Readings for this post:
1) "Who speaks English today?" - Jennifer Jenkins
2) "The Crosscultural Language..." - Diaz-Rico, Weed
3) "Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Education" - Farr, Seloni, and Song
"In California I found not just America, I found the world."
A pretty powerful quote from a Mexican immigrant student (found on pg. 3 of Diaz-Rico, Weed). America is represented in such a different way than the movies, when really it is a land of immigrants and diversity beyond what we can imagine. I know diversity is such a buzz word nowadays in the education world, and we all get sick and tired of hearing about it, but it is truly amazing how much people do not pay attention to how 2 students can be so different from one another. I find that oftentimes teachers do not truly utilize their students' backgrounds in their lessons and in the classroom in general. They stick to their ideal of the education world, and are skeptical to stray from what is considered the norm. It was amazing to read this article because I found out so many things that I wish I had known before about other cultures in this country. I truly believe that it would be beneficial for students in mainstream and ESL classrooms to have days out of the month dedicated to different cultures in the classroom and in the world; present their food, daily lifestyle, a map of their country, art, anything that could demonstrate that they have made a contribution to American culture by being in this country. It is truly not focused enough on in the classroom. I had no idea that Native Americans were performing medicine and agriculture methods before even the Egyptians. It is amazing to me that these aspects of our society are not addressed when children are young and less inclined to be judgmental of other cultures without understanding their background. It should start when they are even in pre-school. Truly it is the younger the better in those circumstances.
In Jennifer Jenkins' article, she describes the different models we ascribe to who speaks English in the world today. The most common or mainstreamed model is that of Kachru and his Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circle. Even though Jenkins does remark that Kachru did not intend anything by his statement "the Inner Circle" and that is merely linguistically and geographically based, it is hard to believe that some individuals would not find that offensive. There are multitudes of people in other countries that speak English just as fluently, but it is not spoken of in the media, especially in America. I feel like the words "Inner Circle" are rather poorly chosen, because it can be interpreted as having a sort of superiority to the other countries where English is not the native language. Something I had to ask myself after reading this article was, how did English become the lingua franca of the world? I am sure that scholars could explain this to me in lengthy detail, but the sheer magnitude of having this international language is mind-boggling. It makes me wonder if this was a different world, would Spanish be the lingua franca? French, Swahili? It is something I want to research for myself in the future and possibly during this course.
What do you think?
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