A history of racial and disability exclusion in bilingual education: Critical translanguaging strikes back!

The Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series on Language Discrimination in Fragile Communities and the FOCUS Program are pleased to present:

A history of racial and disability exclusion in bilingual education: Critical translanguaging strikes back!

Featuring:
Professor Emerita Ofelia García (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

It will take place on Tuesday, April 11 at 5:00 pm in 217 Perkins Library. A flyer is attached and light refreshments provided.

A history of the development of the modern era of bilingual education in the U.S. shows how it gradually moved away from struggles for social and racial justice to focus on language acquisition, and especially the learning of English. We consider the political motivations for such moves. The narrowing of the field to the acquisition of English and/or bilingualism (seen as subtractive or additive), instead of the development and leveraging of the histories, as well as the cultural and language practices of minoritized bilinguals has resulted in the increasing exclusion of students with disabilities, as well as Black students from bilingual education programs. Focusing on Latinxs in bilingual education programs, we explore how and why Afro-Latinxs, Asian-Latinx, and Indigenous-Latinx have been often excluded from representation in such programs. To counteract the focus on named language as an entity that could be "had," bilingualism as the addition of two named entities, as well as the silencing of race and raciolinguistic ideologies, we propose taking up a critical translanguaging theoretical perspective. We consider what this means theoretically, and end by proposing some critical translanguaging pedagogical practices that would open up spaces for the inclusion and representation of all students, as well as cognitive and social justice.

Please invite your colleagues and students. We look forward to seeing you there!