Chapter Twelve Dual-Language Proficiency

Bilingualism is should be ubiquitous in the pluralistic society the United States claims to be. Unfortunately, English is a dominant language in an increasingly xenophobic society where immigrants are made to feel they should discard their cultural and linguistic capital like their predecessors did in the past.  Bilingualism, biliteracy and all of the formats that bilingual education can manifests itself in the United States will not succeed because of a clear point Diaz-Rico makes, “fear” (Diaz-Rico, 2008, p. 322). Jim Cummins research supports Diaz-Rico’s argument and claims that “fear” extends into the nucleus of minority-language families who drive their children toward dominant-language monolinguism for fear of academic failure (Cummins, 1981, p. 16). Political and social stress and the irregular and complex nature of language acquisition keeps society at large from seeing bilingualism, in its various pedagogical formats, as an explicit educational goal.