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Move to Egalité for French in Canada

Since its adoption of the Official Languages Act in 1969, Canada has been an officially bilingual country—that is, the nation has recognized both English and French as its official languages on a federal level. But French has been in decline, as its proportion of native speakers within the country shrinks. A series of major reforms to the country’s language policy is on the horizon though, as the government recently published a document with several proposals to improve the status of French within the country and instill a sense of equality between the nation’s two official languages.

“While Canada is an officially bilingual country, much work remains so that Canadians can themselves become bilingual,” the report reads. “The government’s goal is ambitious: work with provincial and territorial governments to ensure that the population becomes more bilingual in the future, ensuring that the Anglophone majority has access to opportunities that will allow it to become bilingual.”

Although French remains robust in Québec (the only province or territory to recognize French as its sole official language on the provincial level), French has a fairly small population of native speakers outside the province. According to the report, 6.6% of the population outside of Québec spoke French natively in 1971, a number which had declined to 3.9% by 2011—projections suggest that it could drop down to 3% by 2036.

Since 2018, Mélanie Joly, the country’s Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages, has been working to devise ways to modernize the Official Languages Act of 1969. Her efforts have culminated in this series of expansive reforms to the country’s language policy, which aim to reverse the language’s decline within the country. According to the report, modernization of Canada’s official languages regime will be based on the following guiding principles:

  • The recognition of linguistic dynamics in the provinces and territories and existing rights regarding Indigenous languages;
  • The willingness to provide opportunities for learning both official languages;
  • Support for official language minority communities’ institutions;
  • The protection and promotion of French throughout Canada, including in Quebec;
  • The Government of Canada as an example through increasing compliance of federal institutions;
  • An Act for the Canada of today and tomorrow: Regular review of the Act and its implementation.

A committee will now review the document over the next 60 days to study how these proposals can be effectively implemented.

One of the government’s key proposals is the development of a “Francophone immigration corridor” specifically targeted at recruiting French teachers from outside of the country. The document notes that Canada has had an increased demand for French immersion programs but there has been a shortage of teachers in recent years. Other proposals in the document would require that only “functionally bilingual” judges be appointed to the Supreme Court, as well as prohibiting discrimination against employees who only speak French.

“Our official languages are part of our identity; our past, our present and our future,” writes Joly. “They are meeting points and links between our cultures. They are at the heart of our country’s social contract.”

Improving Accountability for English Learners in California

https://californianstogether.box.com/s/khem39s7jyx9qahz2ejmagpp5y1u3ytb

Californians Together, a statewide education advocacy coalition, has introduced a new framework for accountability focused on the needs of English learner (EL) students in California with the support of 20 organizations, including Advancement Project California, California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), Education Trust-West, Sobrato Early Academic Language (SEAL), and Unidos US. The Accountability System English Learners Deserve: Framework for An Effective and Coherent Accountability System for ELs, examines the state’s current system, identifies areas of improvement, sets aspirational goals for what a structure that is transparent and honest about EL needs could achieve, and outlines steps to build a framework that supports all levels of the state’s educational system and moves toward a more equitable and assets-oriented approach.

The framework also provides recommendations for addressing high priority gaps that require urgent action, especially in light of the COVID-19 era. Led by Laurie Olsen, Ph.D., the framework was developed by Californians Together’s coalition members and educators across the state.

“If we don’t have an accurate representation of where our EL students stand, we don’t have a way to ensure that we’re adequately meeting their needs. Especially in a pandemic, it will require a full commitment to help them catch up to their peers in the coming years,” says Martha Hernández, executive director of Californians Together.

Californians Together hopes that state leaders will use the brief as a guide in their current development of the academic growth models for Mathematics and Language Arts, determining English learner progress, and in setting higher expectations for districts and schools. Use of the framework will support and enhance the implementation of the vision set forth in the California English Learner Roadmap policy. California needs to adopt an accountability system that fosters, motivates, and uses multiple measures to inform continuous improvement for equitable student outcomes, especially for English learners.

“Our current system makes it difficult to assess improvement accurately because it continues to mask EL outcomes on key academic indicators and set low expectations for districts to support language development,” says Hernández. “In the spirit of continuous improvement, our state should utilize the break in normal activity due to the worldwide pandemic to reassess and update policy decisions related to English learner outcomes. We owe it to our students to build a statewide system to support English learners to reach their full potential.” 

Twenty organizations including Advancement Project California, California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), the Education Trust-West, Sobrato Early Academic Language (SEAL), and Unidos US join Californians Together in calling upon state leadership to step up and build the accountability system English learners deserve and that will serve the state’s goals of equity and quality education for all.

