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CHRISTINA BRAIT PAULSTON There is an important difference between merely experimental and genuine experiment. The one may be a feeling for novelty, the other is rationally based on experience seeking a better way. - Frank Lloyd Wright Wright was talking about architecture, but the same difference can be applied to analyzing the relationship between standard and vernacular languages in bilingual education; surely we are also seeking a better way to handle bilingual education based on experience. How rationally based our efforts are, is another question. Works on this and similar topics can at times become the scene for very emotional-and very moving-presentations which sometimes are more utopian than rational. One can perhaps call this a very 'rational' text, because so few of the contributors are members of ethnic subordinate groups. Am I suggesting that minority group members are less rational? Of course not. I am suggesting that it is much easier to be calm, objective and scholarly about the lot of others than about your own. The most salient feature about the bilingual education of vernacular speaking groups is the social and economic exploitation of its members by the dominant group. The papers herein, treating bilingual education from a psychological perspective, agree at least on the issue that an understanding of the social and economic factors underlying bilingual education is crucial for understanding the psychological studies on bilingualism.
List of contents
Bilingualism and the Vernacular.- The Bilingual's Linguistic Repertoire.- Cognitive Development in Bilingual Environments.- Immersion Education: Applicability for Nonvernacular Teaching to Vernacular Speakers.- Evaluation and Testing in Vernacular Languages.- Third World Vernacular/Bi-Multilingual Curricula Issues.- Educational Reform and the Instrumentalization of the Vernacular in Haiti.- The Richford Experience: French Bilingual Education as a 'Basic' Approach to Language Competence.- The Role of the Vernacular in Transitional Bilingual Education.- Teacher Training for Bilingual Education: An International Perspective.- The Cajun French Debate in Louisiana.- The Status of Languages in Europe.- Education for Separatism: The Belgian Experience.- American Bilingualism: The Need for a National Language Policy.- Issues in Bilingualism: A View to the Future.- References.- Index A: Languages and Language Communities.- Index B: Authors and Subjects.
