kids.”

According to the National Institute for Early Education Research, only four states (NJ, NC, OK, WV) and Washington, D.C., spend enough money to support preschool programs. The nation’s capital spends the most money per preschool student and has the highest percentage (79%) of 3 and 4-year-olds in pre-K classes, compared to a nationwide average of just 20%.

The American Families Plan, a $1.8 trillion spending plan to expand government support for children, families, and education including $200 billion for free preschool for 3 and 4-year-olds, was proposed by President Biden in his first address to a joint session of Congress in April. Biden argued that, “research shows when a young child goes to school—not daycare—they are far more likely to graduate from high school and go to college after high school…no matter what background they come from, it puts them in the position to be able to compete all the way through 12 years.”

Registration Open for 2021 Global Teaching Dialogue

Alumni of the U.S. Department of State’s Teacher Exchange Programs and other global education leaders will share best practices for globalizing curricula, tips for implementing virtual exchanges, and reflections on innovative educational practices in other countries. U.S. Department of State officials will share information about international exchange opportunities, the National Museum of American Diplomacy will provide resources for teaching about diplomacy, and expert teachers will conduct workshops on integrating global competence across the K-12 curriculum.

Attend this free virtual event to gather practical information to help teachers bring the world into their classrooms!

Session schedule and speaker information is available upon registration. To access resources and recordings from last year’s event, visit the 2020 Global Teaching Dialogue Resource Hub.

The Global Teaching Dialogue is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government, administered by IREX.

Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 11:00 AM – Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:00 PM

Register


Cherokee Linguist Honored by Senate Act and Center

U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), vice chair of the committee, have introduced the Durbin Feeling Native American Languages Act of 2021. This bipartisan legislation marks the 30th anniversary of the Native American Languages Act by ensuring federal efforts meet the goal of respecting and supporting the use of Native languages. “Congress made a commitment to promote and protect the rights of Native Americans to use their languages over three decades ago when it enacted the Native American Languages Act of 1990,” said Schatz. “The Durbin Feeling Native American Languages Act will ensure we are living up to that commitment. Our bill will make the federal government more accountable by setting clear goals and asking for direct input from Native communities about how federal resources can be more effectively used to support and revitalize Native languages.”

“I am proud to again join as co-lead in introducing a bill that works to protect Native languages. Our bill will improve interagency coordination and require a survey of federal programs on their work involving Native languages,” said Murkowski. “With these efforts, Native communities across the country can continue revitalizing and protecting their identity through language. For Indigenous peoples, Native languages are foundational to identity and culture and I will continue supporting policies that help maintain and revitalize Native languages.”

The bill, named after Durbin Feeling, who has been referred to as the nation’s “single largest contributor to the Cherokee language since Sequoyah,” would review and make recommendations to improve federal agencies’ coordination in support of Native American languages. It would also authorize a federal survey of Native language use and programmatic needs every five years. These surveys would serve as “health checks” to allow Native communities and Congress to target federal resources for Native American languages more effectively. The bill is supported by the Joint National Committee for Languages–National Council for Languages and International Studies (JNCL–NCLIS), National Congress of American Indians, National Indian Education Association (NIEA), National Coalition of Native American Language Schools and Programs (NCNALSP), and the Cherokee Nation. Diana Cournoyer, NIEA executive director, welcomed the move: “Native languages are fundamental to the First American nations, histories, cultures, and traditions. NIEA is thrilled to support legislation that will advance critical resources to assess the current national landscape for Native language revitalization, uphold the federal trust responsibility, and expand sovereignty in Native language education.”

Amanda Seewald, president of JNCL–NCLIS, commented, “The information gathered by engaging Native American communities and Congress will better inform our ongoing advocacy to sustain and revitalize Native American languages and fulfill the promise of NALA across the nation. The coordination directed by the Durbin Feeling Native American Languages Act is necessary to ensure equitable availability and access to resources to empower the learners, teachers, and speakers of Native American languages for generations to come.”

Leslie Harper, NCNALSP president, added, “Native American language revitalization efforts are a complex weaving of strategies to build living, thriving languages. Data collection is a critical strategy to map changes as we move toward healthy language futures. Just as there are hundreds of unique Native American languages across the country, there are many unique stages of action across the wide field of Native American language revitalization. The Durbin Feeling Native American Languages Act can provide an opportunity for local settings to link strategies to actions and ensure that Congress delivers resources to the areas that Native American language revitalizers tell us are needed. NCNALSP appreciates the prioritization of Native American language revitalization initiatives and we look forward to working with members to support this bill’s passage.”