To read the full brief and for a list of all signers visit: caltog.co/accountability

The 5 Components of an Effective and Coherent Accountability System for ELs

  • Setting high expectations for all schools and LEAs regarding EL achievement.
  • Assessing and monitoring against those expectations (State Accountability and District Continuous Improvement).
  • Ensuring action by identifying areas for improvement and promise.
  • Engaging all levels of the system (including the state) with clear roles for the California Department of Education, the County Offices of Education, and the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence.
  • Supporting key drivers of success throughout, including: Engages stakeholders; Provides transparency; Establishes an equity imperative; Focuses on meaningful continuous improvement; Provides adequate resources. 

Fostering Multilingualism for Inclusion

Sunday’s celebration of International Mother Language Day, the UN’s annual commemoration honoring linguistic diversity and multilingualism, focused on inclusion, both in the classroom and in society. “Fostering the use of the mother tongue means, precisely, at the same time fostering access to education for all, as well as the dissemination of cultures in all their diversity. The theme of the Day this year, ‘Fostering multilingualism for inclusion in education and society,’ thus encourages us to support multilingualism and the use of mother tongues, both at school and in everyday life,” UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay said in her message for the Day.

“This is essential, because when 40% of the world’s inhabitants do not have access to education in the language they speak or understand best, it hinders their learning, as well as their access to heritage and cultural expressions,” Azoulay continued, calling linguistic diversity “this priceless heritage of humanity.”

“This year, special attention is being paid to multilingual education from early childhood, so that for children, their mother tongue is always an asset,” she added.

International Mother Language Day is being celebrated as the world continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, which has widened inequalities in education. Azoulay said many of the 1.5 billion students worldwide unable to attend school at the peak of the crisis had no access to distance learning.  

The pandemic is also threatening cultural diversity, as festivals and other events have been cancelled, with the impacts affecting creators and the media.

Azoulay underscored her agency’s commitment to promoting multilingualism, including on the Internet. UNESCO is also the lead agency for the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, which begins next year. She said the International Day, like the Decade, presents the challenge of ensuring the diversity of the world’s languages is preserved as a common heritage. 

“For when a language dies, a way of seeing, feeling and thinking the world disappears, and all of cultural diversity is irretrievably diminished,” she said.

“On this International Day, UNESCO therefore calls for the celebration of the world in all its diversity, and support for multilingualism in everyday life.”

To mark the event, The Smithsonian’s Mother Tongue Film Festival is celebrating cultural and linguistic diversity by showcasing films and filmmakers from around the world, highlighting the crucial role languages play in our daily lives. This year, the festival will be hosted entirely online.

Since 2016, the annual festival has celebrated International Mother Language Day in February. The sixth annual festival will take place via a monthly online screening series from February 21 to May 2021.

Through digital storytelling, the festival amplifies the work of diverse practitioners who explore the power of language to connect the past, present, and future.

The 2021 festival’s animation playlist seeks to empower identification through language. Featuring twelve short animations created by Indigenous filmmakers, or created in collaboration with members of Indigenous communities and arts organizations, this playlist provides a variety of engaging stories sure to inspire those of all ages.

The Mother Tongue Film Festival is a public program of Recovering Voices, a collaboration between Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

#MotherLanguageDay

Canadian Survey Reveals Youth Indigenous Language Loss

Statistics Canada has released the 2017 Aboriginal Peoples Survey this month, and it sheds lights on Aboriginal language and culture across the country. The study revealed that young people were far less likely to understand even a few words, which is less than their parents’ generation. The study, which takes places every five years and surveys over 45,000 Indigenous people from across Canada to investigate topics from language proficiency, to literacy rates to sexual health among Indigenous people. The 2017 APS is a national survey of First Nations people living off reserve, Métis and Inuit aged 15 years and over, and collects information not available from other sources, such as the Census.

The APS provides key statistics to inform policy and programming activities aimed at improving the well-being of Aboriginal Peoples. It is a valuable source of information for a variety of stakeholders, including Aboriginal organizations, communities, service providers, researchers, governments, and the general public.

The survey is carried out by Statistics Canada with funding provided by three federal departments: Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada & Indigenous Services Canada (formerly Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada), and Employment and Social Development Canada.

Key Findings

The North Leads– Data for all three territories shows about half of Indigenous northerners can speak or understand an Indigenous language “very well or relatively well,” but those speakers are unevenly distributed across the North, and Nunavut leads in language fluency. While more than 80% of Nunavummiut said they could could understand one Indigenous language, in Yukon, only around one in 10 people could claim the same.

Generational Divide– Around 35% of total Indigenous people over 55 could speak an Indigenous language well while less than 10 percent of those under the age off 55 said the same.

