From the School of Education’s Edline Magazine, Fall issue

Issues of Language and Cultural Diversity in Urban Schools

Students of diverse backgrounds, cultures and languages sit together every day in urban classrooms. But few schools and educators understand or even realize the barriers to achievement that they create for bicultural and bilingual students, including racism, disrespect and low expectations.

René Antrop-González, assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (C&I), said that bicultural and biliterate students confront racism in schools in many forms. He says in individual classrooms, a teacher may display racism in overt ways and sometimes even covert ways.

”For instance, a Latina/o student may be the only Latina/o in an advanced placement science course,” Antrop-González said. “On more than one occasion, the teacher may have asked why the student is in the class and to re-check the registration to make sure she or he is in the correct class. In the case of female students, that’s a double jeopardy—she comes from a historically oppressed group and is also female, so there is a gender aspect as well that plays into this.”

Beverly Cross, associate professor in C&I, says that language can be a substitute for race. She gives an example from Kris Gutiérrez, professor in the Department of Education at UCLA, who says language minority students come to school with a suitcase full of language skills, cultural skills and valuable experiences. But they are asked to leave that suitcase of skills and experiences at the door and come into a Eurocentric environment where those things that stabilize them are not only made invisible, but are denigrated and viewed negatively. “That is one of the big issues that language minority students constantly face,” Cross said. “They are asked not to be who they are, but are asked to deny their language, their culture and their identities.”

Antrop-González says that bicultural and biliterate students must also deal with larger sociopolitical and historical issues of language. Since most school curricula are very Eurocentric, students of a different background have to question how their history is reflected in what is talked about in classrooms, says Antrop-González. Furthermore, he says the culture, language and traditions students bring from home and/or their communities are often disrespected or dishonored. “And this plays out in the very subtle messages that kids receive every day in institutions like schools.”

Some students choose not to tolerate this disrespect of their culture and language, says Antrop-González, and instead try to resist the teacher or school displaying these attitudes. But often, he says, society blames these students for not changing by assimilating to the system instead of looking at what positive ideas and traditions they can bring to the table.

Cross said if no one helps bicultural or bilingual students understand this form of anti-bilingualism and anti-linguistic diversity, they often internalize their failure and think it is their own fault or an issue with their cultural group. And they constantly have to enter school and face adults who have strong racial misconceptions and assumptions about them, which is a barrier to their achievement. “They can overcome those barriers because they have experience doing this, but why should they have to?” Cross said.

So what can teachers and other educators in schools do to raise consciousness in themselves and those around them? “I think first and foremost, people need to be open enough to really check their own belief systems,” Antrop-González said. Also he says teachers need to get to know the communities where students live and start having conversations with those in the community. “Unless these issues are brought out, we fall into the trap of perpetuating misconceptions,” Antrop-González said.

On Nov. 2, the School of Education will bring these issues to the forefront through the ninth annual Urban Forum, “Looking Back at Lau vs. Nichols: Issues of Language and Cultural Diversity in Urban Schools.” Keynote speaker Antonia Darder, professor of educational policy studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will help participants explore issues of language and cultural diversity in urban schools.

Cross, who is a member of the Urban Forum planning committee, said she hopes participants will come away “with a commitment to constantly ask oneself what beliefs I hold about linguistic diversity and how did I get those beliefs.” She said the way we learn to view language diversity is very subtle. “We need to discover how we come to believe what we do and how that informs our behavior as teachers, educators and business people.” She said a goal of the Urban Forum is for individuals to begin dismantling those perceptions, beliefs and ideologies they have about cultural and language diversity so each person can personally commit to move beyond those behaviors to ensure educational access and achievement for all students.

The Urban Forum will be held at the UWM Union and is free and open to the public. To find out more, visit www.soe.uwm.edu and click on the Urban Forum icon.

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