“Today only about 2,000 people can speak Cherokee fluently. Preserving and revitalizing the Cherokee language rank among my highest responsibilities. For decades, Durbin Feeling led the effort to not only save and preserve the Cherokee language but breathe new life into the Cherokee language. We owe it to Durbin’s legacy to carry on his work and continue to advocate for Native language revitalization efforts,” concluded Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

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Addressing the Gender Bias in French

French speakers have long been engaged in a debate over the language’s gender inclusivity—or rather its lack thereof. While some progress has been made toward feminizing the language (such as the 2012 move to remove the word mademoiselle from all official government communications, instead opting for the more neutral madame), other measures have been met with hostility from those who adhere to a more prescriptive philosophy about the language.

The most recent development in the feminist efforts to address the language’s gender biases falls into the latter category: on May 8, French news outlet France 24 reported that the country’s Education Ministry had banned the use of certain forms of gender-inclusive language in schools, describing it as an “existential threat” to the language. This move echoes the sentiment held by the Académie Française, which in 2017 stated that the French language was in “mortal danger” as feminist language advocates attempted to instill more gender-inclusive practices in written forms of the language.

The feminine suffix e has been described as “the most contested and politicized letter in the French language,” as feminist speakers of the language often append it to words in contexts where it would not normally be used. For example, les soldats (“the soldiers”) is a masculine plural noun used as a generic or default term to describe a mixed-gender group of soldiers, regardless of the actual man-to-woman ratio of the group. Recently, many feminists have been adding the feminine ending e to the word (and other words that are masculine by default) to create a more inclusive form of the word: les soldat·es. According to France 24, the dot preceding the suffix (also referred to as the middot) is key to the inclusive nature of such language, as it indicates that soldiers can be members of either sex.

In 2018, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe banned this use of feminized language in official government documentation, stating that “the masculine [form] is a neutral form which should be used for terms liable to apply to women.” Now, schoolteachers can no longer teach this form of the language either, as the Education Ministry has banned the middot formula from educational contexts. However, the Education Ministry has allowed for other forms of inclusive language, such as a systematic suffixation for feminizing job titles (i.e., now French teachers may teach the feminine word la présidente, to refer to a female president, instead of the generic masculine word le président). Andrew Warner

Chinese Controversy in Sri Lanka

Two incidents in which Chinese was included on signs for government projects but Tamil was omitted, despite being an official language, have caused Sri Lankans to start questioning the cultural hegemony of China on the island nation as its investments multiply.

Sri Lankan attorney general Dappula de Livera unveiled a plaque written in Sinhala, English, and Chinese, but not Tamil, as required by the official trilingual policy of the country. The controversy erupted after China gifted a smart library to the attorney general’s department. Following a barrage of social media criticism, the plaque was removed without comment from the AG. However, the Chinese embassy tweeted: “We noticed an interim sign in a JV building site not abiding by trilingual rules. We respect all three official languages in Sri Lanka, and urge China companies to follow.” The tweet included images of other Chinese-built structures with Tamil on their signs.

A week earlier, a sign at the Central Park under development in the Chinese-backed Colombo Port City showed a Chinese translation in place of the original Tamil. After the news went viral in Tamil social media circles, Colombo Port City released a statement saying that it was an old photograph, while the news website Colombo Page published a statement by Colombo Port City on a trilingual letterhead claiming that the project was still under construction and the signboards put up by the contractor were meant for employees and authorized visitors, so they did not have to be in all three official languages.

The controversy continued with state minister of national heritage, performing arts, and rural arts promotion Vidura Wickramanayaka telling Sri Lankan newspaper the Daily Mirror: “As a country we should not allow these type of things to happen. We talk about co-existence. An inquiry in this regard has to be carried out…”

Batticaloa member of Parliament from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Shanakiyan Rasamanickam said that it is China that decides what to put on signs in Sri Lanka, adding that Sri Lanka had become “Chi-Lanka.”

The language controversy follows massive opposition to the Colombo Port City by a cross-section of Sri Lankan society, except President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ruling party—Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna. Even some Buddhist monks opposed Chinese control over the Colombo Port City, saying that it would make Sri Lanka a colony of the communist giant.

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