Pakistan Set to Make Arabic Mandatory

After a near unanimous vote, the Senate of Pakistan has adopted a new education policy requiring students in the capital city of Islamabad to learn Arabic from grades one through twelve. While the policy currently only affects students attending school in Islamabad, it is expected that the policy will soon be extended nationwide.

All but one senator voted yes on the bill, which will go into effect over the next six months. Proponents of the bill argue that learning Arabic will help create employment opportunities for Pakistani students throughout the Middle East. Senator Javed Abbasi, who presented the bill, also argued that learning Arabic would ensure that students are able to read and understand the Quran and daily prayers recited in the language—“We would not go through the problems we are currently facing if we understood the Holy Quran,” he told Dawn News.

Senator Raza Rabbani, the only senator to vote against the bill, argued in his dissent that the policy was an attempt to use “Islam for achieving a political agenda,” according to Dawn News. Pakistan is home to a diverse range of regional languages, which Rabbani argued would be negatively affected by prioritizing Arabic education.

Arabic holds significant status as the religious language of Islam, however most Pakistani citizens do not speak it natively. While it does not have official status in the country, the constitution of Pakistan states that the government shall “endeavor, as respects the Muslims of Pakistan, … to encourage and facilitate the learning of the Arabic language.”

Still, some Pakistani residents are skeptical of the policy’s likelihood of instilling Islamic values in its students. In an op-ed for Dawn News, Islamabad-based writer Pervez Hoodbhoy wrote, “That knowing Arabic … can make one a better person or create unity is a bizarre thought.” Hoodbhoy also doubts that Arabic education will improve job prospects for Pakistani students, arguing that the state should focus on improving its education system as a whole, so that students have more tangible skills to offer when they enter the workforce.

Tibetan Language Advocate Freed

Tashi Wangchuk, a Tibetan language rights activist who was imprisoned by the Chinese government on charges of inciting separatism, has been released upon completing a five-year sentence. Wangchuk was featured in a 2015 documentary by the New York Times, which detailed his efforts to advocate against the government’s linguistic assimilation of ethnic minorities; this same documentary was used as evidence against him in court.

Although the Chinese constitution guarantees ethnic minorities the “freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages,” this has not been the case for many residents of the country. In recent years, Chinese education policy has shifted such that students are primarily taught in Mandarin, rather than local languages—this has led to widespread discord in regions with high populations of ethnic minorities, such as Tibet and Inner Mongolia.

“In politics, it’s said that if one nation wants to eliminate another nation, first they need to eliminate their spoken and written language,” Wangchuk said in the Times documentary. He argued that the government’s current policy toward minority languages will only further repress these languages and ultimately lead to cultural erasure. Speaking in Mandarin, Wangchuk noted in the documentary that he felt his own Tibetan skills—which he learned while studying in a Tibetan monastery and in private lessons—were dwindling away.

In 2015, he attempted to sue the Chinese government, claiming that the language policy violated the constitutional rights of the country’s ethnic minorities. However, his efforts were unsuccessful. Wangchuk was detained in 2016 for his comments in the documentary. Despite the fact that Wangchuk never advocated for Tibetan independence, he was charged with inciting separatism—a charge often made against ethnic minorities who challenge the status quo, according to the Times. His imprisonment was widely condemned by the international community, and a petition to free him gained some momentum early last year.

Tibet is home to a wide range of minority languages, most of which are distantly related to Tibetan and its several dialects. While Standard Tibetan has more than 1 million native speakers, many dialects of the Tibetic language family have a much smaller population of speakers and are classified as endangered by the Endangered Language Alliance.

“If you want to learn about true Tibetan culture now, the only way is to become a monk and learn in the monastery. Basically, there are no other places you can learn,” Wangchuk told the Times.

Photo courtesy of Amnesty International.

Language Restrictions Exacerbate Pandemic Toll

A recently published study is stressing the necessity of accessible multilingual information on public health during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The research—published in JAMA Network Open, a journal of the American Medical Association—underscores the various social and demographic factors associated with higher incidence and death rates of COVID-19, such as limited English proficiency, race and disability.

“(COVID-19) neither created the conditions for health disparities nor did it reveal previously unrecognized social inequality,” the paper reads. “Rather, this pandemic has exacerbated long standing racial/ethnic, social, political, and economic inequities in the US to once again ensure that the most marginalized and under-resourced communities experience the worst outcomes.”

Researchers at the University of Michigan collected data on the virus’ incidence and death rates throughout the early weeks of the pandemic, from January 20 to July 29, and examined social risk factors using the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, which measures community susceptibility to adverse health consequences. The SVI takes into account a wide range of demographic factors in a community, including poverty rates, racial minority status, housing types, and English proficiency.

Across the board, communities with high SVI scores tended to be hit hardest by the pandemic—a 0.1 increase on the SVI (which is scored from 0-1) was found to increase incidence rates by 14.3%. Counties with high populations of non-English speakers were found to have higher rates of both COVID-19 incidence and mortality. An SVI subindex for racial minority status and limited English proficiency was particularly significant, accounting for a 21.7% increase in incidence rate per 0.1-point increase and a 16.9% increase in mortality rate.

“As limited English proficiency was significantly associated with COVID-19 outcomes, public service announcements in other languages could be used to disseminate public health guidelines regarding mask use, social distancing, and other mitigation strategies,” the paper reads.

Throughout the pandemic, health departments across the country have been criticized for not making COVID-19-related announcements accessible in languages other than English. In January, the Virginia Health Department came under hot water for using Google Translate for its Spanish-language translations, while residents of Minnesota have found that much of the COVID-19 data available in Spanish is outdated. In an effort to mitigate the negative impacts of the language barrier, members of Congress introduced the Coronavirus Language Access Act, however the bill did not pass.

Youth Poetry

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Get Lit
On Saturday mornings, Get Lit Players aren’t drooling on their pillows or watching TV. They come from all over the city of Los Angeles to recite and write poetry. Many take several buses and commute for over an hour to share classic poems and recite their own creations at the Actor’s Gang in Culver City. These young poets have a spark. Not only do they recite their original poetry with fire in their eyes, but they recite poems from centuries past with a conviction that can leave an audience in tears. Get Lit brings out the poet, the reader, and the performer in each of the students.

One of the most impressive features of a Get Lit workshop is the culture that’s created. Students from different schools, grades, cultural backgrounds, and neighborhoods use the gift of gab to spill their guts to each other, tackling difficult personal topics such as sexuality, family problems, and gang violence. Everyone listens and supports their fellow poets with finger snapping, praise, and constructive criticism. Get Lit has created an environment of mutual respect and students know that they can focus on fine-tuning their poetic language and nailing delivery instead of worrying about being judged by their peers.

Founded by Diane Luby Lane, Get Lit aims to give youth opportunities for developing a passion for literature, poetry, and language. They work with schools through their in-school program that provides standards-based curriculum for teachers to adopt.

Get Lit has trained language arts teachers to use Get Lit curriculum in classrooms around the city. Teachers can order an advance copy of Get Lit, A 12-Week Course in Literacy (and Life) Through POETRY by Diane Luby Lane, a guide to teaching their standards based curriculum in the classroom. Arts evaluator professor James Catterall and and his team from the University of California, Los Angeles evaluated the Get Lit In-School Program. They followed four classes in Watts, Compton, South Central, and Long Beach area schools for a period of six months. They published the results of their findings, which conclude that the in-school curriculum is “immensely effective,” writing, “Get Lit promotes good thinking, thoughtful words, high student engagement, and improved student motivation. Students say they find a voice and learn about themselves through poetry.”

For news and information about getting involved in Get Lit, visit www.getlit.org.

African American Education Connector Virtual Roundtable

White House Relaunches Spanish Website

In his first day in office, President Biden’s administration relaunched online Spanish-language communications that had been previously discontinued under the Trump Administration. The Trump Administration was the first in two presidencies not to maintain a Spanish-language version of the White House’s official website.

Shortly after the inauguration ended on Jan. 20, the Spanish-language version of whitehouse.gov went live for the first time since 2017. The website first launched in 1994 under President Clinton; under President Bush, a Spanish-language version was introduced and it had been maintained through the Obama Administration as well. Soon after President Trump entered the office, the Spanish-language version of the site was removed.

While Trump officials insisted early on in his presidency that the Spanish language version of the site would return shortly, it never did—throughout the four years of Trump’s presidency, the URL for the Spanish-language site would display an error message.

According to CNN, the White House did maintain a Twitter account, @LaCasaBlanca, which published in Spanish throughout the duration of Trump’s tenure as president. However, as the Guardian noted in 2017, under the Trump Administration, the Twitter account was much less active than it was during President Obama’s tenure—the tweets also frequently featured errors, such as missing accent marks.

The Biden Administration will continue to use the Twitter account alongside the official Spanish version of whitehouse.gov to communicate with the nation’s Spanish-speaking residents.

The move to relaunch the Spanish-language version of the website can be seen as a reflection of the nation’s linguistic diversity—more than 50 million residents of the United States speak Spanish on a regular basis, and it’s the second most widely spoken language in the country, after English.

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